Category Archives: Reflection

Square One: Or the Time I Poured Gasoline on a Raging Fire

It was about midnight on a Tuesday. After a few fitful hours of sleep, I awoke to my heart racing, feeling like it was about to flutter right out of my chest. I glanced at my Garmin and saw 100 for my heart rate. It’s usually around 60 when I sleep. I checked the monitor to see if the puppies were still asleep and they were, curled up tight against each other into one little fur ball. We adopted them five days ago from a local rescue and my body has been in full rebellion since the second day. That night, I was up running to the bathroom every few hours with what I thought was a digestive bug, but by Monday it was apparent something more sinister was at play. I couldn’t eat and my gut was still a wreck. Add in the periodic episodes of tachycardia waking me up at night and something was clearly amiss. I worry the puppies are too much, and text M as much in the middle of the night.

We talked for almost an hour, with me being as quiet as possible as I didn’t want to wake the puppies. Being so young, they’d soon be up to go outside and I wanted to put that off as long as I could. I don’t understand what’s happening to my body and am worried about what’s going to happen in the three+ days until M gets home. He’s only been out for a day and it’s already a shit show. I wonder if we should contact the rescue, but he thinks he can get home early. He will make some calls first thing in the morning and I will do my best to keep my head above water until then. As someone who’s always prided herself on having her shit together, I hate that I need help. I hate that this is too much. I hate that my body is rebelling in such an obvious way that it cannot be ignored. I deeply resent that after everything that’s happened in the last three months, that now my body is like a wildfire raging out of control.

It’s June 11, 2019. Just over three months after my dad died from pancreatic cancer. Not yet three weeks since my old-lady dog Abby died unexpectedly. Adopting the puppies was supposed to be a bright spot in what has been an incredibly shitty year so far. We’ve lived with at least one dog since we got Sadey, our Lab, in September 2001. She was with us until August 2016. We rescued Abby in October in 2004, and with her passing that chapter of our life officially came to a close. Sadey and Abby brought so much life and joy to our home. Sadey with her love of naps in front of the fan and Abby with her gentle scolding when the popcorn I tossed her didn’t land to her liking. With them gone, M wanted to take a break from having pets. But with him away for work as much as he is, a quiet house in the midst of this dreadful year seemed like a miserable idea. So one adult dog became two puppies after our dog sitter reached out when these two came into the shelter. It’s one of those moments that when I look back on it, replays in slow motion as I scream at the woman to stop and pay attention.

I navigated my dad’s passing fairly well, all things considered. He lived with pancreatic cancer for 3-1/2 years, which is practically an eternity for that particular cancer. As with a lot of terminal cancers, there were warning signs those last few months that suggested we were running out of time. Which is to say that while his passing was tragic, he was only 65 and we should have had much more time with him, it was not unexpected. What was unexpected was how much time we had following his diagnosis. When you expect someone to be gone in less than a year and one year turns into 3-1/2, the extra time feels like a tremendous gift, even as the ending is the same shitty ending. Three and a half years is a lot of time to acclimate to what’s about to happen. I started grieving the minute we got confirmation of his diagnosis. Which isn’t to say that a tsunami of despair didn’t accompany his passing, but I was prepared for it.

When my dad was diagnosed in the summer of 2015, I did the math and realized I was going to be the girl who lost her dog and her dad in the same year. I assumed that dog would be Sadey, as she was 14 years old at the time. Abby was 11. But then my dad and his treatment team found a groove, and when we lost Sadey the following summer, my dad was humming a long just fine. I thought I’d dodged a bullet.

The years clicked by with my dad holding his own, even as we knew it wouldn’t last. By late 2018, it was clear the cancer was getting the upper had. He looked as though he’d aged ten years since the summer and he was sleeping more. Other troubling symptoms started to pop up. The clock spun faster. We had our last lunch together on Monday, February 4th. Exactly four weeks before he died. And I knew it was our last lunch. Just as I knew he had pancreatic cancer when my mom mentioned his symptoms on that July evening in 2015. So when he passed just after midnight on Monday, March 4, I was as prepared as one can be.

What I was not prepared for was Abby’s quick decline two months later. She was so spunky, so full of life for being 14 years old. We knew we were on the short end of her time with us, but it wasn’t until 36 hours before we said goodbye that we knew anything was amiss. And with her passing, a small little fire that had burning in my body since the death of my dad, grew into a bonfire, but a fire I could still ignore. With the adoption of the puppies a few weeks later, I poured gasoline on the fire and it quickly over took my life.

It would take months for me to recover from the aftermath of that June. M did the heavy lifting on so many fronts, most especially in caring for the babies. Part of me resented them, thinking they were responsible for what happened to me. Which of course they weren’t. They were a catalyst, but they weren’t the cause. The cause was my own inability to see what was happening. When the dust finally settled from that terrible time, my takeaway was that when a fire is burning, pull up a chair and watch. Don’t ignore it. And for the love of god, don’t add more fuel.

It wasn’t until last fall when I started my coach training that I had language beyond metaphor for what I experienced that summer. One of the first concepts we learned about was the change cycle. Life transformation follows a cyclical course with four phases, a course that we navigate many times in many aspects of our life. We can be in different phases of the change cycle in different aspects of our lives – Square One in our career, Square Four in our relationship with our significant other for example.

The cycle kicks off with a catalytic event. Catalytic events are a shock, an opportunity, or a transition, and can be good or bad events. The catalytic event sends us into the first phase of the change cycle – Square One. Square One is a time of fundamental death and rebirth. Old identities, old patterns, old versions of the self are shed to make way for the new. It is a deeply uncomfortable stretch of time. Martha Beck’s mantra for Square One is “I don’t know what the hell is going on, and that’s okay.” (For reference, Square Two is for dreaming and scheming, the motto is “there are no rules and that’s okay”; Square Three is the hero’s saga, the motto is “this is much harder than I expected and that’s okay”; Square Four is the promise land and the motto is “everything is changing and that’s okay”. For more information, Martha Beck goes in to detail on the change cycle in her book Finding Your Own North Star.)

As it turned out, I had two catalytic events right on top of each other – my dad’s death and Abby’s death. Then, because apparently that wasn’t enough, I added in a third for good measure by adopting two young dogs. Looking back now with the context of what I know about Square One, it feels like a foregone conclusion that the summer of 2019 was going to be a fucking disaster. There was no other way for it to go. Two of the most important steps for navigating Square One are to stay present and make small moves. Stay present and make small moves = pull up a chair and watch the fire burn, maybe make some s’mores and read a good book. In other words, don’t adopt two young dogs after the death of your father and beloved old lady dog.

For better or worse, holding still goes against our cultural narrative of what it means to be a worthwhile human. We worship productivity culture and resist pausing for any reason at nearly all costs. It didn’t occur to me when everything was going wrong in the first half of 2019 that it was a warning sign, a caution light encouraging me to slow down. In fact, slowing down was the exact opposite of what I wanted do. So I ran head long into a situation that would be my undoing. It took about four months to crawl out of the hole I dug for myself in June 2019, an incredibly high price to pay.

But the next time I land in Square One, I’ll recognize it and know what to do. I’ll know to stand still and wait. To pause as long as it takes for the dust to settle. To let the fire burn itself out. To not make any big decisions, even if big decisions seem like wonderful distractions. They are not. They are fuel on the fire and I know how spectacularly that can blow up.

And while that summer was traumatic (not an exaggeration), we made it thanks to a lot of help from other people. My sister watched the puppies while I showered those first few days. Our dog sitter, the local doggie daycare, and Bob the trainer, who helped us teach the puppies not to be assholes (Jack is still working on this), saved our butts time and time again. I still need a lot of help with the babies, but we’re managing. And when one or both of them curl up on me in the middle of the night, I am so deeply grateful to have not missed out on this. They’ve been my greatest teachers, it turns out.

Peace Amongst an Insurrection

I was in class while violent white supremacists stormed our Capitol. In class with eleven other women, learning how to hold space and examine painful thoughts, while aggrieved men desecrated one of the most sacred places in our government. Once I was out of class and realized what was happening, I could not stop thinking about the juxtaposition between the space I just occupied and the chaos unfolding halfway across the country.

I did not have an illusions that 2021 would be magically different from 2020. After 2019 nearly tore me in half, with the death of my father and my dog less than three months apart, and a spectacularly shitty couple of years before that, I deeply understand that the universe owes me nothing. So when the calendar turned on Friday, January 1, I cast a skeptical eye towards what might come. The universe wasted no time in getting to work. On January 1st, my community endured a severe ice storm with .3-.4 in. of ice piling up over the course of the day. It would take ten days for the ice to melt and it would be twelve days before we’d see the sun again. I was in Prompt Care on Sunday morning, January 3 with a case of shingles. Violent white supremacists terrorized our Capitol on Wednesday, January 6. Jack and Lola were at the vet on Saturday morning, January 9 where Lola had some “maintenance” on her anal glands and Jack was diagnosed with a thyroid problem. Lola was back at the vet the next Saturday, yesterday, with an ear infection. 2021, coming in hot.

And yet, the last few weeks have been some of the most peaceful weeks I’ve experienced in quite a few years. And not just because I spent the first ten days of the year sick and mostly stuck on the couch. Today (Sunday, January 17) is my 17th day with out social media. I planned on taking a break from just Facebook and Instagram, but haven’t felt the urge to login to Twitter, so my FB/IG break turned into a social media break. Of course, I had no idea that my hiatus would coincide with an insurrection, but my timing couldn’t have been better. It was fascinating to experience such a cataclysmic event without the noise of social media. It was SIGNIFICANTLY less stressful. Significantly.

Without this pause, I wouldn’t have known how affected I am by the swarm of input from my social media feeds, which is exponentially amplified during significant events. I was able to follow the news about the violence, without the extra chatter. It was just the facts. Because of that, I felt some space from what was happening. As terrible as it was, I wasn’t anxious, I didn’t spin out about what would happen next. I didn’t feel compelled to form my own opinions about it. I talked with a few friends about what was happening, and M listened to many more of my ramblings than he cares to, I’m sure. I eventually wrote my Representative. But it all felt very civilized, unemotional…in a good way. A healthy way.

Beyond the tremendous decrease in anxiety related to political events, I’m reading way more. Since the start of the year, I’ve read The Witches are Coming by Lindy West and Wintering by Katherine May (I highly recommend both books). I’m just finishing up A Liberated Mind by Stephen C. Hayes for my coach training. Never mind how I will be able to use the tools outlined in the book in my work with clients, but I have a dramatically different perspective on the chatter and anxiety that has always resided in my head. One of my top priorities for this week is to start practicing some of the techniques outlined in the book. Thank you sweet tiny baby Jesus for brilliant researchers who can write coherent books for regular folks. I’m also reading Running Home by Katie Arnold (a gift from a dear friend, thank you Kristy!) and Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo. Reading Mediocre, who’s subtitle is “The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America” on the heels of the insurrection on January 6 is particularly rich. I have always been prone to reading two-to-three books at once and these last few weeks have been no exception. I’ve even managed to watch two(!!) movies, which probably only happened due to being sick. But still, it counts. If you haven’t seen Just Mercy, please watch it. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Even though it’s barely halfway through the month, I’m already thinking ahead to what happens when February arrives. I realize that this is my experiment and that I make the rules. Meaning I don’t have to come back to social media if I’m not ready. But I do miss my friends, even as I’ve been zooming, emailing, texting, and chatting on the phone with some (seriously, I’d love to do more of all of this, let’s chat!). I’m certain I don’t want to leave these platforms. However, I don’t want to go back to my old habits. I want to retain the hard-earned peace I’ve found these last few weeks. I’ve thought about how I might create an online environment that feels more friendly and less antagonistic. Honestly, I think (hope) the inauguration in just a few days will go a long way in creating that. Trump is a cancer that’s infected all of us. With him out of the White House, I hope we might start the long process of healing the damage of the last five years. A Biden administration will bring down the temperature, even for Republicans. While they might not agree with his politics, he will lead the government in a way we are accustomed, with seriousness and grace. His staff and administration are comprised of people who are deeply familiar with government and know how to do the people’s work. Government was never meant to be a business and should not be treated as such.

Mostly, I’m getting better at not abandoning myself and I want to hang on to that. Learning to stay with myself is partly why I’m taking a break from alcohol. I don’t drink much, and I don’t drink often, but I want to be far more careful about how, when, and why I escape. Taking a pause from social media and not drinking for a while are two “easy” ways to do that. Now when my brain needs a break, rather than scrolling mindlessly on my phone, I read a book, work on a crossword from the New York Times (which are really hard, BTW), or watch a favorite episode of The Office. If I have a thought that’s hooked me, I use one of the tools from my coach training to take a look at it. Peace has been the overriding theme of the year so far, even with an ice storm, shingles, an insurrection, and two sick dogs, all with an escalating pandemic as the backdrop. And for that, I am deeply grateful.

Taking a Break

I noticed the email around 8p. I opened it and clicked the link, knowing what I would find. I had blood work drawn the week before in anticipation of a doctor’s appointment on the 23rd. After feeling really good for several months, I felt not great. Again. A familiar fatigue returned, and with it the anxiety and rage and wonder if this cycle would ever end. After thinking we found THE solution this summer with the discovery of a severe wheat intolerance, this recent setback reveals that while gluten was in fact a significant part of the problem, it wasn’t the full story.

I open the email and quickly scan the results. As I expected, the inflammation was back, more than double what it was in September. I know what this means: no more running, more sleeping, more supplements, and more dietary changes. While I’m relieved for confirmation that the fatigue and malaise wasn’t in my head, I’m so frustrated to be back here again. I thought I was done with this.

This fall was busy, busier than I’d been in a while. My coach training, which started in October, is rigorous and much more work than I expected. Not only am I learning the skills to be an effective coach myself, but in practicing with my fellow students I’m experiencing the tools we’re learning from the perspective of a client. Which means that I’m doing a considerable amount of internal work while learning and developing a host of new skills. It is turning me inside out in a way that no other program has before and I love it. I love what we’re learning. I love how actionable and effective the whole of it is. I am still deeply uncomfortable with the “life coach” label, even as I am three months into an intense training program, with seven months still to go. A program that was developed by a Harvard-trained sociologist. A program that is deeply grounded in research. And even as I learn how transformative this work is as I serve as a practice client for my colleagues. I still shudder at this term, hesitating to attach myself to it.

About the time I started my coach training, I began running again. I started conservatively, hoping that the cooler weather would allow me to gain the traction that eluded me in the summer. I took a break from running in late June, when it became apparent that the summer heat, something I’ve always struggled with, was going to be more of an issue than normal. For the first time, running felt inflammatory in a way I couldn’t well articulate. This seemed to be confirmed when I switched my workouts to strength training and HIIT, supplemented with regular walks around the neighborhood, and immediately lost a few pounds. I only resumed running once the heat broke, easing back into training cautiously. In early November, I started training with my friend Mike, one of my Boston Marathon friends. It was my first time I having running coach since Mr. Bahr in high school. I loved having someone tell me what to do. He also kept me from increasing my mileage too fast, something I repeatedly do to myself when left to my own devices. I savored heading out the door every morning, even as the mornings became colder and darker.

And then, seemingly just like that, it all came crashing down. Here I sit in late December, not running at all, on holiday break from coach training, trying to recharge my batteries as much as I can before we pick back up next week. As I look back over the last few months, I wonder where I went wrong, how it fell apart again so quickly. I’ll never have the definitive answers I crave, but I think it boils down to a lack of resilience. My recovery is fragile, tentative, and uncertain. It is hard to accept this. Before these last few years, I could plow through life, burning the candle at both ends. I’ve been very stubborn in letting go of this approach, even as it is obvious it no longer serves me. Our culture worships the hustle, prioritizes productivity. Even as I was forced to let go of my attachment to those since getting sick several years ago, it’s fascinating how quickly it creeps back the minute I start feeling good again.

As I’ve read the work of women writing about sobriety the last few months, one recurring theme is how the absence of alcohol created space for other things such as more restful sleep and more meaningful connections. There’s conversation about how many people turn to alcohol to numb out or distract. As I’ve thought about this, it’s nudged me to consider the other ways in which I numb or distract myself. Social media is a big one, something I engage with far more frequently than alcohol. It’s been interesting to observe myself the last few weeks, noticing when and why I reach for my phone. Similar to experimenting with sobriety, it has me considering what my life would look like without this distraction.

I don’t want to leave social media, as I deeply value the connections I have with very real people there. I met a large group of friends on a Runner’s World forum over ten years ago, and we used to call each other imaginary friends. But there is nothing imaginary about most of the people who fill my social media feeds. They are full of real people that I treasure and to whom I want to remain connected. And yet. I want to develop a healthier relationship with this tool. As the often quoted line from The Social Dilemma goes “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”. Our attention is a commodity. These platforms are made to capture our attention and keep us scrolling for as long as possible. I know it has affected my attention span, reduced how long and how deeply I can focus. I wonder what the consequences are of being able to so readily distract myself. I want to know what I would think about, how I would use my time without this thing that has become central to our existence.

So similar to my experiment with sobriety, I am going to take a break from these platforms, well Facebook and Instagram anyway. I use Twitter primarily for news and cultivated a feed that I do not find stressful. Nor am I tempted to check it or scroll mindlessly as I am the other two. January will serve as a reset, a detox of sorts. I’ve taken several days at a time away from these sites over the years, but this will be the longest break I’ve taken since joining them all those years ago. I’m embarrassed to say that I’m nervous.

With the pandemic, all of our worlds have become quite small and mine is no exception. With a husband who is gone for a week at a time, every other week for his work, I spend a lot of time by myself. This was true before the pandemic. I don’t know how that time alone will feel when I can’t meet friends for dinner because of covid and don’t have the option of checking in online. I text with my family, email with friends, but not having Facebook and Instagram as one more avenue for connection and distraction will be an interesting experience. Through my coach training, I’m gaining the confidence to hold discomfort lightly and with curiosity. I am not afraid of what might come up. I plan to write a few posts throughout the experiment here on the blog, mostly for my own benefit, but feel free to follow along if you’re curious (since I won’t be posting to FB or IG, subscribing to the blog is the easiest way to do this).

I’m also taking a break from running, likely until I have blood work drawn again nine weeks from now. I am grateful for a wonderful setup in the basement, so getting in a good workout will not be difficult. Fortunately, January and February are two of the worst weather months in my corner of the midwest, so I am not that sorry to be inside for a few months. Hopefully this will let my doc further isolate what may or may not be the problem and finally put an end to these seemingly relentless setbacks. What I want most is to be healthy, to feel good, to live my life without this mess hanging over every decision. I believe there’s a sweet spot of diet, exercise, sleep, and life that will allow my health to rest quietly in the background. We just need to find it. We’re getting closer.

These last four years have been difficult for many of us. This last year especially so. My wish for all of you is ease and comfort as we go into 2021. May your new year be filled with joy and peace.

To the Religious

As an agnostic, a secular person, someone who finds inspiration, grace, comfort, and reassurance in nature, I watch as you wield your religion as a sword. I see how rather than using your religion’s tenets to guide your own life and decisions, how you use it as a weapon against others. How you use your faith to demonize people who make different choices than you, live their lives differently from you. How you stand in false morality shouting about the unborn, but look away in silence while children are ripped from the arms of their families at the border. Look away in silence from the black mothers who die in childbirth at much higher rates than their white counterparts. Look away in silence at the children who go unfed and unhoused right here in our own country. How you rail against the Affordable Care Act and the birth control it provides, how you rail against other public health interventions that reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, how you shame women for the very human act of sex.

I watch while you turn your noses at LGBTQ folks for their “lifestyle”. If you didn’t make a conscious choice to be cis-het, how did they make a conscious choice to be gay or lesbian, to be trans? But even if that were a choice, what business is it of yours? How is two women or two men getting married any of your concern? How is the baker refusing to make a cake for the gay couple any different from the soda fountains of the 1950s not serving black people? Are you not called to love everyone? Didn’t god make us all in his image?

I grew up going to church in my tiny midwestern town. I attended Sunday School most every week, and my family attended services most but not all weekends, usually arriving a few minutes late when we did much to my eternal horror. My parents weren’t content to slide quietly into a back pew, we had to march our tall, noisy selves to the front of the sanctuary which made me want to melt into the floor every single time. My heart races just thinking about it. As a high schooler, I watched the young kids during the service, escaping to the basement after the youth sermon. We were active in our little church, my parents serving in leadership roles and us kids volunteering to help at church events on a regular basis. I enjoyed it. Later, my mom would say that she wanted us to attend church as kids in the hopes that it would make us less likely to join a cult as adults. She was probably half joking, but perhaps not. We belonged to the Congregational Church, which became a point of pride many years later, long after I stopped attending services, when they were one of the first denominations to actively invite and welcome LGBTQ folks to worship.

Eventually, when I was in college I believe, there was a falling out of sorts and my parents left their leadership positions. The pastor was updating the organizational chart and budget of the church. My dad thought god should be at the top, the paster felt he himself should be at the top. The pastor also wanted more money. Our church was tiny and had very little money. I don’t know details beyond that, but it ended with my parents walking away. They left their leadership roles and never attended services regularly after that, although I believe my dad remained a deeply faithful person until he passed last year.

One of my sisters takes after my dad in that respect. She took religion seriously, even as a younger child. She and her first husband were very active in their church, most of her friends were from their congregation. When she left the marriage, a decision she did not make lightly or without every attempt to save the marriage, she lost many of those friends. I watched my sister lose her support system in the time she needed it the most. When I think back to the teachings of my youth, what I remember most comes down to “love thy neighbor”. Not “love thy neighbor unless they want an abortion”. Not “love thy neighbor unless they are gay or trans”. Not “love thy neighbor unless they get a divorce”. Not “love thy neighbor unless, unless, unless…”.

Earlier this year when the pandemic hit, Governor Pritzker here in Illinois was one of the first to issue shut down orders. These orders included any place where people gather, including churches. Many local churches pivoted quickly to online or call-in services, as good internet continues to be a huge challenge in rural areas (side note – this would be a wonderful actual problem for government officials to focus on). Several churches even did drive-in services, where folks stayed in their cars but tuned into the service through a radio station and still worshipped together, which I thought was brilliant. It didn’t take long for some people to claim that the shut down infringed upon their first amendment rights, even as the governor never asked people to stop worshipping. He asked them to stop worshiping in person, a request a great many churches complied with as they recognized the dangers that congregating together posed to their parishioners. People in my timeline made all sorts of ridiculous statements about their rights and their freedoms.

Those same folks in many cases raged against the mask orders. Public health folks universally recommend masks to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Masks, social distancing, and regular hand washing are our best defense against this virus. And yet these same folks, including many in public office, persistently stomp their feet about their rights and their freedoms, to not only gather together, but to not wear masks when they do. I cannot reconcile how this same group of people shouts about the sanctity of life when it comes to the decisions women make about their own bodies, decisions that affect no one but the women herself, but persistently and vocally shun all public health measures when it comes to combatting a deadly and highly contagious virus, decisions that affect great many people not just themselves. The intersection of freedom and responsibility is not something we discuss, particularly as relates to religion. People shout “I HAVE FREEDOM. I HAVE RIGHTS.” and the conversation ends.

When it comes to the hand-wringing about abortion and gay marriage, including a significant number of letters to the editor in our local paper and what I see from people online, it is all based in personal religious beliefs. I have yet to see one argument against either of these that isn’t based in someone’s religion. I also have yet to hear an argument of how or why it is appropriate to apply those religious beliefs to the whole of the country. How is that not the establishment of a religion? What about my religious beliefs? What about the religious beliefs of the woman getting the abortion? The couple getting married?

With white religious folks supporting Donald Trump in large numbers, especially white protestants and evangelicals (black people are generally the most religious folks in the country and they overwhelmingly support democrats on the whole), those of us who sit on the sidelines of formal religion see stunning hypocrisy. Trump is a man who goes against everything I learned as a kid when I attended church. He is a bully, a white supremacist, a man who treats women with great disrespect, who behaves as though rules and laws do not apply to him. He is not a man of faith. I don’t think a president’s religious beliefs – or lack of belief – matters at all when electing who will lead our country. But if a group of people seeks to apply their version of morality to an entire country, but throws their energetic support behind the most immoral of men, it reveals the whole mess of it to be a house of cards. White christians revealed deep tolerance for white supremacy and misogyny, a deep tolerance for a man who lies with abandon. They are not the moral compass for the nation.

There are many people of faith who do not share these sentiments, of course. “Not all religious people” applies here. And yet. A vocal and powerful subset of that group do and currently they drive the narrative. Many of us agnostic, atheist, and folks of other religions are held hostage by this minority. Rather than talking about public health measures that can reduce unplanned pregnancies, therefore making the question of abortion a rare occurrence, we debate whether or not women have the right to bodily autonomy. Rather than ensuring everyone has equal rights under the law, in many states LGBTQ folks can still be denied employment and/or housing, we debate whether or not they have the right to exist and to marry. This isn’t freedom of religion. We need to have a conversation about what is “moral” and why it matters. When it comes to public policy, morality as defined by religion – any religion – doesn’t matter at all. Even so, attending church every Sunday doesn’t make you moral. Praying every night doesn’t make you moral. Telling others how to live their lives doesn’t make you moral. Ignoring public health guidelines, thereby endangering the health and lives of others, in a pandemic is not moral.

A great number of religious folks need to realize the difference between my business, your business, and everybody’s business. They are awfully concerned about what amounts to my business. I’d prefer they spend their time minding their own store. I don’t need their input on how I live my life. My friends don’t need their input on who they should marry. I do need them to wear a mask, however. That’s everybody’s business.

Healthism is Ableist, Capitalist Bullshit and Musings about What’s Next

Healthism: identified by Robert Crawford in 1980, healthism is “the preoccupation with personal health as a primary – often the primary – focus for the definition and achievement of well-being; a goal which is to be attained primarily through the modification of life styles.”

Ableism: discrimination in favor of able-bodied people

Capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for-profit, rather than by the state.

Six years have passed since my health started its downward spiral. Fall of 2014 was the first clear inclination that something was up, beginning with exercise intolerance and weird night sweats. The downturn continued for four more years, with sprinkles of hope and improvement mixed in, but it would be fall of 2018 before any marked recovery took place. In that time, I burnt my career to the ground – not by choice, stopped running for months at a time, radically modified my diet, all in hopes of reclaiming a shred of the wellbeing I once took for granted.

It’s quite common in our culture to hear people brag about how they don’t take medication. It’s not meant to shame those that do, but folks take pride in being medication-free. It bothered me before, as someone who’s needed thyroid medication to function since I was 25, and allergy medicine to prevent me from taking my eye balls out of my head and scratching my face off since a decade before that. But as someone who now requires handfuls of supplements a few times a day, in addition to the aforementioned thryoid and allergy medication, to make up for the nutrient deficiencies documented within my body, it reeks of ableism. Folks who are medication free are largely so because of good fortune and good genetics.

But what is healthism, beyond the overly stuffy definition quoted above? Our attitudes about overweight and obesity are perfect examples. Folks are blamed by society if their bodies don’t fit our fucked up ideas about what bodies should look like. All bodies must be thin, ideally white or white passing. Anything other than that is subpar and a problem to be addressed. Never mind that a person’s body sized is influenced by many factors, most significantly genetics. It’s also affected by income levels, food security/insecurity, access to healthcare, stress, a community’s built environment – or how people move about one’s community (are there sidewalks, is it safe, is it bikeable), all things partially or completely outside an individual’s locus of control. In spite of all of that, a person’s weight is viewed as a moral issue. An urgent problem that must be solved.

How many companies exist for the sole purpose of “helping” people lose weight? Who is making money off of our culture’s obsession with thinness? Who benefits? Certainly not women who are taught from a young age that our unruly bodies are something to be controlled and managed. Our healthcare costs are some of the highest in the world, our outcomes not befitting those of a wealthy nation, a nation obsessed with health. Where’s the disconnect? Never mind that our bodies are no one’s business. The size of it, the state of it, what we do with it, how we treat it, none of it.

The chronic flare of my autoimmune condition started because of stress. Specifically stress at work. I cared deeply about my job and it was incredibly challenging. So I did what many women do, I ran myself right into the ground, without a second thought. I spent the decade before burning the candle at both ends and getting away with it. I climbed ladders, took on more responsibility, earned a decent salary, all for someone else’s – namely my employer’s – benefit. Sure I had some money in the bank, but I was not the main benefactor of my labor. It’s what I was supposed to do though, right? Bust your ass, even if it costs you nearly everything. This is capitalism. An economic system that benefits a small class of wealthy people, not the everyday folks stuck in the middle of it.

So now I am a person with a chronic illness, someone who will forever exist outside our culture’s obsession with health. I no longer possess the capacity to burn the candle at both ends. Most days I feel pretty good, but I still have days I can barely get off the couch. Less often than a few years ago, thank goodness. I sleep a lot, not by choice. It’s the only way I can function. I spend an inordinate amount of time prepping food. Taking care of myself feels like a full time job most weeks. I’ve spent the last few years trying to figure out where my career fits in the midst of all of this. I’m young enough that I still have a lot I want to accomplish, a lot to offer. I want to be of service, to make all of this mean something. I explored, and even started, going back to school. I’ve explored a number of other options, none of them feeling like the right fit. All of those options have been within how we traditionally define work, namely my working for someone else. My pay, my worth, defined by others.

Finally, it occurred to me that perhaps the way forward isn’t the way it’s always been. What if I worked for myself, on projects that matter most to me? Where I have complete control over how and when I work, taking advantage of when I’m feeling great, scaling back when I need more rest. What if I created a career for myself that can go wherever I go, wherever we go?

Months of soul searching, questioning, and facing a whole host of fears I didn’t even know I had (thanks to M for his tremendous patience while I worked through these) has me on the cusp of starting my own business. I’m a few months from launch, but I am starting Juniperus, a leadership and communications coaching service focused on quiet, introverted, empathetic women who want to cultivate more courage and resilience in their work and in their life. What I loved most about being a leader was mentoring and bringing up other women with me. When I thought about how I wanted to spend my limited resources going forward, I realized it is here. I think the concept of work-life balance is bullshit, especially as someone with a chronic illness. Work-life integration is what I’m going for, and what I hope to help other women manifest in their own unique ways. In addition to my nearly two decades of experience as a quiet leader, I’m also taking a life coach training that starts in October. Not because I want to be a life coach (NTTAWT), but because I want to enhance my question-asking and listening abilities. And a coaching certification seems important in the longterm. I’m exploring anticapitalist pricing strategies and plan to increase our giving as I earn income again. I have very modest goals initially, but I’m not ashamed to say that I want to make up for the income that I’ve lost out on the last five years. I believe I can help quiet women leaders be more effective and fulfilled in their work AND earn a decent salary while I do it. Creating work that accounts for my very real limitations in a way that doesn’t feel like a compromise feels pretty damn good too.

I’ll post on the socials when I officially launch, but none of this would be happening without this persistent, relentless flare, and the wildfire it created. Without being forced to burn it all down, I wouldn’t have had the time or the space to think about the kind of impact I want to have with my work and how I can make that happen. In a different society, one that valued true health and wellbeing, that honored different abilities, I could likely go back to a more traditional career. I could still be a leader in an organization. That is not an option for me, or thousands of other people in similar situations. And what a loss that is. Our talents and our skills are missed because our capacity is different. Because workplaces care more about my butt in a seat for eight+ hours than the quality and quantity of work I can offer. I’m grateful for the privilege to go out on my own. Grateful for a husband that’s been a rock through these last terrible years. Grateful for our good financial decisions that provide the resources to get Juniperus off the ground. Grateful to Vasavi Kumar, the extremely talented business and mindset coach who’s helping me nail down the specifics of this business.

The fire is out, the smoke has cleared. Little bits of life are poking up through the charred earth. I turn 45 in eight weeks. LFG.

How Will We Be Different?

In June of 2017, I left my position with the local health department to address what had become a life-consuming setback with an autoimmune condition (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis). As someone who’s always loved throwing myself into my work, leaving a job I enjoyed left me feeling like I was standing naked in the middle of the street. We all have various ways we define ourselves and for me those included daughter, sister, wife, runner, and whatever title was on my business cards. I took a lot of pride in my work. I defined much of who I was through my work. Being sick had already forced me to quit racing two years before, and having to walk away from my career was an even more devastating blow. As I left the office that Friday afternoon, I walked out into a void that I worried would consume me, even if the Hashi’s did not.

I ended up being off work for fifteen months. During my time away from many of the things I enjoyed most about my life – running and racing, working, adventurous vacations with my husband just to name a few, I had a lot of time to think. I’ve referred to those few years lost to the Hashi’s flare as a forest fire, and what grew back wasn’t exactly the same as what was there before. All of that time sitting, resting, and recovering allowed me to evaluate every single aspect of my life. While it wasn’t an opportunity I would have chosen, it was an opportunity nonetheless. The pause provided me a unique chance to remake my life and to reconsider my priorities. I decided what I rebuilt on the other side needed to look much different that what came before. Not only was my body not going to tolerate the levels of stress I subjected it to in the past, I realized that I wanted out of the “race” of life. I no longer had an interest in success as we traditionally define it. The title on my business cards didn’t carry nearly as much weight as I thought it did. In fact, it didn’t matter at all. What I wanted most was to maintain more space in my life. Time to be with my dog (now dogs). Time to be with my husband. Time to read, to write, to be bored. Time to be with my dad while he was still with us. Time to travel. Time to be with my family and friends.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a similar opportunity for many of us, both individually and as a society. Again, not an opportunity any of us would have chosen, but an opportunity just the same. For many of us, our day-to-day life looks very different than it did six weeks ago. The hustle of regular life has been replaced by a different kind of chaos. Gone is the rushing from place to place, activity to activity. Even for folks still going to work (not working from home), the world is very small. We’re in the midst of a pause of sorts, a collective deep breath.

In six short weeks we’ve learned who the essential workers are. They aren’t the corporate individuals walking around in suits. They aren’t the people with the money. They aren’t those in corner offices. The people we need, really truly need, are the checkers at the grocery store, the gas station attendant, the bus driver, the letter carrier, the UPS driver. They are the healthcare workers – the environmental services folks, lab techs, nurses, doctors. In many cases, they work for less than a livable wage. Some have minimal benefits, if any. How do we look them in the eye when this is over if we don’t take this opportunity to rebalance the scales? How can we continue to pretend that the inequity we’ve tolerated for so long is ok? Even as our health care workers are fighting on the front lines, health care systems are laying off staff. With elective procedures canceled, revenues have plummeted. Our health care system is so fucked up that the very organizations responsible for saving us are going broke…while saving us.

In six short weeks, the Earth breathed deep as well. Cities known for their horrific air pollution are enjoying consistently clear skies for the first time in decades. Wildlife is returning to some areas. In six short weeks, workplaces who’d maintained that it was impossible to let employees work from home, quickly figured out exactly how to let employees work from home. Suddenly, many people have much more autonomy over how and when they work. Autonomy to work when their mind is the sharpest, when their body’s most alert. Autonomy to work when it fits within their family life. Perhaps this pandemic will be what finally shakes us out of an obsession with the factory model of doing work, where how long we sit in our chair matters more than the work we produce. In six short weeks, we’ve been forced to consider how we define “productivity”, and realized that sometimes the most productive day involves not much at all.

But what will we DO with all that we’ve learned? Will we pass on the opportunity to remake our lives and our society into something more satisfying, something more equitable? Will we jump right back in to the hustle-and-bustle, letting ourselves be numbed once again by busyness? Will we allow our workplaces to go back to business as usual, to go back to playing the game of who sits at their desk the most works the hardest? Will we again punish the earth with our habits? Will we keep washing our hands?

In six short weeks, we’ve proven that we can all make great sacrifices for the collective good. Something I honestly think we’d forgotten we were capable of. Healthy people are staying home to help out their at-risk friends and family, and their local health care workers. Neighbors are getting groceries for neighbors. People have found new ways to connect with both the folks next door and friends around the world. We’re ordering takeout to support our favorite restaurants. Regular people are making masks. Health care workers are making great sacrifices to give us all a fighting chance. Yes, there are people protesting at-home orders, disregarding the policies in place meant to protect us all. But I believe those folks are in the minority. Just imagine how different things could be if we took advantage of this pause and used it to create something much more powerful, just, and fair. Perhaps we’ll value more deeply the time we spend together, the concerts and baseball games, sitting in a movie theater, going out to dinner. Perhaps we’ll value more deeply the time we spend at home, with each other.

How will YOU be different?

Wilson Mountain

It was my last full day in Sedona. After a dear friend had a last-minute change in plans and was unable to travel, I’d spent the last few days exploring on my own. While I’ve traveled extensively by myself, I’ve always met up with folks wherever I’m going. This was my first time being somewhere, just me. Fortunately, M and I visited Sedona in April 2018, so I was familiar with the area, and I’d spent the prior weekend there with friends. But I was still quite intimidated by the solo 3-1/2 days.

I woke up that morning and considered my plans for the day. I really wanted to hike Wilson Mtn., a long, tough hike a guy at the hike shop told me about on Friday. It would be my first time on this trail, and a challenging enough hike that I knew I wouldn’t see many people on a Wednesday early in March. While I’ve hiked extensively, the only solo hiking (or trail running) I’ve done has been in places where I live – the lake outside of town where we live now, the mountains just west of Fort Collins where we lived several years ago. Hiking alone somewhere new is intimidating to me for some reason, even though I’m good with a map and know how to look after myself. To build up my courage, I hiked a beautiful and familiar trail on Tuesday, exploring four miles of new trails at the end. In the back of my mind I knew I was testing the waters for Wednesday. Poking at the edges of my comfort zone.

Boynton Canyon

As I eat my breakfast Wednesday morning, I know I’m going to Wilson. I’ll regret it if I don’t. So many things that are a stretch for me I end up doing not so much because I WANT to do them, but because I’ll hate myself if I don’t. Not hiking this trail, a trail that is within my physical capabilities, because I’m afraid I’ll get lost (absurd) or that I’ll get eaten by a mountain lion (it’s more likely that I’ll be abducted by aliens), would leave me with a kind of self-loathing that would make getting out of bed the next morning very difficult. And I had a plane to catch. So I packed up my stuff and drove to the trailhead.

Most of the hike I thought about my dad. That very day happened to be the one year anniversary of his leaving his mortal body for whatever waits for us in the beyond. His death revealed to me that the most horrible things can happen and yet we endure. Life really does go on, whether you want it to or not. I always knew that my dad and I were a lot alike, but it wasn’t until he passed that I realized what a comfort it had been to have someone close to me who experienced the world much the same way that I do. I would talk to him about work stuff and barely have to explain how I’d responded to a situation because he just knew. Because my instincts, my perspective, was most often his instincts, his perspective. My mom and I were driving back from picking up dinner this past Christmas Eve and she was talking about a problem she was trying to solve. I told her that I was really, really good at coming up with a solution three days from now, so I’d get back to her on Friday. I needed time to think about things before the good stuff bubbled up. She looked at me with a half smile and said “you’re just like your father”.

The farther I hiked, the higher I climbed I felt myself getting closer to him. Not because I believe he’s perched on some throne in the sky, but because it was just me, the trail, and my thoughts. The noise of the trip, the noise of the past month, slowly fell away. I saw one other person in the 4.5 mile hike to the top. I let the effort quiet my over-active imagination and only once thought I heard something in the brush (an actual miracle, really). The view from the top was as spectacular as the hike-shop dude promised. There was some snow still, and snow on the San Franciscos of Flagstaff which were prominent in the distance. It reminded me that it was still March, even as the sunshine and warmth of Sedona lured me into thinking otherwise.

I spent longer than usual taking in the view, making small talk with an older couple from Utah. I took too many photos – as always – and hiked to the other side to see the canyon. Part of me wanted to stay up there forever, as I knew that this hike was essentially the end of the trip. And waiting for me at home was reality and whole bunch of uncertainty around COVID-19, which was just starting to reach its tentacles into the country. I didn’t want to come down from this quiet place, this haven of solitude. My fear of hiking alone felt ridiculous to me now, small and insignificant, as most of my irrational fears do once I’m forced to address them.

While I’m still brokenhearted that my friend couldn’t travel, the silver lining was rewriting a story I frequently tell myself…that I’m unadaptable and that fear controls too much of my life. There was so much about this trip that was uncontrollable but I handled it and made the best of it. I took up space in a way I’m not used to, and that felt really powerful. I went for a burger and a beer after my hike on Tuesday because it was hot, I was starving, and I’m a fucking adult. I found THE breakfast joint on Thursday morning and took up a table by myself while they were on a wait (yes, I tipped my server very well). I helped quite a few people on my hike on Tuesday when they got turned around because of their inadequate maps, or in the case of the guy who was leading his family on a loop hike into a box canyon (impossible) – was on a completely different trail than he thought. Being out in the world by myself meant that I was a pile of mush by the time I got back to my Airbnb late in the afternoon each day – being a human is A LOT of work sometimes, but that was ok. I like what I learned about myself. I liked the person I was for those 3-1/2 days. I want to embody her more. I’ll always be someone who thinks deeply and is slow to act. But this trip showed me that sometimes I can think deeply AND act at the same time. I can be paralyzed by fear and still do the thing. That’s the energy I’m carrying into this decade.

And as for my dad, a year has passed now. A year of birthdays, holidays, little moments. The world ends, but it doesn’t. As I’ve said before, I really don’t understand anymore about grief than I did prior to all of this. I know it will swallow you whole if you let it. I learned that I could feel tremendous loss and deep gratitude at the same time. I think that’s much of what being fully human is, holding seemingly opposing thoughts and feelings together at the same time and knowing both are real and true. I know that there will never be enough time. That’s what I know the most. My dad could’ve lived to 90 yrs old (he was 65) and it wouldn’t have been enough. There won’t be enough sunrises and sunsets, beautiful trails in beautiful places. It is our duty, our responsibility, to soak up every ounce.

Journey to Grandma’s: Returning to the Marathon

My first marathon was in April of 2000 – Glass City in Toledo, OH. I was in grad school, and trained all throughout the fall and winter with three dear friends. All of us were long-time runners, with Kristi and Erica being highly-accomplished collegiate athletes in undergrad. I don’t remember exactly when that fall we decided to run a marathon, but I’m guessing it happened over ice cream at UDF. None of us had ran that far before, and we thought it’d be a good distraction from the grind of school. Training with those women remains the highlight of the year I spent at Miami University. Three of us made it to the start line healthy and finished the race, with Sarah taken down by injury a few months prior. I finished in 4:02, and would spend the next decade trying to break the four-hour barrier.

Sarah, Kristi, Erica, and me, ~Dec. 1999
Glass City Marathon, April 2000

Through the aughts I ran nine more mediocre marathons, never figuring out how my body wanted to train. They were all a grind, with my times getting slower and slower. In early 2010, I registered for Green Bay in May. A bad sinus infection put me out most of the month of February, and I almost bailed on the race. But I decided to run anyway since I was already registered and had a hotel (along with my sister, we’d be making a weekend of it), and would just train to build fitness, letting go of any goals for the race. I started running five days/week that spring, and surprised myself with a 4:03 in Green Bay, the closest I’d come to my PR in the ten years since my first race. Thinking I might be on to something, I just focused on mileage that summer. I included two progression runs/week for quality, and just ran as many miles as I could. I think I topped out around 50-55 mpw, which felt like A LOT at the time. The miles ended up being the missing link, for in Oct. of 2010 at Lakefront Marathon in Milwaukee I ran a huge, unexpected PR (3:45) and even managed to qualify for Boston. Accomplishing a goal I thought to be years down the road. And that’s when it started getting fun.

With my sister Erin after Green Bay, May 2010

The more miles I ran, the faster I got. By 2012, I took another 14 minutes off of my PR-landing at 3:31, dropping 31 minutes in two-and-a-half years. Not much compares to the satisfaction of spending a decade trying to figure something out (how to run a decent marathon), and then finally having it click. Which gets at the heart of what captivates me about the distance…there is no one way to train for or race a marathon. It’s a journey that every runner has to take for themselves. Some people get lucky, and hit on the right mix of training right out of the gate. Some people battle as I did, which while frustrating, made it all the more gratifying when I finally cracked it. I ran several marathons/year through the spring of 2015, some I raced, some I ran for fun, most of them shared with friends. All told, I’ve finished over 30 marathons and a handful of trail ultras. But not one has been since April of 2015.

Team Chocolate Mile – Fun Size, Mixed Ultra champions, Reach the Beach 2013

My health challenges of the last several years are well-documented in this space. The funkiness began in the fall of 2014, and continued to escalate for the next several years. Eventually I was unable to sustain my normal training levels, or any training at all for stretches of time. I raced shorter distances through the summer of 2015, but only very sporadically since then. I haven’t been able to stay healthy enough for long enough to get back to it. I started to think that chapter of my life might be behind me.

Earlier this summer, I started to dream again about what might be possible. The lifestyle changes of late 2018-early 2019 bore ripe fruit and I felt better than I had in years. Unfortunately, that was short-lived as the puppies coming home in early June unleashed some sort of chaos in my body that took the entire summer to recover from. The puppies themselves didn’t have anything to do with what happened, rather I think they were the catalyst that released what had been brewing in my body following the loss of my dad from pancreatic cancer in March and our old-lady dog Abby unexpectedly in May. But still, running dreams were once again caught up in the forest fire of my ongoing health issues.

After taking much of August off from running per doctor’s orders, I eased back into training right before Labor Day. Starting over for what felt like the thousandth time, I didn’t have expectations for where it might go, but it felt really, really good to be running again. Not running doesn’t really work for me, as running is about the only thing that keeps the cacophony of voices in my head down to a dull roar. It’s how I sort shit and make sense of the world. So even absence of races and training goals, running is the fabric that holds my days together. But for as terrible as the summer was, September was GOOD. I ran six days/week and started to see paces dropping. I’m still quite slow compared to “before”, but it is wonderful seeing some fitness start to return. This time felt different, even in the context of a horrendous summer.

On October 9, the Brave Like Gabe Foundation posted on their Instagram about having charity bibs available for Grandma’s Marathon in June. The post caught my eye. I hadn’t even considered running a marathon in 2020, but this sparked my interest. What if a return to the marathon had nothing to do with Boston or seeing if I could still run fast, but was to celebrate a woman who’s story meant to much to so many, including my dad? I’ve long admired my many friends who’ve raced for charity, but was deeply intimidated about doing it myself. However after enduring all of the Terrible Things the last few years, putting myself out there didn’t seem quite so scary. And running to raise funds to support Gabe’s foundation makes it not about me, but about helping others. If I was going to get over myself and reconnect with my favorite distance, the one that captivated my attention for 15 years of my running career, this seemed like a healthy way to approach it. So what if I end up out on the course for five hours? If I can raise some money that will do good in the world, it will be worth it. Ghosts of the past be damned.

I didn’t have this blog when I was healthy, and training and racing like a fiend. So for the first time, I’m going to document the journey to the start line. I don’t know what to expect from training, I don’t know how my body will respond. I do know I’m incredibly grateful to have the better part of nine months to develop fitness and get my body prepared to run 26.2. I’m going to need every single day. Currently I’m running about 35 miles/week with a long run of around ten miles. In September, I ran 112 miles, my first triple-digit month of the year. Knowing that historically my body likes mileage, I hope I can get back up to around 60 mpw by May. We’ll see.

Last Friday I posted on Instagram and Facebook that I would be running Grandma’s for Brave Like Gabe, and so many of you sat me flat on my ass with your generosity. You all far exceeded any thoughts about what I might raise by June, let alone in the first few days. THANK YOU. Thank you specifically to: Jill, Ghost, Mirjam, Robyn, Troy, Bridget & Dhuey, Ron & Cass, Amy, Bob, John, Prairie Runner, Dave & Liz, Becca, Petra, Nikki, and Judy. I am humbled and so grateful for your support of my campaign for Brave Like Gabe. I’ll be raising funds all of the way until the race in June, and will be training buoyed by your support, a good reminder that this race isn’t about me at all.

What I want most, outside of raising funds for Brave Like Gabe, is to immerse myself in training again. I miss building training programs and then ignoring them, the exhaustion of a long run, the frustration of niggle-management, second breakfast, a pile of worn-down shoes in the basement, the chronically dead legs that are the hallmark of the taper, packing lists for race weekend. I crave the whole brutiful mess of it. Dreaming again feels risky, a little dangerous even. But my heart is ready to take some risks and chase a few goals.

Redwoods outside San Francisco, February 2019

I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmed sight
What may not bless my waking eyes.
~Anne Brontë

F*ck Rules or Waving the white flag

It was late June. The last few weeks had been total hell, but as I looked in the mirror, I liked what I saw. My waist was slimmer than it’d been in months, and I felt confident running in just a shorts and sports bra, even though I’d been running that way since May when the weather turned warm. I decided, at the ripe old age of 43, to dress for the weather while training, regardless of how I felt about my body, and this still felt like a radical act even as the pounds that I lost made me more comfortable with how things looked. Never mind that the six to seven pounds disappeared while not eating for five days as I endured some sort of gastric distress related to a flare earlier in the month. My waist was trim and I liked it. 

As the summer wore on and after effects of the acute flare I endured in early June became more apparent, I struggled to maintain the little amount of running I’d been doing. My heat tolerance, which was terrible under the best of circumstances (thank you heat injury in high school softball), was noticeably worse. My mental focus was not much better. My head, which was typically full of hundreds of different thoughts all racing at differing speeds and in different directions, a familiar kind of organized chaos like the airplanes coming and going at O’Hare airport, was suddenly like an LA expressway during rush hour. Lots of thoughts sitting still, baking in the heat. But those that were getting through seemed like they were from someone else’s brain. Can I just say how weird it is to have thoughts you don’t recognize as your own? And I was tired. Oh so tired. Whatever was happening felt familiar, similar to the other flares I’ve endured over the last few years, but in a lot of ways different. It would be the end of July before I’d get to see my doc, as coincidence would have it she abruptly left her old practice and opened a new one the same week as my flare. Because of course. 

When my doc and I finally connected and debriefed about what happened in early June, she saw some lasting effects in my blood work and put the kibosh on what little running I was doing. Just a few weeks out from my family’s annual trip to Cape San Blas, this was particularly devastating, as I’d had “run at the beach” as a goal for the previous 9-10 months. I wasn’t able to run there the year prior due to some persistent and stubborn gut issues, but having done a ton of work on my diet and healing my body, I held running at the beach this year as one of the clearest signs that the past was the past. Not being able to run there again this year, in what happened to be our first year there without my dad, was brutal. With my head still stuck in a foreign fog, I struggled with how I was going to climb out of yet another hole, recover from yet another setback. It seemed pretty fucking hopeless. 

But then I remembered that I didn’t have to do this alone. I messaged with Claire, the dietitian who’s program I’ve participated in since late last September, and brainstormed how best to move forward. I struggled to “get back to” (my god I hate that phrase) the more restrictive diet I followed through the winter and wondered if there was another way forward. We discussed my connecting with the other members of her team – Isabel also a dietitian and Sophie a mental health coach, to see what insight they might have. I recognized this to be a great idea, as if there was ever an all-hands-on-deck situation, this was it. Around this same time, I decide to resume running. Running didn’t have anything to do with the acute flare in June, nor was it making things worse. I’ve been running long enough that I’m comfortable looking after myself and considering that running is how I sort all of the shit in my head, I likely was better off running than not running at this point, even if I did end up paying a bit of a price physically.  

By now it’s late August, and I first connected with Sophie, who made some incredibly astute observations on our phone call that didn’t even last an hour. We talked about what she perceived to be a disconnect between my mind and body, and how that might have contributed to what happened in June. The first half of this year was filled with SO MUCH loss between my dad and our dog Abby (we lost Abby rather unexpectedly in late May). I think I’ve always been a “just plow forward” kind of person and these losses amplified that. She offered some incredible suggestions on how to rebuild a connection with myself, with starting a mediation practice and reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living to guide that practice being the most impactful. I’ve experimented with a regular meditation practice off-and-on over the last year or so, but she thought that resuming the practice with the guidance provided in the book would be transformational. And she was so right.

The following week, I talked with Isabel. I rehashed my journey over the last few years, and in particular the progress I made with my health since starting to work with Claire last fall. I shared my current frustration at the difficulty I’m experiencing when trying to resume the more restrictive diet that had been so helpful earlier in the year, and how when it really comes down to it, I hate all of the rules that this approach requires. Isabel encourages me to forget all of the labels (Whole30, AIP, low histamine, paleo, etc) and to ask myself what eating like Kim looks like. I don’t say it aloud, but in my head I think, well she’s most definitely eating sandwiches. We explored what feedback I can glean from my body (beyond body weight) about what foods are working for me and which ones aren’t. She encouraged me to get curious and to feel comfortable experimenting a bit. We talked about how rules can make things easier in some ways, but how many more possibilities lie outside of those rules. Rather than getting off of the call with a recommitment to my low-histamine, AIP diet as I expected, I am instead liberated from the notion of how I “should” eat as someone living with a chronic autoimmune condition, and with a charge to figure out what eating like Kim looks like. Task #1 – find some decent gluten-free bread for making sandwiches. 

Later that first week in September, the same week I talk with Isabel, Full Catastrophe Living arrives, all 600+ pages of it. Because of my work in cardiac rehabilitation early in my career, I’m familiar with the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program the book outlines. But while I was familiar with it, I really didn’t know any details. So I dove into the book with a healthy amount of curiosity while at the same time being very overwhelmed by the 600 pages. But then, in the very first section about certain perspectives that must be in place for a mindfulness practice to be fruitful, Kabat-Zinn spends about a page talking about acceptance, one of those needed perspectives. He writes:

“Acceptance means seeing things as they actually are in the present. If you have a headache, accept that you have a headache. If you are overweight, why not accept it as a description of your body at this time? Sooner or later we have to come to terms with things as they are and accept them, …often acceptance is reached only after we have gone through very emotion-filled periods of denial then anger. These stages are a natural progression in the process of coming to terms with what is. They are all part of the healing process. In fact, my working definition of healing is coming to terms with things as they are. (Emphasis by Kabat-Zinn)

…In the course of our daily lives, we often waste a lot of energy denying and resisting what is already fact. When we do that, we are basically trying to force situations to be the way we would like them to be, which only makes for more tension. This actually prevents positive change from occurring. We may be so busy denying and forcing and struggling that we have little energy left for healing and growing, and what little we have may be dissipated by our lack of awareness and intentionality. 

If you are overweight and feel bad about your body, it’s no good to wait until you are the weight you think you should be before you start liking your body and yourself. At a certain point, if you don’t want to remain stuck in a frustrating vicious cycle, you might realize that it’s all right to love yourself at the weight you are now because this is the only time you can love yourself. Remember, now is the only time you have for anything. (Emphasis mine.) You have to accept yourself as you are before you can really change. Your choosing to do so becomes an act of self-compassion and intelligence. 

Acceptance does not mean that you have to like everything or that you have to take a passive attitude toward everything and abandon your principles and values. It does not mean that you are satisfied with things as they are or that you are resigned to tolerating things as they “have to be”. It does not mean that you should stop trying to break free of your self-destructive habits or to give up your desire to change and grow, or that you should tolerate injustice, for instance, or avoid getting involved in changing the world around you because it is the way it is and therefore hopeless. It has nothing to do with passive resignation. Acceptance as we are speaking of it simply means that sooner or later, you have come around to a willingness to see things as they are. This attitude sets the stage for acting appropriately in your life, no matter what is happening. You are much more likely to know what to do and have the inner conviction to act when you have a clear picture of what is happening versus when your vision is clouded by your mind’s self-serving judgments and desires, or its fears and prejudices.”

I read that section no less than five times. And I all could think about was the difference between knowing something and accepting it. I wondered how much I knew about what happened the last few years versus whether I accepted it. By this time, I’d gained back those seven or so pounds I lost in June, with an extra two or three just for good measure. Which I had been very frustrated about. I was frustrated about the flare in June, frustrated about not being able to follow the right diet, frustrated about my body not looking like I wanted it to, frustrated about my brain being a hot mess most of the summer. But in reading that passage on acceptance, it occurred to me that I could choose to not worry about any of it. I could decide that my body is just fine right now, exactly as it is. I could realize that it is really fucked up to prefer the body of an acutely sick self versus a healthier one. I could decide that those food rules that work so well for so many others don’t work for me at all. I could decide that running makes me really, really happy and it helps more than it hurts. I remembered that for 15 years I lived with this autoimmune condition, breaking all of the rules the entire time because I didn’t know they existed. I just took my meds and trusted myself to make the right decisions. And that approach remains a choice I can make. 

So here I sit I early October. I had the best month of running this calendar year in September. October’s training is off to a great start. I’m getting faster, running more miles. I’ve eaten sandwiches nearly every day for lunch the past three weeks and could not be happier about it. I made granola for the first time in years. I made my favorite Bolognese sauce (from Run Fast Eat Slow, you all should try it) that tastes amazing with Banza pasta. I’ve continued to work through Full Catastrophe Living, even trying the impossibly long 45-minute body scan meditation a few times. I check in with myself several times a day to see what I’m feeling. My digestive system is a bit more disrupted than I’d like, telling me that I haven’t found the sweet-spot with my diet yet, but I will. The next blood draw later this fall will provide important feedback, but it’s not the only feedback.  

For as bleak as the summer was, the last six weeks have brought nothing but hope. Hope and joy. So much joy. Joy in a diet that isn’t full of someone else’s rules, joy at running in the midst of a cool fall morning. Joy in embracing my imperfect body, because it’s the only one I’ve got…perhaps I should be a bit gentler towards it? Joy at getting out of my own head long enough to reconnect with the important people in my life, most especially M. I can see now how the last several years have been nothing but a battle. Me battling against my body and with how someone with my condition is “supposed” to conduct herself. (She follows AIP for months, maybe even years, and certainly is not a runner. Running another marathon is not a consideration for her.) Reminding myself that I make the rules, that in reality there are no rules, and that I can trust myself to take care of me has made this rebel’s dark, moody heart so happy. I’m waving the white flag in this war with myself. Even with as tough as the last few years have been, the lessons learned and tools I’ve acquired, most especially these last few months, will help me be more prepared than ever to navigate what life has in store, including the uncertainty that comes with living with chronic disease. Especially a chronic disease like mine that can be heavily impacted by lifestyle choices. I can opt out of the shame and guilt for not doing it the “right” way and just live life, trusting myself to course correct as needed. The difference between knowing and acceptance is living life according to someone else’s rules versus living life guided by my own.

Celebration of (a) Life

From the moment we’re born, our identities are tethered to our parents. They are the anchors, the roots from which we grow. And while I’ve experienced a lot of weird, unexpected things in my 43 years on this planet, events or decisions that reframed how I saw myself, nothing has so shifted the ground beneath my feet as losing my dad.

My family is close. Even when my sisters and I were young and spent most of our time driving each other crazy – or rather Megan spent most of her time driving Erin and I crazy – we were always around each other. My sisters and I are far enough apart in age (four years for each of us) that we didn’t share friend groups, but in many cases we were friends with siblings. As we got older, we realized that perhaps maybe we did actually like one another, and in what my 13-year-old self would call nothing short of a miracle, my sisters have become some of my closest friends. As I’ve gotten older and fully inhabited my introvertedness, my sisters and their husbands, along with my parents, form the inner ring of my social circle. Before my dad got sick, I’d tag along with he and my mom on their Friday night Chipotle dates on the weeks M was flying. My sisters and I took weekend shopping trips to Chicago a few times a year (note to Meg and Erin – we need to resume these). Between my sisters, our husbands, and my nieces/nephews, there are no shortage of birthdays to celebrate. Mom makes brunch and we stuff ourselves silly, just for fun. Toss in holidays and our annual pilgrimage to Cape San Blas, and my family is the common thread weaving the years together.

Cape San Blas, FL
August 2017

Because my family has always been so present in my day-to-day life, my favorite memories of my dad aren’t so much of these grand, seminal moments, but of regular life-stuff. They’re of going to work with him on Saturdays when I was a kid. He’d work on the Monte Carlo he was restoring, and I’d help him sand for a while and then spend the rest of the time wheeling myself around on his creeper. Eventually, those Saturdays evolved in to actual work for him, and I’d file repair orders while he toiled in his office. They’re of riding along on my bike while he’d run, which when I was 11 turned into us dropping my bike off mid-run so I could run too for a few miles, which then evolved into just going out for runs together. We ran around Abingdon, we ran with my Uncle Bill at the beach, we even ran a half marathon together in 2002. We ran the Indy Mini-marathon, because of course it was the incentive of running on the track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that got my dad to run a half even as his back was protesting. More recently, they’re of the time he built a ramp for my old-lady dog who couldn’t climb stairs when we stayed with them for a few months upon moving back from Colorado. They’re of lunches at Red Robin where we’d enjoy cheeseburgers – his always cooked with lots of pink, topped only with American cheese, and open-faced – with diet cokes and talk about nothing.

Indy Mini-Marathon
May 4, 2002

My dad’s ability to fix literally anything, and because he was essentially unflappable, meant that he received a lot of bizarre phone calls from me and my sisters over the years (to be fair, my mom receives her share of these calls too). We called him with car trouble, house trouble, after car accidents, and in my case one time when I trapped a wasp in my bathroom and didn’t know what to do about it. He’d talk us down off the ledge and help us figure out what to do next. He and mom could have wrote a book with the phone calls they’ve gotten from us over the years. I don’t think it’s so much that my sisters and I can’t figure these things out ourselves, but when you have Mike and Renee Tolle as your parents, why wouldn’t you call them when shit is hitting the fan? They’ll help you solve the problem, make you laugh, and then remind you that you’re lucky. A good blueprint for navigating any crisis, I think.

While I treasured the everydayness of my relationship with my dad, there are a few times in my adult life where a conversation between us reorganized how I saw myself or what I prioritized. The first time this happened was 15 years ago or so when I vented to him about some problem at work. I managed a medically-based wellness center and led a staff of 35. I was frustrated about a situation with a colleague, a situation that revealed a lack of integrity and laziness in my coworker. I felt irrationally irritated by it. In talking with my dad, he apologized with humor and said I got that particular brand of impatience from him. There was something comforting in being able to make sense of the frustration, to know where it came from. And when that same frustration would pop up repeatedly in the years following, I could see it and recognize it, which made it much easier to navigate. I loved knowing where it came from, that it was a trait I shared with my dad.

More recently, it happened again as he was being diagnosed in August of 2015. I was an administrator at the same hospital where his doc was and he stopped by my office after one of his appointments. My family isn’t prone to talking about stuff, so he caught me off guard when he mentioned that he regretted how much he worked while we were growing up. I was so grateful he said it though, because I could reassure him that my sisters and I had an amazing childhood. I could tell him how I never once felt like he was absent from our lives. The conversation was a short one, as we moved on to other topics fairly quickly. But it stayed with me and has factored into most of the decisions I’ve made since. At the time, I was knee deep in an autoimmune flare that was taking over my life. The job I was in was making it worse, much, much worse. Six weeks later I’d walk away from it. Until this point, I’d prioritized my career. I’ve always enjoyed my work, but when a stressful job triggered the flare in 2014, I had a hard time making the necessary sacrifices to get better. That conversation with my dad was the start of my making the changes I needed to recover my health. And work has not held the same prominence in my life since. That might mean I may never hold a job with a fancy title again, but if I can be healthy and participate in life on my own terms, it will be worth it. When I was sick, I couldn’t run like I wanted, I was too tired to ski, traveling was A LOT of work, and the brain fog made even reading a book difficult. It was a really high price to pay for an office and set of business cards, and my dad unintentionally revealed this truth, a truth I desperately needed to see.

But for almost a week now, I’ve been living in a world without this man. This quiet, stubborn, practical fellow who formed one of the two earliest anchors of my time on this planet. I’ll forever be his daughter, but I’ll miss calling or texting him with my latest house or car drama, I’ll miss sharing a cheeseburger with him at lunch on Mondays. The world will never be the same without him in it. I have moments where I think if we could just go back to a week ago, to ten days ago, then he’d still be with us. But when I remember how sick he was, how much pain he was in, I realize we have to go back further. Even last summer, the cancer was slowly staking its claim. Two years ago, things were pretty good, but he still had a devastating illness. So if we go back four years ago, he was healthy but the tumor was there, waiting to make its presence known. So now we go back six or seven years, and well it becomes obvious of how ridiculous an exercise it is. This is all we have, today. Right now. And that means making sense of a world without my dad in it. Reorienting myself and learning to live with the tremendous void left in his wake. But I won’t be doing it alone, as I’m surrounded by an army of people who miss him as much as I do. Who knew what a character he was, who understand how lucky we were to call him dad.