The Other Side of Hard

On coming home, falling apart a little, and what the ice actually taught me.

In this newsletter: coming home broken, what the ice actually confirmed, and the question nobody asks themselves often enough.

I’ve been home for a week.

My feet are still wrecked. My sleep is broken. I wake up at 4am with a head full of noise and lie there wondering why I can’t just be okay.

I finished. I crossed 553 kilometres of ice. Thirty days. And I’m lying in the dark at 4am feeling anxious about nothing I can name.

Nobody tells you about this part.

The ice was simple. Brutally, beautifully simple.

One direction. One objective. Forward. Survive. Repeat.

No inbox. No decisions about what matters today. No noise from the outside world bleeding into everything. Just white and wind and the sound of your own breathing and the next kilometer.

I didn’t know how much I needed that simplicity until I lost it.

Coming home felt like walking out of a silent room into a party nobody warned you about. The world just carried on. Of course it did. But something in me hadn’t caught up yet. Something is still out there, moving west, dragging a sled into the wind.

That’s not poetic. That’s just true.

The science has a name for it.

Research published in The Lancet found that up to half of polar expedition athletes experience depression, anxiety and sleep disruption after returning. The nervous system that kept you alive out there doesn’t get a memo that says you’re home now, stand down. It just keeps running. Threat assessment. Hypervigilance. A brain that spent thirty days solving for survival doesn’t switch off because you’re back in your own bed.

Nine wake events last night according to my Whoop. Sleep consistency at 65% for the week. A body that needs almost eight hours and keeps getting six and seven.

Not telling you this for sympathy. Telling you because we lie about what hard things actually cost. We show the finish line. We post the picture. We say it was worth it, and it was, but we skip the part where you’re home and slightly broken and not sure what to do with yourself.

That part is real. That part matters. Pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t make you stronger. It just makes you dishonest.

Lost 9.6 kilograms on the ice. That’s a lot! The body eats what it needs to keep moving.

So I’m rebuilding. Starting to train tomorrow. Nothing heroic. Just the first strength session. A solid peptide protocol to support recovery and hormone function. Nutrition slowly locking in. Protein first. Deliberate choices about what goes in and when.

Not glamorous. But something I can control when everything else is still settling.

That matters more than people realise. When the nervous system is dysregulated and the sleep is broken and the head is running hot, having one or two things you can point at and say I did that deliberately today is its own kind of anchor. Focus as a recovery tool. Structure as medicine.

The body knows what it needs. Get out of the way and give it the right inputs.

I went to Greenland knowing one thing.

I was physically ready. Three years of preparation. The training, the kit, the nutrition, the route. The work was done.

I’ve always known my mind was strong. Knew it. But knowing something and having it confirmed under real conditions are two different things entirely. Week two, my feet started going. Ten out of ten pain. Every step. For two weeks. I kept moving. Not because I’m special. Because there was no other option and out there, stripped of everything else, I found out the ceiling was higher than I’d ever measured.

Hard things done properly don’t show you something new. They show you how much more of what’s already there you haven’t touched yet.

I didn’t know I’d want to go back harder before I’d even finished.

That last one surprised me most.

We pour so much energy into other people’s journeys. Watching. Following. Advising. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we turned that same energy toward our own.

Not a criticism. Just a question worth sitting with.

I keep coming back to why I’m already thinking about the next one.

Feet aren’t healed. Haven’t slept properly in a week. Already looking at the map. Already planning.

The honest answers aren’t pretty or simple.

Maybe it’s addictive. Maybe I need something to move toward or I don’t know what to do with myself. Maybe the post-expedition emptiness is easier to hold when there’s already a next thing on the horizon. Maybe I miss the simplicity of one direction and one purpose. Maybe I want to prove something to people who said it wasn’t possible. Maybe I want to matter. Maybe I want to inspire someone to go do their own hard thing.

Maybe all of it. Maybe none of it fully.

This morning, while getting a few things at the mall, someone that followed the journey stopped me and asked if it was life changing.

Honest answer: not in the way people mean when they ask that. There was no dramatic before and after. No sudden clarity. No different person standing in different shoes.

What it did was quieter and more useful than that.

It gave me permission to ask better questions. It made me less willing to tolerate a small life. It raised the floor on what I’m prepared to accept from myself.

That’s not life changing. That’s something harder to name and worth a lot more.

The version of me that stepped onto the ice on 1 May and the version writing this are not the same person. Not dramatically. Not in ways easy to articulate yet. But something shifted. Something got confirmed that no other experience could have confirmed.

You cannot know what you’re made of until the thing you prepared for is no longer the hardest part.

I prepared for the physical. The ice gave me something else entirely.

When last did you do something hard enough to find out something true about yourself?

Not uncomfortable. Not inconvenient. Hard. The kind that strips everything back and leaves you alone with who you actually are when there’s no performance, no audience, no option to quit gracefully.

Terrifying, actually.

It’s also the only place I’ve ever found anything real.

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And that’s it for this week.

Back to coaching and creating tomorrow. Performance clients and creative work. Looking forward to it more than usual. Coming off the ice gives you more to bring. New perspective. Harder earned than anything I could have read or studied.

On Saturday I head back to the Arctic. Svalbard. A photography expedition, nothing like Greenland, but the same sky, the same cold, the same space. Maybe I’ll find some clarity out there. Maybe I’ll just find more questions. Either way feels right.

Sleep is broken. Feet are healing. Head is busy.

Already looking at the map. Hard not to.

As always, you can reach me directly on email or WhatsApp or reach out from my website. If you have any questions to comments, I’d love to hear from you!

And if any of this has been useful or you’re enjoying the ride, share it with someone who might need it. Would really appreciate it.

Do good work.

G.

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