Your Body Isn’t Broken.
This week we chat about pelvic floor myths, postpartum recovery, stability over strength, and trusting yourself through the many seasons of womanhood - with the fabulous Dr. Alexis Griffin
It was 2022. I was three months postpartum with my second baby. We had just moved to a new city. I didn’t know anyone. I had a 20-month-old at my feet and a newborn in my arms. I was breastfeeding, pumping, doing all the things - and every single morning I woke up and my body just…hurt.
I joined a gym. And in walked this woman. Pregnant. Radiating something I can only describe as total authority over her own body. I didn’t know her name yet (little did I know we share the same name!). I just knew I needed her in my life.
That was Dr. Alexis Griffin. And she is, to this day, one of the most extraordinary women I know. She helped put my body back together, little by little - and I’m forever grateful.
We sat down together for the latest episode of The Breadwinners Pod and talked all things postpartum recovery, pelvic floor, motherhood, career pivots, and what it actually looks like to build through the seasons.
The myth we’ve all been sold
We started by talking about the thing that most people feel is a total black box - The Pelvic Floor.
For those who even know what it is, we are walking around believing we need a strong pelvic floor. Tight. Firm. Held together like a fist.
Wrong.
Alexis explains it like this: think of your pelvic floor as a trampoline. If the trampoline doesn’t give at all, there’s no bounce. If it gives too much, that’s also a problem. What you want is yield. Length. Movement.
She asked her husband once what the pelvic floor does. He said: “It pushes the baby out.”
Exactly wrong. The uterus pushes the baby out. The pelvic floor needs to get out of the way. If it’s short and tight and gripping, your body is literally fighting against itself.
I’ve been thinking about how often we do that. In our bodies, in our work, in our lives. Gripping so hard we forget that yielding is also a skill. And that’s for all humans - pregnant or not pregnant, men and women alike.
Stability is more important than strength
This is the other reframe I keep coming back to. Mostly because 2.5 years postpartum I’m still dealing with pelvic floor issues (hello peeing when I run) and reminded daily that stability is queen.
We chase strength. We lift heavier, push harder, add more. Dr. Griffin’s entire clinical philosophy is organized around a different principle: stability first. Always.
A strong body that isn’t stable is a body waiting to break down. For her NFL players. For her postpartum clients. For any of us who are holding a lot - professionally, physically, emotionally - and wondering why we keep getting hurt.
Strength gets the attention. Stability does the work.
The gym is not the answer (not yet)
We, unfortunately, have a serious problem with snapback culture in this country.
We think of recovery as: get cleared by the doctor, get back to the gym asap, get back to normal (what even is normal after kids?). Dr. Griffin thinks about it differently.
Before you ever walk into a gym, she wants to know how you’re bending over that crib. How you’re holding that beautiful baby. How you’re sitting in your car during your commute.
Because you do those movements hundreds of times a day. And if you’re doing them with a tucked pelvis and a disengaged posterior chain, 45 minutes of effort at the gym doesn’t undo the other 23 hours.
Here’s an amazing tip she shared: she puts her laundry on the floor so she’s forced to do a proper hip hinge every time she picked something up. A built-in RDL. Intentional movement, woven into a day that had no room for extras. And that’s how she sneaks in 30-40+ hip hinges a day….while doing chores.
What an epic hack.
On seasons…and the tech sales job at 38
There is a moment in this episode that I think every woman navigating a career pivot needs to hear.
Dr. Alexis Griffin - DPT, board-certified sports specialist, a decade of working with elite athletes - took a tech sales job at 38. Cold calling. Sitting at a desk. Quotas. Teams of 24-year-olds.
She called me when she was making the decision. I remember the conversation. She said: I’m a doctor and I’m going to go do tech sales. And I said: I think that’s exactly what you, and your family, need right now.
Because it was a season. Gwendolyn, her fourth baby, was four months old. She needed something consistent and flexible. She needed to be home without guilt. She needed the season to be what it was without forcing it to be something else.
What she took from it surprised her. The clarity of sales metrics - you hit your number or you don’t - helped her understand boundaries in a way that years of solo clinical practice hadn’t. Being fully present at work. Being fully present at home. Not bleeding everything together and calling it ‘dedication’.
But the reality is, even though that job was what she needed for that moment in her life, she also realized that nothing is wasted. It may not be your dream, or your forever - but it’s important to remember that it’s not for nothing. And that’s what she tells her kids.
Effort Matters More - High Expectations, High Support.
Those are the words written on the whiteboard in her family’s kitchen. Reminding her kids that it’s important to work hard, but also to enjoy the hard work.
Near the end of the episode I asked her what legacy she wants to leave.
She said: I want my kids to want to work hard because that’s their best self. Not because someone told them to. Because they know they have something to offer the world.
In the age of AI - where effort is increasingly optional, where the path of least resistance gets easier every day - she’s choosing to model something different. She’s building something hard. She’s showing her four kids what it looks like to do meaningful work in a season that finally has room for it.
That’s a Breadwinner. And that’s what we’re here to celebrate.
Listen to the full episode with Dr. Alexis Griffin wherever you get your podcasts.
And if it resonates, share it with someone who needs to hear that their body isn’t broken.
As always, thanks for reading - and listening.
— Alexis
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