Random Thoughts on Movement and Living Well

  This picture was taken right after crossing the finish line  (Hopes, Wishes)….call it what you want or wish😉 Sometimes needs/wants/dreams can change in unexpected ways, or they can be the same and just perceived or understood differently. I was thinking about how I am finally getting better at doing what I need vs what I want.......for me having a disorder used to mean more exercise, less sleep, and less food. Chaos reigned in my malnourished brain, and I acted only on what my disorder wanted and not what I needed. I had a hard time praying and I felt virtually nothing. In 2019, my anxiety was higher than ever, and I said to a few people that if I were told I had a terminal illness, I would be okay with it. I was ready to die, even though I had everything in my life to live for and I knew it. I knew I was blessed to have all that I had. Even so, in 2020, though I had started the path to recovery, I knew that I had a secret weapon if life got intolerable here on earth…. wh...

WHO ARE YOU AND HOW DO YOU DEFINE YOUR LIFE? Be you, but you may ask, “well, how do I find me?”  Some of us find out early, some of us find out later.  I also firmly believe that we have never arrived when it comes to knowing ourselves. It is an evolution, am I right?   I just recently discovered that I am a cat person. Not exactly what I am getting at but it is something that I just realized in let's just say well-past my wonder years. When I was a young kid I had a progression of career desires….not that career defines who we are but it is maybe our earliest definition of ourselves and I for one, put a lot of value in it.  I wanted to be a stewardess or waitress at first….sorry if those terms are “wrong” but they were the terms used in my childhood.  Then when I was older, I wanted to be a teacher.  A good friend of mine (we were in about the 4 th grade) and I would pretend to have classrooms. In my room, Greg was always getting in trouble, and he...

Words and Hope Today, I came across the below Henri Nouwen quote.  I have been reading his books for a good fifteen years now.  His words move me always in such an inexplicable way. His writings had a great impact on me early in my journey and they continue to pop-up when I least expect them. Like today, when I really needed a boost to keep my hope alive; I came across part of this quote.  It is the amazing reminder that even in the midst of darkness, hope and God are with us even in the discomfort even if we do not realize it. “Hope is not dependent on peace in the land, justice in the world, and success in the business. Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God’s guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness. No one can truly say with certainty where he or she will be ten or twenty years from now. You do not know if you will be free or i...

  How I have learned to live without regret, or as few as possible. We all have to find our individual inner peace and learn how we each can live unapologetically. This blog like the last, took a long time to come.   As is always the case, a situation came up that fit the theme of living life intentionally focusing on living and acting without regret, which for me results in inner peace. First: why?   For me, the answer is that my past regretful situations are hard to forget, hard to forgive yourself for, and they are painful. Nobody wants any of that for sure!   Several years ago in confession, I learned to not regret some of my poor choices from so long ago but to realize they made me who I am today and of course I received the grace I needed from that reconciliation. The main reason I could accept that advice is my past actions by and large did not effect my loved ones. I accepted that truth and advice readily.   Many years later, I had a difficult ti...

  This blog has been simmering for a while.  My twisty thoughts have been taking longer than usual to unravel.  You might guess that by that mambo-sized title….how will I ever wrap all that into one blog and make it positive? I am not sure but I do know this, I always do my best to listen to my heart and do what my gut says because I hate regret and I try to avoid it at all costs….more on that later….I hope!  So, here goes!  My last blog was pre-Boston, which is almost two months ago.  I have packed lot of life into a few weeks......two birthdays,  all of Thanksgiving and Christmas tradition. I have cared for and planned for it all and it has been wonderful.   I have either been in high gear getting things done or just the opposite, which is a completely unproductive and melted-mind state. By the way, unproductive is perfectly okay, healthy, and good to do, which is hard to see unless you have a healthy mental state. Now that my busy personal ti...

  Would You Rather?  This game was made for me, I love it!!…along with just asking random weird questions…like, I wonder why…? On this eve of running the Boston marathon, I was thinking about the last three years since I qualified.   It should have been about a year and a half between my qualifier and Boston but you know we had this pandemic thing. When Boston 2020 was cancelled, about a month before the race, I felt I was ready. I had just run my first 20 miler of that cycle and I was feeling great. I had killed that run with the help of a friend.   It was my fastest 20-mile training run on record, I believe.   A few days later, the news came.   No Boston. So we waited and reset for fall 2020. I didn’t restart my cycle until about the latest time possible as I thought it was going to be cancelled again.   I had built up but not really in earnest because I was getting mentally worn down after the first reset already.   It was cancelled again in ...

My "Why" goes back to another topical question, "How did you get started running?".  I recently was honored to be asked if I would be interested in writing a "Why I Run" for @themotherrunners and while thinking about how I was going to start it, I realized that I had never really written a "Why I run" piece and I decided it might be a nice blog.  The answer is simple and it did not take a lot of thinking to point to my "why', but it took time to think about how to make my point come across in as few words as possible. My "why" is history.  I started running in 7th grade when my dad started running around the lake we lived on.  I picked it up because in all the games I played with the neighbors and my brothers, the running part was my favorite part and it was about all that I was good at....I was not good at batting, catching, throwing, shooting baskets, you name it....but in all those games, I loved running and I loved being ou...