There are songs you listen to with your ears, and then there are songs you listen to with your ribs—the ones that settle somewhere beneath your skin and hum along to the frequency of your own unspoken pain.
Whitney Houston's "I Look to You" is one of those songs.
Released in 2009, it was more than a comeback; it was a confession. When Whitney sang, "After all my strength is gone, in you I am strong," she wasn't just hitting notes. She was handing a lifeline to everyone who has ever felt themselves crumbling from the inside out.
"My levees are broken / My walls have come tumbling down / All the pictures have been washed away / There's nothing left now."
If you've been through the cycle—the one we've been talking about, the trauma bond, the addiction to a person, the breakup and makeup and breakdown—you know exactly what that feels like. The levees break. The walls fall. The pictures wash away. And you're left standing in the rubble, looking for something, anything, to hold onto.
For some, that something is a song.
For climbers, that something is a wall. A board. A 20-millimeter edge.
When There's Nothing Left to Hold, You Hold the Rock
Whitney's lyrics paint a picture of total depletion:
"I've been battered, but I never break / I'm down on my knees / But I look to you."
This is the paradox of climbing. The more battered you are, the more you need something solid beneath your fingers. When your emotional world has become quicksand—when every person you trusted turned out to be unstable ground—the rock doesn't lie. The hold doesn't pretend.
Climbing is one of the only sports where you literally cannot do it without trust. You trust your feet on tiny chips. You trust your fingers on slopers. You trust the rope, the belayer, the gear. But most importantly, you learn to trust yourself—your own strength, your own judgment, your own ability to find the next hold when there doesn't seem to be one.
This is what Whitney was singing about. When the levees break, you don't look to the flood. You look to something higher. Something stronger. Something that has been standing long before you arrived and will stand long after you leave.
The Hangboard: A Place to Put Your Desperation
In the depths of a trauma bond, your hands are always reaching for something unstable. A person who might text back. A memory that might comfort. A future that might never come. Your hands are full of grasping at air.
The hangboard gives your hands something real to hold.
It's just a piece of wood or resin mounted to a wall. It doesn't care about your ex. It doesn't care about your childhood wounds. It doesn't care about the voice in your head that says you're not enough. It just waits for you to put your fingers on it and pull.
And when you do—when you hang there, all your weight suspended by a few millimeters of friction—something shifts.
For those seven seconds, the only thing that exists is your fingers, your breath, and the edge. The person who hurt you? Not on the board. The shame? Not on the board. The fear that you'll never love again? Not on the board.
The board asks only one question: Can you hold on?
And you answer, with shaking arms and burning forearms: Yes.
Strength You Can Count On
Whitney sings, "You're gonna be the one who saves me."
In climbing, the thing that saves you is never glamorous. It's not a prince. It's not a perfect relationship. It's calluses. It's tendon strength built over months. It's the memory of a hundred failed attempts that taught you exactly how to try again.
When you train on a climbing hangboard, you're not just building muscle. You're building evidence.
Evidence that you can get stronger. Evidence that consistency pays off. Evidence that small, repeated efforts add up to something real. This matters more than you know when you're recovering from a relationship that made you feel small.
Every time you add a pound to your max hang, you're proving to yourself: I am capable of growth.
Every time you complete a set you couldn't finish last week, you're proving: I am moving forward.
Every time you step up to the board on a day you wanted to stay in bed, you're proving: I show up for myself.
This is the kind of strength no one can take from you. It's not dependent on someone else's mood. It's not conditional on being chosen. It's yours. Earned. Real.
The Prayer of the Pull
There's a reason Whitney's song feels like a gospel hymn. It reaches for something transcendent.
Climbing, too, can become a kind of prayer—especially when you're climbing through pain.
Think about it. You approach the wall. You chalk your hands. You look up at the route, which might as well be a mountain. You place your hands on the starting holds. And then you begin to move, one hold at a time, asking your body to do things it doesn't want to do.
Every difficult move requires a kind of faith. Faith that the next hold is there. Faith that your foot won't slip. Faith that you can hold on just a little longer.
Isn't that exactly what healing requires?
Faith that the next day will come. Faith that the pain will fade. Faith that you can hold on just a little longer.
Whitney sang it best:
"When I feel I'm all alone / And I'm down on my knees / I look to you."
For climbers, that "you" might be the rock. The board. The community at the gym. The quiet strength of a sport that asks everything from you but never lies about what it's giving back.
A Practice for the Brokenhearted
If you're reading this and you're in the middle of it—the grief, the withdrawal, the obsessive thoughts, the urge to text them again—here is a simple practice
1. Go to your hang board. Or go to the gym. Or find a wall with a door frame you can hang from. Find something solid to hold.
2. As you hang, breathe. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Let the physical discomfort be bigger than the emotional discomfort for just a few seconds.
3. Say this to yourself: "My levees may be broken. But I am not. I am still here. I am still holding on."
4. When you drop down, stand still for a moment. Feel your feet on the ground. Feel the blood rushing back to your fingers. Feel the simple fact that you just did something hard, and you survived it.
This is how healing happens. Not in grand gestures. Not in dramatic closures. But one hang at a time. One breath at a time. One small proof of strength after another.
The Encore
Whitney's voice on "I Look to You" carries the weight of someone who has been through everything—fame, love, loss, addiction, betrayal—and somehow found a note to sing on the other side.
That's what we're all doing, isn't it?
Finding a note to sing.
Finding a hold to grip.
Finding something to look to when there's nothing left.
The beauty of climbing is that it never asks you to be okay. It just asks you to try. You can show up with a broken heart, tear-streaked cheeks, and hands that won't stop shaking. The wall doesn't care. It will still hold you. It will still give you something to pull on.
And slowly, over time, you'll realize: you're not just holding on anymore.
You're climbing.
"I looked to you / And I found something to hold."
Let the rock be that something. Let the board be that something. Let your own growing, healing, unbreakable self be that something.
You've got this. One hang at a time.