Monthly Archives: December 2016

New Year's, Reflection, Transformation, Uncategorized

Reflections

I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions. I’m of the mind that if there are changes to be made, one shouldn’t wait for a particular date on the calendar to make them. However, I do love the metaphorical clean-slate the new year provides. Even though Sunday is no different from Saturday, something about turning the page on another year can feel like opportunity.

While I’ll not spend the last few days of the year making lists of things to change about my life, the last few years, I’ve been more intentional about taking a look back. About taking stock of the year that’s closing, remembering the good, honoring the bad. It’s a habit that started with my running logs, I think. I love adding up mileage totals for the year, looking back over race results, considering the effectiveness of my training, comparing the totals and results. Since I’ve been unwell the past three years, that exercise hasn’t been as fruitful. I’ve been running and racing much less, and the results of the races I do run are expectedly mediocre. So, I’ve found my mind wandering and expanding the exercise to a more holistic inventory. I value acknowledging the light and the dark, as it is the contrast of experiences that sharpen the focus.

Compared to 2015, which I’ve come to refer to as a forest fire, 2016 was pretty solid. A bit of context…for me, a forest fire represents a year when everything goes wrong, to the point where every narrative you’d written for yourself gets burned to the ground. To complete and total ashes. We all experience forest fires at some time or another. Enough things come undone to the point where the path you’d envisioned for yourself is so clearly not where you’re meant to be, or not even possible anymore. Like an actual fire in the forest, this tearing down creates space for a rebirth and makes room for experiences that wouldn’t have happened without a major reorientation. Growth of a different kind. My fire was personal-illness of a family member and continued major challenges with my autoimmune condition- and professional. But, without 2015, there is no 2016. And if 2015 was a forest fire, 2016 was sunshine on blackened trees, delicate flowers poking up through scarred earth.

Highs

In January, I found a new physician. By the end of 2015, I was as sick as I’d ever been with my Hashi’s and starting to feel like there was no way out. But I took a chance on a physician based in Chicago, a functional medicine M.D. who, according to her profile, specialized in holistic approaches to managing autoimmune conditions. My expectations were low, but I was getting nowhere with western medicine and had nothing to lose. Twelve months later, I’m thisclose to remission. I have a doc who not only has deep knowledge of my condition and how to treat it, but who lives with it too. She’s a true partner in healing.

With my not-one-minute-too-soon recovery, we took several trips. Nothing makes me happier than wandering around in the wilderness with my most-favorite person. We visited Breck in February, Zion National Park and St. George in May, and made two trips with my family to our favorite beach this summer (Cape San Blas, FL).  Also, I met some of my running friends in New Hampshire for a relay in September. Thanks to what I suspect was food poisoning, my running was crap (literally), but the weekend spectacular. Side note – Zion stole my heart. If you haven’t been there, put it at the top of your list, you won’t regret it.

Professionally, fall brought a new, unexpected job opportunity and I begin working for the local health department in early November. I love my work, have wonderful colleagues and get to make good use of the knowledge gained during the challenging two years at my job in Fort Collins. The stress from that job is what triggered the flare of the autoimmune condition, but it’s also a wonderful kind of alchemy, because without that work, I wouldn’t be at the health department. Funny how that works.

Lows

With much gratitude for all that was good in 2016, I leave this year missing a piece of my heart. In early August, we said good-bye to our sweet Sadey, our trusty companion of 15 years. We knew her time was short this summer, but losing her left a void that will never be filled. I miss her velvety ears, her begging for butt scratches, the pacing on the hardwood to get our attention. We’d only been married three years when we brought her home, and in her sweet, quiet way she taught us how to be better humans. I’m so grateful she was ours.

I closed out the year with a freak accident, breaking a bone in my foot on a trail run with my sister. I spent several weeks on crutches followed by several more in a boot. I broke my foot 10 days before starting my new job. BAD TIMING. Once I was finally liberated from the boot, I came down with a lingering head cold, from which I recovered only to get the stomach flu. Other than a few random workouts squeezed in between bouts of illness, I’ve been sedentary for two months. I’m a great candidate for a Couch to 5k program. 🙂

2017

As I mentioned, I’m not one for resolutions, but I do have some intentions for the coming year:

  • Continue towards remission with the autoimmune condition. I need to make the dietary changes my doc recommended a year ago, which will go a long way towards getting me over this last hurdle. My procrastination on this is unexplainable, but typical.
  • Reclaim my identity as a runner. I haven’t run regularly since the end of October and it’s making me a bit crazy in the head. I hope to run lots and lots of miles in 2017.
  • More adventures. A few are already scheduled…we’re going to Breck in a few weeks where we’ll be taking a snowmobiling tour for the first time (in addition to skiing and snowshoeing), and I’m attending the Wilder running and writing retreat in Oregon in May. (Still totally geeking out about the retreat!!)
  • Take chances. The last few years have unintentionally been about getting really uncomfortable. Good stuff has come from it and I want to be mindful about continuing to take risks. Growth and transformation is hard, but so completely worth the discomfort.
  • Be present. As an introvert who lives in her head, it’s really easy for me to go about my days totally distracted. I’ve been working to be more present in whatever I’m doing, whether that’s talking with a friend, cooking food for the week, working on a puzzle, or sitting in a meeting. It’s REALLY hard. But important, I think. Put down the phone, turn off the TV. There’s so much I don’t want to miss.

Whatever your approach for the new year, may you spend it with the people you love the most. Wishing you health and happiness in 2017!

 

General

Everyone’s an A-hole

As I drove to work on Wednesday morning, I witnessed four different people run four different red lights. These were the first four stop lights I came to that morning. Beyond forcing me to consider the safety of my six-mile commute, it got me thinking…when did we become such jerks? When you start paying attention, you quickly realize we’ve turned into a bunch of selfish, distracted punks.

One definition of respect is “a feeling of admiring someone or something that is good, valuable, important”. What strikes me about the definition is the inherent assumption of value or importance. When considering how we interact with each other, in so many instances, we say the exact opposite with our words and actions. When we run the red light because we’re in a hurry or not paying attention, we’re essentially saying to the other people at the intersection “I don’t value you or your safety”. When we argue impatiently with on some random person on Facebook, we’re saying “you’re not important enough for me to consider my words”. The breakdown of civility is having deep implications, as evidenced by our complete inability to have fruitful dialogue about hard things. When we can’t drive across town without respecting one another, how on earth do we imagine we can discuss something as challenging and complicated as access to healthcare or climate change, or a topic as polarizing as a woman’s right to choose?

If you walk into any coffee shop on a given day, often times you’ll see at least half of the patrons buried in their devices, whether that’s a computer or a phone. Regularly, these folks are seated with other people who are similarly engaged. I’ve wondered about the consequences of this shift. How much has the transition in how we communicate influenced how we treat one another? How has the evolution in how we make connections influenced how we communicate?  And how does this environment reinforce the “me” culture that appears to be doing us in?

In a society void of respect, having compassion for those who’ve walked a different path is impossible. I can’t be concerned for your well-being if I don’t value you as a human. My not taking the time to understand a community’s unique challenges demonstrates that I don’t find them to be important enough to warrant careful consideration. When someone says “poor people just need to work harder” that’s the message, for when you take the time to understand how institutionalized poverty is in our country, you quickly realize how escaping it is so much more than just “working harder”. Are there lazy people who are poor? No doubt. Is that an excuse to devalue the experiences of families living in poverty? Absolutely not.

The culture we’ve created has dangerous consequences. The election of Donald Trump is one extreme. Selfishness was essentially the heart of his campaign…”Screw the rest of the world, America comes first; this country is in a terrible place and I am the only one who can save you.” My neighbor who can’t wait his turn at a four-way stop is the other. I’m not sure how we evolve from this. My personal resistance includes driving as though I give a shit about others on the road, making eye contact and small talk with strangers in public (I loathe small talk…this is a bigger deal than it should be), being very careful about how and where I engage in conversations on difficult topics, and putting down the phone/computer more often. Also, I’m trying to listen more than I talk. As an introvert, this comes easy to me, but I’m listening harder, listening more to understand. Perhaps if we all extend a bit more kindness, a bit more grace, we can change the energy of the world around us.

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” ~Leo Tolstoy

Running, Uncategorized

Starting Over

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I sit here, four days out of a boot from an avulsion fracture of the cuboid bone in my right foot, I find myself consumed with thoughts about running. It’s coming up on seven weeks since I first injured my foot…a long time for a runner to not be running.

This injury comes on the heels of a terrible two-and-a-half year stretch for me as a runner. In the spring of 2014, I began to have trouble with what I now know was the start of a serious flare of my autoimmune condition (Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis). It would be six months before I got some insight as to what was happening, another 15 months after that (January 2016) before I found a doc who could help get my immune system under control. I haven’t set a PR of consequence since fall of 2013. That was also the last time I really felt like myself. Seems like a lifetime ago.

So here I sit. Coming off of a big injury at the tail end of a terrible couple of years. After getting over my initial anger about the injury (it came at a terrible time…we had to cancel a much-anticipated trip to Zion National Park – quite possibly my favorite place on Earth, and I started a new job on crutches), I’ve landed in a place that’s incredibly liberating. I can finally let go of any shred of the past, as any tiny bit of fitness I thought had stayed with me the last few years is certainly gone now. And after running five Boston Marathons in a row, more than I ever dreamed would be possible for this girl of modest talent, I’m now coming into the second year in a row where I don’t have a qualifier. No race has brought more joy and pride than what I felt standing in the starting corral in Hopkinton. But letting go of that expectation, that goal, has been liberating too.

2017 will be a year of rebuilding. Not only do I have an injury to rehabilitate from, but I have three years of illness to recover from as well. My November lab results were the best numbers I’ve had since my Hashi’s spun out of control in 2014. Things still aren’t “normal”, but they’re close. Close enough that I wake up with ease most mornings, even if I don’t want to actually get up (because who wants to get out of bed in the cold dark of December); close enough that for the first time in years I’m not cold all of the time; close enough that my brain works most days; close enough that it feels safe to set goals again.

While the marathon is my first love, the race that captured my heart, I plan to wait at least another year before attempting the distance. The last marathon I ran was Boston in April 2015, eons ago for someone who typically runs three-to-four per year. The race was a disaster (and not just because the weather was terrible), just like the several marathons before it had been. I’ll spend the first half of the year focusing short distances, 10k or less. If the summer goes well, I’ll try a half marathon in the fall, but I’m content to run nothing but 5ks and 10ks if that’s what it takes to get well again. And besides, the faster I get now, the faster my return marathon will be. 🙂

Why does this matter? Because as any runner knows, running is freedom. Running isn’t about the running at all. It’s about setting a goal and having the discipline to chase it. It’s about accomplishing things you never felt you could (see the five Boston Marathons mentioned above). It’s about spending time with your friends, whether it’s a short run on a random Tuesday night, or a weekend trip out of town. It’s time to clear your head, to make sense of all of the bullish!t. It’s quite possible that all of these words are on this page because this runner can’t run.

Any runner who’s been injured, or had a long layoff that wasn’t of their choosing, knows this feeling, this place. This experience isn’t unique. The challenges of the past few years have been moderated by the encouragement and commiseration of friends who’ve had their own go at this game. I know that I’ll be back. Things won’t be the same as they were before, but then again they never are. We only fool ourselves into thinking such. So I’m biding my time, hopeful for the future. I’ll leave you with a little ditty from one of my favorite bands, which sums it up nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PkcfQtibmU

Uncategorized

The P Word

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

I’m not the most qualified person to be speaking on this topic, so I bring it up with hesitation. But I think it’s important.

I progressed embarrassingly far in life before I spent much time considering the concept of privilege. It’s not that I didn’t think it existed, or that I didn’t understand the very real disparities challenging particular communities, but I didn’t give deep consideration to its origins, implications or consequences. Let me be clear that I realize that in-and-of itself is privilege. But since my foray into public health, I’ve had to sit with the concept. If I’m going to make my community healthier for ALL residents, I need to understand the various factors, both positive and negative, that are impacting health. I’ve learned there are many kinds of privilege – racial, economic, heterosexual, gender, religious, etc. You can benefit from one kind of privilege and be disadvantaged in other ways. Privilege is a systemic, cultural experience, not an individual construct.

When you dig into the data, it’s clear that significant disparities exist. For example, non-Hispanic blacks have the highest age-adjusted rates of obesity (48.1%) followed by Hispanics (42.5%), non-Hispanic whites (34.5%), and non-Hispanic Asians (11.7%).  Blacks, non-Hispanics, and Mexican Americans aged 35–44 years experience untreated tooth decay nearly twice as much as white, non-Hispanics. (Health statistics from the CDC) The rate of suicide attempts is four times greater for Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual (LGB) youth and two times greater for questioning youth than that of straight youth. Suicide attempts by LGB youth and questioning youth are four-to-six times more likely to result in injury, poisoning, or overdose that requires treatment from a doctor or nurse, compared to their straight peers. (Suicide statistics from The Trevor Project) One of every three African American children and one of every four Latino children live in poverty— two times higher than the rate for white children. By age three, white children have a significantly larger vocabulary than black children of the same economic class. The gap for race is as large as the gap for class, and remains the same through age 13. Racial disparities in poverty result from cumulative disadvantage over the life course, as the effects of hardship in one domain spill over into other domains. (Poverty statistics from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan)

Still with me? If when confronted with the concept of privilege, you’re inclined to justify the disparities, qualify them, diminish their significance, please don’t. Sit with the impulse and consider why you feel the need to push back. Our society’s tendency to brush aside these realities has been damaging communities for over a century.

As I’ve observed conversations about privilege over the past few years, several themes emerged. Setting aside those that acknowledge the realities of privilege…there are those that feel the presence of privilege diminishes their own personal accomplishments or hard work (it doesn’t). There are those who believe the disparities exist at the fault of the vulnerable communities themselves (they don’t). Then there are those that proclaim privilege simply doesn’t exist (it does). And usually in the midst of these conversations, if someone says the word “privilege” out loud (or in writing), many of these individuals will respond vigorously, using their personal beliefs and experiences to deny the existence of it. A single person’s experience is never a counterpoint to the experience of an entire community of people, or to the data which supports that experience.

How do we have this conversation? How do we talk about privilege in a way that allows us to move beyond the question of whether or not it exists (considering the mountain of data that proves it does), and to the conversation about reconciling it? I’ve found myself avoiding use of the word during these conversations. Generally, I’m not inclined to avoid a difficult topic or term to make others more comfortable, but as I’ve experienced how this word can single-handedly shut down dialogue, I’ve shifted my approach in the interest of maintaining the conversation. Having this dialogue is critical, particularly if it leads to a deepened understanding. But not calling it what it is diminishes it, so I’m invested in learning how to name it without losing the conversation. This is messy work.

Related to my last post, I believe that an investment in reconciling privilege is rooted in compassion. If we, as a society, aren’t compassionate towards vulnerable Americans, vulnerable communities, we won’t be committed to eliminating disparities. Disadvantaged communities need advantaged communities as allies in their quest for equity. Compassionate allies can build important bridges that will be necessary to achieving that equity.

As a member of an advantaged community, what can you do?

  • Listen. Seek to understand the experiences of those who are different from you. Hear their stories and trust their truth.
  • Ask. Inquire about how best to be an ally. Let those affected by disparities guide you in how to engage.
  • Seek. Work to understand your own privilege.  By better understanding the systemic structures that work for your benefit, you’ll be better able to identify how these same systems might be adversely affecting others. Dig into the data, there is a considerable amount of research that can help inform your perspective.
  • Act. Find your passion and be a doer. Volunteer for a local non-profit, or contact your local legislators to advocate for policies that are important to the communities you are supporting. Write letters to the editor or donate money. Don’t sit on the sidelines. Get involved in ways that resonate with you. (If you’re an introvert, don’t volunteer to make phone calls, you’ll hate yourself for it later.)
  • In a position to cultivate awareness among others about privilege? The Privilege Walk is a non-threatening, impactful exercise that can spark rich dialogue. If you’re still unsure about privilege and how it influences our experiences, just reading through the exercise can help you understand the subtle, but impactful ways it touches our lives.

“Privilege doesn’t just insulate people from the consequences of their prejudice, it cuts them off from their humanity.”                               ― DaShanne Stokes

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