Little Red Running Hood

This year I dropped my oldest off at college, started a new job, and competed in 3 national lifting meets.  It seems like the pandemic was another lifetime, but I still feel the effects every time I head into yet another place I " haven't been to in years".  When I reluctantly leave my house on the weekends... when I realize how little I socialize.  In reality 2023 has been an amazing year.  I think the most valuable lesson I have learned over the last 5 years is how important it is to be ok with letting go and saying goodbye.  How important it is to cherish the people you love and the good times....so when they end, you can let go with out feeling like you missed a second.  So that when you say goodbye, you do so knowing you were all in, you lived every moment you enjoyed the time you had until it ended.   I miss my Dad everyday.  Lately I miss my little babies... running around the house... I miss the magic... I miss the laughter and the lo...

Life is kind of like " the train that crashed my heart... the glitter in the dark..." This blog started as my single Mom running diary.  It has served me as an outlet through some of the hardest times in my life...Times I felt completely alone. This blog has helped me process, appreciate myself, it has documented my incredible personal victories, it has recorded monumental heartbreaks.  Most importantly, it has let me be me. Pouring my head and heart out in cyber space.  It is time to begin where I left off..... or perhaps even,..... before I started....  Circa 2015........ 2014 - Mid summer. It was unseasonably hot. I drove 9 hours to drop my youngest off at a camp, and 7 more hours to meet my dad at his cabin in the mountains.  I did not have AC, but, being no stranger to 4/65 AC and lots of water.... it didn't feel like a big deal to be driving with no AC.  In summer, with my children... we would make it.  We had made it this far.   My Dad met ...

When I was 12, my Dad began his great quest of introducing me to literature. I remember being so excited about summer break... having just bought several Sweet Valley High books - I could not wait to spend my days doing nothing and reading about high school drama in the 80s..... and then- The first book was "The Old Man and the Sea". My Dad said - read it, then let me know you have finished, we will discuss, and I will give you a new book. Yeah... it was a dream summer - let me tell you....The Pearl, Lord of the Flies, Grapes of Wrath, War and Peace, my Dad's ever favorite... The History of Mankind... by the time I arrived at college, I had read so many books - I was so fast and efficient at consuming literature - I read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in a weekend. My Dad had not only educated me in litearature, he taught me how to comprehend and discuss - and COMPARE. There was almost nothing I could not draw from - nothing I could not understand in the wr...

I wake most days and the house is a disaster of kids and clothes and dishes and so much to be done...... ..... I WANT to clean a barbell... I need to clean my life... I mean my house.... ugh... and then I  think... you can l ook at you r life and call it mess OR you can look at your mess and call it a life.  Then I start searching for beauty.. in everything I see.  Beauty is never hard to find.  Just looking outside can truly overwhelm me.  How beautiful it is to be alive and see the vibrant ever changing colors of a season's evolution.... But there is also so much beauty in the people around me... in who they are... what they have accomplished... or overcome... how much kindness and love they give.... I think about that saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"... if life doesn't look beautiful... all you have to do is change your vision.... FITNESS:  It has been an incredible journey.  I have learned that I will always be a runner... running is ...

2020 A few weeks ago, this blog had a very different beginning.  I was about to publish... when I came across this photo..... I love this picture of myself.  I am not sure the photographer knew everything he captured in this moment.  This was after facing some of my biggest fears and learning some invaluable truths about myself. 2018-2019 was a year of learning.  This photo is a picture of a girl who felt like she had lost almost everything, who felt so devastated and so tired.  But somehow, she found the strength and perseverance to keep moving forward... no matter how weak she felt or how hard it got.... and in that prolific moment of realization.... I wrote a new beginning to this story.  I have read that the times we feel crushed, pressed, under extreme pressure, or in total darkness are paths to powerful places of transformation.  I see that now, as I am emerging into new beginnings...That is to say, over a year ago, when I was in so muc...

Well... I am coming up on the one year mark from what I thought might be the end of life as I know it. One year ago, my Dad was very sick, one year ago I discovered that some one I thought the world of was ready, willing,  and able to hurt me more than I ever thought I could bare... one year ago.... I started crossfit... one year ago I was running for the single purpose of trying to breathe. One year ago...felt like I had been knocked down so far... I would never be able to get up...  and I made it. It was October when I walked into that crossfit gym.  Damn I was so thankful for those moments of beating the F out of my body so that I felt something... I was so numb.... I looked forward to that hour... I felt almost nothing... I left shaking and sore and tired and... not devistated...not sad.  That one hour a day was the ONLY thing that kept me sane a year ago. When I recap this in my head... I was helping take care of my Dad, my Mom also became ill... I had a gre...