This 80-year-old woman used Crossfit to cope with the loss of her husband

Constance Tillit has been using Crossfit to build up her strength, but she’s no ordinary gym rat. Constance is 80-years-old, already setting her apart from the vast majority of the fitness-focused population. She’s also doing one of the hardest exercise regimes out there (seriously, you guys, have you TRIED Crossfit?) with two hip replacements, two knee replacements, and two rotator cuff replacements. To top all that off, she’s working herself to the bone after suffering a terrible loss- the death of her husband. In fact, the loss is what inspired Constance to get strong. She’s using Crossfit to cope with her grief.

In a video posted by NowThis, which has gone crazy-viral on Facebook (collecting over 3.6 million views as of this writing), Constance lifts like a champ. She also has some words of wisdom (and a strong dose of tough love) for those who are a little hesitant about getting their workout on.

“Get up and do it,” she says. “Stop with the whining, stop with the ‘Oh, you have to take care of me.’ Take care of yourself.”

When things get tough physically (and it’s freaking Crossfit, things are going to get tough) Constance draws upon the memory of her wonderful husband to keep going.

“He is with me right now,” she says in the video. “He was my nurse, my doctor, my friend, my everything. He was my encouragement. He still is my encouragement.”

We are blown away by Constance’s heart and strength. She motivates us to dig deep and call upon our physical and emotional reserves of strength. As she proves in this insanely inspirational video, we are all so much stronger than we think we are and we are all capable of so much more than what the world expects of us.

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