Running
Since I wrote this post last March, running continues to nourish me. It helps me to be a better wife, mother, teacher. I am grateful to my husband who takes the lead with the kids while I head out, often forgoing a sleep-in or his own morning exercise.
It’s been two years since I started running again. I flew to Florida with my then three-year-old and two-month-old to visit my mom over March break. My sister met us there on the second day.
I had not been running (or exercising consistently) for years, and I was struggling after the birth of our daughter. I felt vulnerable, raw, emotional, exhausted; I felt like I had lost myself to motherhood for a second time and I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I wanted to…but this tunnel was too long and too dark. It was unending. And I was being engulfed by the depth and darkness of this space.
On the second day my mom and sister suggested that I go for a run. I hummed and hawed. I pumped a bottle of breastmilk. I had some coffee. I stretched. I snuggled with the kids. I sat on the balcony. I had a second cup of coffee. I pumped another bottle of breastmilk (what if she needed more than one?), and then… I put on my running shoes.
That first day I ran a block, walked a block. The second day I ran two blocks, walked a block. By the end of the week, I was running 5 km with one break in the middle. I was soaking that sun onto my face, willing that sweat to trickle down my forehead, opening my ears to the irritating high pitched chirp of the crickets in the …(?) grass (?) — where do those little buggers hide? — and deeply and consciously inhaling that fresh salty air. I was hungry for that time on my own. But it was so hard to take it.
My mom and sister gave me permission. They reassured me that it was ok to be a mother and to be my self. I realized that I needed to take what I needed, instead of making excuses for why I could not get what I wanted.
During that trip, running helped me to process what was happening in my life. I came up with a list of truisms and wrote them down in my journal. It’s as though running helped me to recognize, process (and broadcast) the obvious to myself — I was my very own Jenny Holzer.
Since that week in Florida, I have continued to run consistently in a kind of a three-times-a-week-ish way. What some might say is a boring routine-ish way. A mid-thirties, teacher-ish way. And for anyone who knows me this is not my MO. I am more of an all-or-nothing kind of person. The-seven-days-a-week-for-two-weeks-and-then-nothing-for-two-years-kind-of-person. But this routine, this running routine has helped me to process and reflect on so many things.
Sometimes I think I’m running away from something (my screaming kids, work related stress, challenges in my personal relationships) only to find myself running — no sprinting — back to them with a new perspective and a new appreciation for the life I have and the seeming challenges(?) I face(d).
Running has changed my life. It is a constant rebirth. And reminds me that we are in a constant state of becoming. And *that* tunnel no longer seems unending or threatening or dark. In fact, that tunnel no longer exists.
And I am so thankful for that gentle push. For my mom and sister who took that bottle of breastmilk from my hands and said, “Go.”
This world is changing, but so are we. And we have to find ways to process these changes: ways that provide us with a different outlook on life.
Are there any lessons to learn from this pandemic? Probably.
What are the ways we can open ourselves to hearing them? I don’t know about you (because we are all different), but I am going to hit the ground…running.
