I wrote a letter to my clients. Then I realized it was for you too.

You Are High functioning and Disciplined. And completely unprepared for hard seasons. Sound familiar?

Hello. Mere here. Happy Sunday.

The last few weeks have lived in my body in a way I am still making sense of.

If you have been following along, you already know some of this. If you are new here, buckle up.

I really struggled to write this newsletter. Not because I did not have words. On the contrary. Things have been moving so fast that by the time I sit down to write any of it, it is already behind me and we are somewhere else entirely. Words, ideas, things to share, they have been coming at me on early morning drives to the gym, on walks, mid road trips through states I was not expecting to be in, somewhere between a hospital room and a memory care facility and more phone calls with lawyers than I care to count.

What I did not have was certainty about whether a newsletter was the right container for something this heavy. Whether you came here for this. Whether I should share it openly beyond my clients and mentees.

And then I remembered why we do what we do and who we are. What Fortify was built on. Changing the narrative.

And I have had an extraordinary few weeks. But before I tell you about them, I need to tell you something else first. Because the events are mine and the lesson is yours.

Years ago I lost my mom. Suddenly. I had been following a meal plan for seven years. Seven years of being told what I should eat, when and how much, to achieve my aesthetic goals. Not to fuel my body. Not to navigate grief or chaos or the unexpected. And when tragedy arrived, I cooked fish and froze it, chopped cucumber, and when what I packed ran out entirely I told myself I was failing. I white-knuckled my way through loss because to me grace was weakness.

I was so busy performing strength that I never actually built any.

I not only watched my mother die, I felt like I was failing because I ate quinoa. It is embarrassing to write and admit but it was my truth then… My world was imploding.

I want you to sit with that for a moment.

Because here is what happened this time.

I wrote a letter to my clients. And when I finished it I realized I needed to share it with more people. You need to hear it. Here is what I sent:

To my incredible clients. My people. My family. My community.

I have read every single message you sent. Every prayer, every word, every offer. More than once. What you poured into my inbox over these last few weeks is something I struggled to find words for. Thank you just was not enough, yet it is often all I had. So let me try to say it differently. You gave me permission to be a human. You held space without ever making me feel like I was leaving you behind or vice versa. In a season where so much felt out of my hands... that was everything.

I want to tell you a personal story. Something I have never fully shared, and something that feels more relevant right now than it ever has.

Years ago I lost my mom. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Tragically. At the time I was working chairside in a clinic and given no formal time off. Every hour I took I had to make up. I was also mid competition prep, and the only nutritional foundation I had to date was following a meal plan. I had been following a meal plan in some form for seven years. Seven. I did not know how to make food swaps. I did not know how to track macros. I did not know how to feed myself through grief without a set of instructions telling me exactly what I was allowed to eat or should eat. And when there was risk that I might not do it perfectly I told myself I was failing. I never allowed myself grace. I just stayed rigid. Because to me grace meant weakness. It meant everything I had built would come apart the moment I let go.

That story is important because of what I am about to tell you.

My father passed away peacefully Wednesday, with my sister and me holding him.

And I need you all to hear me. This time was different.

Yes, the world was spinning. Estates, lawyers, real estate agents, banks, notaries, power of attorney, closing accounts, cleaning out a house, moving my father across two states only to watch his decline continue with the speed it came on, sending him into full hospice care just five days after settling. I learned more about my father in the last three weeks than he allowed us to see in our entire lives. He was drafted to Vietnam right out of high school, then drafted two more times. He graduated college with an engineering degree, a man who only ever said how stupid he was, how he was too dumb to understand. A man of many demons who in his last weeks released what was within. I saw my dad weep in confusion. I saw him weep in sorrow. I saw his eyes light up seeing the sun and blue sky. I heard him talking to his own father as though he were a child again. I saw him smile telling me he saw mom dancing in the wind. I witnessed him smile and tell each of us I love you. We had more of him in three weeks than we had in a lifetime. It was a lot.

I have never felt so present. With my sister, with my dad, with myself.

I showed up for this the way I always hoped I would. It was hella messy and at times very snotty. But I still found home inside of it all. I still sought anchors with abundance as opposed to scarcity even when everything around me felt like chaos. I took care of myself. Not perfectly. Not gracefully by anyone's Instagram standard. But I found home inside of it. I kept seeking anchors. I leaned into abundance even when everything around me was pulling toward scarcity. I chose presence over performance every single time, and that choice was available to me because I had built the capacity for it.

This is exactly why I am so passionate about what we build together. Not aesthetics. Not only numbers. Confidence. Real confidence, the kind that does not crumble when life arrives unannounced. Honest capacity, knowing yourself well enough to show up from where you actually are, not where you think you should be.

What I want for every single one of you is that when your hard season comes, because oh huni bear it will, you do not have to think about your foundation. You just get to fall on it. You know what you need. You know how to feed yourself. You know how to move your body even when motivation is nowhere to be found. You know how to listen to what you are asking of yourself and whether that ask is honest. You also know how to be gentle without ruminating on the shoulds. You have built something that belongs to you and cannot be taken away by circumstances, by grief, by chaos, by the unexpected.

That is what we are doing here. That is what every check-in, every hard conversation, every ordinary week of showing up is actually building toward.

This is also why I am so passionate about health and prevention. Because the body and the mind you build today are what you will draw from when the hard seasons come. What you are doing right now, showing up, building the tools, allowing yourself to be a beginner, allowing yourself the space to show up for your own health needs, that is not vanity. That is life preparation. That is love for your present self and your future self and for every person who will one day need you to be present.

This is what I need and what to expect of me between now and this Sunday… 

That letter sat in my drafts for a few minutes before I sent it. Not because I doubted it. Because I wanted to feel it one more time before I let it go.

And this is what I want to leave you with.

The woman who lost her mom years ago and white-knuckled her way through it on a meal plan and called it strength, I understand her completely. I do not judge her at all. She was doing the only thing she knew how to do with what she had built. The problem was not her resilience. The problem was that what she had built was not capacity. She built rules, not relationship. A performance of health that had not yet become an actual home inside herself.

The woman who just buried her father though..... she found home inside the chaos, she was not stronger by accident. She was not more disciplined or more naturally gifted at hard things. She was had worked on building capacity and a relationship with herslef. She was further along in practicing her foundations. The work that happens in the check-in you send when nothing is wrong. The moment you choose honesty with yourself over convenience. The slow steady practice of actually knowing yourself well enough to trust yourself when it counts.

You are building that right now. In the ordinary weeks. In the unremarkable ones. In the weeks where nothing dramatic is happening and it is easy to wonder whether any of this matters.

It matters. I promise you it matters.

And for the coaches reading this: this is the work, the impact.... Not the protocols. Not the perfect posting schedule. Not the likes, the views, or the algorithm. You cannot give your clients what you have not built for yourself. But when you have? You will know. And so will they.

To my clients, thank you. Publicly, loudly, and without enough words to do it justice. You showed me what this work actually builds....you showed me the impact... I will not forget it.

With so much love

Mere and Sarah

For clients: I am ready to start building a LASTING capacity

For coaches: This is the kind of coach I want to be.