Bree Stilwell

He’s also what some may call a ‘fitness enthusiast,’ or by my sometimes definition, one who’s preoccupation with moving his body is pathologically obsessive. I used to resent it—his constant and undying love for exercise feeling like the other (much younger) woman in our marriage—until he got me in on his action.

He’s walked miles with a concrete donut around his neck, and taught himself how to tear whole decks of cards in half in the interest of increasing his grip strength (and bragging rights, of course, he’s not a robot). He rides bikes and climbs walls and rocks, runs, lifts and swings very heavy things, and often comes home with bizarre roadside finds that he then reconjiggers into bespoke gym equipment, of which we have ample inventory.

And there’s the steel bending. And just like it sounds, it’s the actual competitive sport of bending actual steel. With your body, ps.

We all did some off-brand things when locked in our homes during the pandemic. Sourdough mastery for many, it was steel bending for us.

Chris was literally recruited by a local bender who saw his humblebrag IG post about his formidable finger strength. Just a friendly rando talking up a totally esoteric and probably in no way legit sport.1 They shared some links, Chris’ interest was easily piqued, and a new devotee was born.

As goes any of these things with my husband, he shares his fascinations both freely and with open invitation. What he finds valuable, magical, repulsive, infuriating, and/or inspiring, he brings to the spaces we inhabit together. He enjoys my input and response, but also, and more often than I think I’m up for, my participation.

What really sets my husband apart tho, and why he won the biggest prize at the ring toss (ME!), is that he does all this without even the slightest whiff of pressure.2 His enthusiasm is so authentic, his invitation to join him so entirely sans ulterior motive other than togetherness, it’s impossible to refuse. It’s also very likely THE key to our happy marriage, but I suppose I need a little more longitudinal data to safely make that claim.

Anyhoo… it was during those dark nights of our collective soul that I learned how to move varying lengths and breadths of steel rods with the only tool I can verifiable claim legal patent of—my body.

The website for Bend Sport Canada describes steel bending this way:

Steel bending, for sport/hobby, is done by bending steel using the power and leverages of your own body. There are two main types of steel bending: Unbraced and Braced.

UNBRACED BENDING is done by only using the upper body to complete a bend. No assistance of the lower body is allowed during the feat.

In BRACED BENDING the bender is allowed to use their legs, hips, and knees in conjunction with their upper body to complete the task. The only body part that can’t be used is the feet. 

Bending steel has been around for as long as steel has been around, which is about 4000 years. It was even documented that Leonardo DaVinci used to bend horseshoes to impress onlookers. It is a great way to develop self confidence and overall physical strength.

It’s way niche, folks. Like, excepting the blurb included in our short-run Christmas card from 2020, I’ve brought this thing up in only a handful of conversations. It honestly takes too much time to explain and even with the short version, there’s no existing frame of reference to lean on—it just doesn’t compute through idle chitchat. It’s a little like describing the taste of filet mignon to a lifelong vegetarian. It’s both completely unrelatable, and off-putting. Even a little disgusting to some. Who would want to do that??

Well, we did. I did. Even our kids did for a stretch (peaking at ages 2, 7 and 10 before moving on to the next shiny sportsball-thing). We loved its diversity, the myriad ways to move equally endless iterations of steel and metal. We bent bars and rods, but also rebar, nails, horseshoes and bolts. Chris got into adjustable wrenches for a hot minute.

We’re a curious lot, my husband and boys, and Chris and I particularly enjoy pushing boundaries and testing our tolerance, with our bodies, our brains and our lifestyle. It tracks that we’d be into all this steel bending wildness, for the novelty of it, sure, but also for the deeper lessons we immediately recognized were available through the pursuit of it.

So here’s the thing: when you’re in the middle of a tough bend, and they’re ALL tough, the key is to stay in it. You’re trying to move a piece of hardened steel to your will, without heat or hammer, and the fight is primal.

There’s a predictable moment with each bend when your frontal cortex starts taking the reigns from the hindbrain, telling you there’s no way this thing is moving, that this shit is cray and abort-abort-abort, but it’s also that exact point, and the screaming match you’re having with yourself, that you have to work into and through.

Right in the midst of exhaustion, seemingly zero strength left to tap, the only route to the other side involves sustaining the effort… staying in the bend.

Other thing is, and as with all challenging endeavors: the failures far outweigh the successes. I fucked with a particular braced bend for over a year—consistently failing, repeatedly coming so close so often that it really started to mess with me. I even brought it to competition, failing the first go but getting it done the next year.3 So it’s not just about the sustained effort singular, it’s also the sustained effort over time and on repeat, revisiting over and over again that fulcrum point where either you or the steel ultimately yields.

When the steel does finally move, when you’ve stayed with it and feel the moment, as one always does, when you’ve won, everything changes in the span of a millisecond. You go from full and complete effort against an immovable object, to the sensation of zero resistance, as if the obstacle itself was a fiction from the start.

If this sounds at all familiar to you, dear reader, it’s because it’s also, move for move, the creative process.

I haven’t bent steel in over a year now, and don’t intend on going back to it. The style of effort doesn’t align as well with where my head and heart are at currently, so I’ve moved on to other things that feel more synergistic (reformer Pilates, baby; can’t get enough). But something happened this last week that put me right back into the bender’s mindset.

I’ve been pushing for a specific creative breakthrough, making all the effort against a seemingly fixed obstacle. I’ve been *in the bend.* And just when I thought I’d drained all my reserves, expended every available resource, internal and ex, the thing moved.

I’ve spent the last year, solid, grifting every angle in designing my work life. The efforts of this last year were preceded by a slower burn over the previous seven, a continuous tending of my blue-hot promise to never work for anyone else ever again. It’s been exhausting, but also full up with possibility, insight, reconnection to myself and my people, and of course, creativity.

I’ve had to come at this process with every resource I’ve collected in my nearly 50 years on the planet (aka, my entire body), and until just this last week, the movements have felt slow and sluggish; muddy. I just couldn’t see how it was all going to jive in the sparkly flow-type way I craved; both my husband and I working independently on our own small businesses, making enough money to do what’s important to us. We’ve both got some pretty strong feelings about our culture’s definition of and relationship to work these days, but it’s hard AF to walk the talk.

We’ve scrambled. For years now. And while Chris’ business is steadily building, the pressures to align in a deeper way with our values and purpose have built just as steadily and in lockstep. I’ve considered my own role in this as one yet to be cast, or sculpted; like chiseling at a block of granite without fully understanding what will emerge.

It’s felt unbendable. But I stayed in it. I continued, against my ‘better’ judgement, against my tolerance and seemingly finite endurance, until the unexpected moment of release and resolve appeared. Out of nowhere, and yet, somehow still by my own hand.