Sophie Butler: “For me, resilience was never a choice”

Instagram influencer Sophie Butler struggles with the words ‘resilience’ and ‘inspiration’. This is why, as told to Chloe Gray. 

“As a disabled person, I’m often called brave, strong and resilient. These are funny words to me because I didn’t have a choice in my resilience. I realised very early in the ICU hospital [after an accident while lifting weights in the gym that broke her spine] that it’s resilience or death, and I wasn’t going to choose the second option. It’s why I think my resilience wasn’t just about the fact that I’ve gone through something, but how I managed to cling onto myself during it. How I’ve come out the other side has been the most important thing.

Many people want me to be inspirational, and we live in a world where we are constantly looking to other people for that spark of motivation to keep us moving. But I find it really dehumanising. In the gym, it leads to a lot of benevolent ableism, where people think that they are genuinely being nice or helping by saying ‘It’s so great to see you here’, or asking me about very personal parts of my life, but they would never say that to an able-bodied person. 

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Being put on a pedestal for doing these normal things stops me from being able to grow or make mistakes. I’ve noticed that as I’ve started to gain more confidence and show other sides of my personality online – the parts of me that aren’t just the ‘brave woman in the gym’ – people haven’t responded well. They don’t want me to leave the box they put me in. 

I used to hold people up like this. I would look to other women online as ‘fitspos’ or body goals. I had a certain idea of what fitness looked like and I chased it. I was training to feel disciplined, energised and confident, but that confidence was still being determined by what I looked like. Now I maintain that self-assurance because I deserve it, rather than basing it on what I look like on a certain day.

The gym has been a huge part of my life since I was about 19. I started going because I wanted to realign my priorities. I was at university and I felt like I was doing the bare minimum, rather than challenging myself as I knew I could. Strength training made me feel good because it was a physical challenge, but also because I was doing something for me and taking time for myself. I’m really grateful for it because it taught me discipline and structure.

But the reality is that I have struggled with my confidence in fitness spaces. People who follow me know that I have experienced a lot of trolling and negative comments from the industry on Instagram. I didn’t really realise it at first but it’s really impacted the way that I see myself in the fitness space. I know that lots of women also have experiences that make them feel as though they don’t deserve to take up space in the gym, and it’s why I think it’s really important to know that it’s not a failure to feel like this. We all have relapses in confidence, and right now I’m trying to focus on rebuilding my love for training. 

I’m learning that while it’s much easier to make other people the villain and to say ‘they were bad in the situation and I was in the right’, life is not a West End musical. There is no good and evil. People are very nuanced and have experiences that make them react the way they do. It doesn’t mean that you should tolerate nastiness or abuse, but that understanding it’s very rarely a personal attack takes the responsibility off of my shoulders. 

It takes a great deal of power to maintain not necessarily kindness, but neutrality in those situations. That attitude is helping me go into the gym, be there for myself and not be concerned with other people’s problems.

It’s why I think online spaces can be so useful despite the trolling. It gives you the ability to seek the people you want to be. Even if you can’t see other women or other people with disabilities in your physical space, you’re seeing it in the metaspace. I don’t want to be inspirational, but I do want to be seen, and I’m starting with relearning to own my space in the gym.” 

For more stories of Strong Women, check out the Training Club library. You can check out Sophie on Instagram (@sophjbutler).

Photography: Sarah Brick

Fashion: Helen Atkin

Hair: Afi Emily Attipoe using Charlotte Mensah Manketti Oil

Make-up: Nandi Kai at S Management using Glossier

Nails: Tinu Bello at One Represents using The Gel Bottle

Photography direction: Tom Gormer

Photography assistant: Caz Dyer

Sophie wears top, £140, Marysia Sport (matchesfashion.co.uk), leggings, £85, Prism (prismlondon.com), trainers, £165, Adidas (adidas.co.uk), necklace, Sophie’s own

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