Grasiele Gewehr hated playing team sports. Growing up in Brazil, she openly admits sport wasn’t her forte and often she would be left standing on the sidelines.
“My experience with sport was really bad because I wasn’t very good at it at school. I was always the last one to be picked for the teams,” said Gewehr.
Subsequently, for many years, she chose to avoid sport altogether and it wasn’t until she moved to Australia and started a family with her Australian husband, the young mum of two children under four, decided enough was enough and it was time to face her fear head on.
“In fact, inspired by the This Girl Can (Victoria) campaign, I started trying a few different sports that I’ve never done before because I’ve always been scared of sports.” In addition to solo activities such as yoga, swimming and pilates, the 32 year old has teamed up with women in her local community, who share a similar story or journey to hers, to provide support in numbers, encouragement and simply share in the fun of doing something they possibly thought they would never experience, like beach volleyball, footy and rowing.
“Some of them just said, ‘Oh I haven’t done any exercise for like a year, but I’ll give it a go!’ It’s just supposed to be a bit of fun and we’re not going to compete professionally. But you never know!”
Following the birth of both her children, Gewehr took time off to recover and admitted the temptation was there to devote all her time to her young family at the expense of her mental and physical wellbeing.
“You’re constantly living around them and doing everything for them. It was really hard to get back into it. I didn’t feel like exercising at all and I felt really bad about my body.” So she created a personal challenge and hasn’t looked back.
“I decided I would give myself two months of doing it consistently and going to the gym four times a week. After ,a month I was absolutely hating it. I was going, I just want to go home and sleep. I just wanted to have sweets and chocolate! Now I jump out of bed and I really look forward to doing things and getting active.” And rather than taking time away from her young family, Gewehr believes she is positively impacting their development as a great role model. In fact, her advice to other women who may feel the same as her is pretty simple, “You can’t wait to feel like exercising to start doing it. You must make it a habit. Just start. Start anything. Just go for a walk. It doesn’t matter what it is.”
“This girl can play sports and have fun.”
VicHealth’s This Girl Can - Victoria campaign celebrates women who are all kinds of active. Women who are giving it their all, or giving it a go, but not giving a damn!
