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.