10/12/2025
FORWARD MOTION FREEDOM
Ever feel like your body is sending you emails you never subscribed to?
Subject lines like: “We need to talk.”
“Something’s out of balance.”
Or the classic: “If you won’t slow down, I will, love, your lower back.”
If you’ve been feeling stuck, sore, overwhelmed, out of sorts, or like you’re stumbling toward 2026 with one shoe on and the other missing, you’re not alone, your body isn’t nagging you, it’s inviting you into balance.
And at Forward Motion Freedom, that’s exactly the intention we’re setting for 2026.
________________________________________
Balancing Support and Enabling: The Art of Walking With Someone, Not For Them
By Julie Lucas-Hokin, Forward Motion Freedom, focus on Balance Month
In the healing world, and in everyday life, support is a beautiful, necessary, deeply human thing. We need each other. We’re meant to be connected. But like all good things, support has a shadow side. Tilt too far in one direction and we slip from supporting into enabling. Tip too far the other way, and we risk becoming unhelpful altogether.
This month at Forward Motion Freedom, we’re exploring what it really means to walk the balanced path: to support someone without carrying them, to empower without rescuing, and to hold space without holding responsibility for another person’s choices.
Before we go deeper, let me gently ask:
Where in your life or body feels out of balance right now?
Is it pain? Feeling stuck?
A body that won’t cooperate?
A mind that won’t slow down?
A heart tired from carrying too much alone?
I’m here to support you in returning to balance, by walking beside you with a whole-body (wHolistic) approach that nurtures, corrects, and empowers.
You receive the care your system needs in session, and the education, tools, and after-care to carry that healing forward.
And yes… I've brought a story. Because nothing illustrates balance better than a hospital ward and a couple of characters we’ll call Anna and Cheryl.
________________________________________
Support vs Enabling: What’s the Difference?
Before we step into the hospital, let’s set the scene.
Support
Support is about strengthening someone’s capacity.
It’s the gentle hand on the back, the “you’ve got this,” the willingness to sit beside someone while they take their steps, literal or metaphorical.
Support says:
“I believe in your ability, so I’ll walk with you.”
Enabling
Enabling is different, it shields someone from the consequences of not showing up for themselves. It’s doing the walking for them, even when they’re perfectly capable. It feels helpful in the moment but ultimately disempowers.
Enabling says:
“I’ll carry you so you don’t have to use your own legs.”
Sweet, but not particularly growth-promoting, and often exhausting for both people.
Finding balance between the two is the real art.
________________________________________
A Tale from the Hospital Ward: Anna & Cheryl
Recently, I spent time supporting someone through a hospital stay. Same surgery, same ward, same excellent nurses (from a former nurse, trust me, they were good). What differed was the mindset.
This surgery required patients to get up and walk as soon as possible. Movement helped prevent complications like pneumonia and scarring and adhesions where you didn’t want them to be. As in many things, the body thrives when it is supported into action, not allowed to become dependent.
Anna
When a nurse suggested attaching her catheter bag to her leg so she could get up and empty it herself, Anna gave me a cheeky grin and said, “Ah, sneaky nurses, getting me walking!”
Then she got up, walked, laughed, and kept walking.
Her recovery? Smooth. Her healing? Steady.
Cheryl
Cheryl had the same request from the same kind, competent nurses, only her response was a little… different.
“Lazy nurses,” she grumbled. “Trying to make me do their job.”
And that tone continued.
Her body, lacking the movement it needed, eventually tipped into pneumonia, exactly what the nurses were trying to prevent.
________________________________________
Where Support Lives in These Stories
The nurses were supporting both women, encouraging independence, protecting their long-term wellbeing, walking with them but not walking for them.
Anna recognised the support and allowed herself to be empowered by it.
Cheryl saw the same support as a burden. In resisting it, she unintentionally slid into a place where she needed more care, not less.
Here’s the quietly profound part:
Support only works when the person receiving it participates.
And…
Enabling often begins when we try to compensate for someone who won’t.
________________________________________
What Balanced Support Looks Like — in Life and in Healing
Balanced support never replaces someone’s own agency, but it also doesn’t throw them into the deep end and yell, “Swim!”
It looks like:
• Walking beside someone, not stepping in front of them
• Encouraging capacity rather than relieving them of responsibility
• Seeing their strengths more clearly than their limitations
• Believing in their inner intelligence, even when they’ve forgotten it
• Creating safety without creating dependence
In the healing work at Forward Motion Freedom, this balance is at the heart of everything I do.
My job isn’t to “fix” you, rescue you, or carry your life or your pain, but I do hold you, your body, your energy, your heart, with the kind of presence that invites your own wisdom to rise and lead the way. Healing, becoming the best possible you, isn’t something done to you, it’s something we co-create.
________________________________________
The Body Is Always Asking to Participate
Whether you’re receiving bodywork, energy work, or navigating deep emotional or soul-level shifts, your system is always part of the process.
Just like Anna needed to walk so her body could heal, your body needs to engage with your healing journey. My role is simply to support your natural intelligence, to activate what’s already within you.
Support says:
“Let’s do this together.”
Enabling says:
“I’ll do this for you.”
Healing says:
“You already know how to do this. I’m just helping you remember.”
And as we move toward 2026, this is the perfect moment to set the intention for balance, not starting the year on the “right foot,” but with both feet grounded, connected, and ready to move forward.
If you’re feeling that nudge, ask me about the January Balance Packages designed to begin your year steady, supported, and empowered.
________________________________________
A Balanced Invitation
If part of you is ready to step into your own healing, whether with a laugh, a wobble, or a gentle eye-roll at the “sneaky” parts of growth, Julie at Forward Motion Freedom is here to walk beside you, not to carry you, to support you, in the most grounded, soulful, balanced way.
Let’s walk forward, together.
And if you're still reading this thinking,
“Is this a sign?”, Yes, it is.
Your body, your energy, your life are all calling for balance.
When you're ready, even just a little bit, I’m here.
Message me to book a session or ask about January’s Balance Packages.
Let’s make 2026 the year you stop carrying everything alone, and finally walk supported.