Five Years Later
I gave a speech a couple weeks ago about my transcon run, which ended five years ago today. Someone asked the biggest thing I got out of the run. I didn’t have a quick answer then, and after thinking about it for days, I still don’t. In reality, I suspect I won’t ever have a clean answer – because that run was not clean. The lessons it imparted and impacts it had are still revealing themselves in fits and starts and decidedly messy ways. It feels very much like a book I read and set aside thinking “that was interesting.” Only to find myself returning to a page years later, finding new or different meanings in the paragraph. I’ve written before about how I didn’t feel “transformed” when I jumped into the Atlantic, how the transition to the other side feels ongoing, perpetual. It still feels that way. I’m still returning to pages, to miles, and finding new plot points. I imagine I’ll pull from the story, build upon it, different lessons throughout the years – because what I need from it changes with each season.
In this season, I need the confidence, the calm, and the quiet.
People have asked me if I ever thought I wouldn’t make it across, and as arrogant as it sounds, no. I wanted to quit a thousand times. The first few weeks were a messy mass of doubt and fear. I had no idea how I’d make it, but I always thought I would. Maybe it was the way I was raised or the sheer immensity of the support network I have, but I never really thought I’d fail. I’m lucky that way, privileged that way – and the run only made that clearer.
It sounds funny, but just last week I took the boys to my parents for a few days, solo. Sure, I was terrified, I mean it was a toddler and an infant on a plane, but when I’d feel that anxiety rise in my chest, rising a bit faster was a little voice that cut through the fear and reminded me that a screaming child wasn’t the end of the world. So much of what I was fearing, what I was anxious about – was little stuff. I mean they don’t ground planes for crying kids right? And we did have a couple meltdowns and two blowouts. And sure, I arrived in Illinois with a naked infant and baby shit on my dress and back in Beaufort with a naked toddler and smelling of pee. But they didn’t turn the plan around. We didn’t stop moving forward. Whatever happens, I could, I can, figure it out. I can find the right people to ask, the right book to consult. I can keep my blended family together across international boundaries. I can have a successful career, “finish” school, and enjoy the love of my partner and children. I ran across the country, I made it through the desert, the demons. I can do this. I don’t always know how but I know that I can. I know that I will.
That sort of confidence brings a very welcomed calm to life. So, as I find myself traveling again this week, packed into a car with seven suitcases, four people, and a cooler full of frozen breast milk on a five-leg, two-car convoy back to Canada, I’m trying to remember that calm. We can do this. We can keep our shit together. We have what we need, because what we “need” is very little. We have each other. We have friends and family to support us. We have our health, means, and a plan – and we grabbed the passports, right?
And so, even in what can only be considered a very loud life, I find quiet. More than that, I find comfort in the quiet. Before the run, I was never quiet. I filled every hour with activity, every minute with work and every second with words. If not out loud, then in my head. My very personality was loud. I brought energy and noise to the table, and I loved it. Clinking glasses, boisterous laughter, blaring music – a soundtrack to my favorite memories. I still love those things, but sometimes I just sit, in the quiet. Running for 99 days meant a lot of alone time, a lot of quiet, and for the most part I hated it. It was boring. It was lonely. It was terrifying.
But it was necessary.
The quiet made me stronger, calmer, and more confident.
In this season of my life, I draw those reminders from the miles. I look to how much I’ve grown in the years between that finish line and now, and I look towards how that journey continues to grow me.
More about that first year of lessons here.