Trauma Responses & Taylor Swift

It only hurts this much right now
Was what I was thinking the whole time
Breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out.
-Labyrinth

If you’ve never scream-cried “All Too Well” while trail running in the forest, alone, at over 9,000 feet, are you even in therapy?!?

I first discovered Taylor Swift’s music during spring off-season in 2015. My boyfriend had come over to my house for dinner a few weeks beforehand with plans to tell me he loved me, but I wouldn’t find that part out for over a month. He panicked and broke up with me that night, instead. And I spent my off-season blind sided and solo, camping by the river in Carbondale, reading Neil Gaiman, drinking boxed red wine, and listening to the 1989 album on ceaseless repeat. “All You Had To Do Was Stay” was my new anthem. My heart has been Taylor’s ever since.

Though I’d happily bop around to her pop songs, Taylor’s music more often punctuates the most difficult events in my life. The queen of break up songs, her ability to lay it all bare astounds me. Narrative therapy with a pre-chorus and a hook.

The release of her newest album, Midnights, was heralded to be the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout her life; “We lie awake in love and in fear, in turmoil and in tears. We stare at walls and drink until they speak back. We twist in our self-made cages and pray that we aren’t - right this minute - about to make some fateful life-altering mistake.”

I cried for three hours, laying in my bed, the evening that Midnights dropped. Grief, set to music.

When tickets went on sale for the Eras Tour I made the conscious decision to sit this one out. Although the decibel levels and the parking traffic give me plenty of cause for anxiety, I think the real reason I decided to stay home was because, amongst a stadium full of people, the memories of shame and vulnerability that her music conjures in me, just feel too damn big to bare. The idea of trying not to cry in public for forty-four songs feels impossibly exhausting; each one the footnote to the story of someone who left.

I came across an old interview with Taylor on Instagram where she says, “When I’m in love I’m just stupid about it. And I trust people. Constantly. And then I’m always like, I’m not gonna trust people anymore. I’m gonna be one of those dark twisty girls who guys love because they’re all like guarded and stuff. And then, I just trust people again.”

Same girl, same.
Heart. On. My. Sleeve.

I once had a boyfriend tell me, verbatim, that he lead me on because I am loving and caring and he knew he could take advantage of me and I wouldn’t hate him for it. Instead, I would shame and berate myself for ending up in that type of situation, feeling stupid and embarrassed. Always blaming myself. Apparently falling hard and going all in on commitments is a common trauma response. Another sign of early childhood emotional trauma is that when someone’s love is unavailable, you tolerate it and focus on how you can try to change them into being who you want them to be. I learned a very long time ago that you cannot make someone into something they’re not - but you can try to make yourself smaller, more palatable, more tolerable; needing less, giving more, being ignored and invalidated until you question whether you even exist. It never works, but it doesn’t occur to you to leave. So, you try to make yourself even smaller. Until you disappear.

I want you to know
I’m a mirrorball
I can change everything about me to fit in.
-Mirrorball

I grew up in a household that made me feel like my very existence was a burden. My mom would lock herself in the bathroom for hours on end. At times while I was still living under her roof, she could go days without saying a word to me. When I was in kindergarten I walked in on my father in his attic bedroom, with a gun to his head. He was babysitting my sister and me while my mom ran a quick errand and this was how he chose to spend that hour. Some time later, I overheard my parents fighting before they told my sister and me they were getting a divorce. My mom was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, but right there at the dinner table, my dad refused to take charge of us. So, at five and three years old we were shipped off to the midwest to live with my aunt and uncle and cousin for three months. My mom went to a rehab facility and got sober. My dad started a new life in Atlantic City. I pined for them both. And my sister started down her path to a psychotic break.

I wish I could go back in time and soothe my younger self.
She has battled to be seen and find safe space ever since.

My ex-husband used all of this against me. I was hesitant to get married. He pushed, and I pulled away. He scolded me that if I really loved him I wouldn’t let my parental baggage and the treatment of past boyfriends get in our way. So I finally said, “Yes” to a proposal that I’m not sure I truly wanted, in an attempt to prove that I was all whole and healed. The night we got married I cried in the hotel bathtub alone while he passed out drunk on the bed, but not before telling me that he has me now, and he doesn’t have to try anymore. He was drunk and high everyday after that. I convinced myself it served me right.

This is not the treatment I crave. All I have ever wanted is to be cherished. But the nervous system defaults to what is familiar. Chaos and unavailability are not qualities I would rationally reach for in a partner, but they have been an unconscious compass, my magnetic north.

Towards the end of the off-season that introduced me to Taylor, I received a message from my ex-boyfriend explaining the I-love-you-debacle, and asking me to meet up with him in person. We proceeded to get back together. A couple years, and several rounds of arguments later, he told me he wanted to marry me and make a life together. The following week, I drove to his house and found him sitting on the couch. I could tell by the roundness of his shoulders and lack of eye contact that he was breaking up with me. Again. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I cried. He told me it turns out he didn’t know what he wanted, so he just said he wanted me. I walked out that door, and we haven’t spoken since.

And you call me up again just to break me like a promise
So casually cruel in the name of being honest
I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here
‘Cause I remember it all, all, all.
-All Too Well

When I met my most recent boyfriend I tried to do things differently. I had done a lot of work on myself in the months in between. We focused on building a friendship first and then became romantic partners. I was the Me-est Me I had ever been with someone. I worked hard to communicate calmly and clearly. I showed up in every authentic way I could muster. I asked the big questions and initiated the hard conversations. I thought I had finally found my person. And when we were a year and a half into our relationship, and I’d moved to Minneapolis to be with him, he came home from a baseball game and told me it just wasn’t working. Without having any kind of conversation leading up to this proclamation, he promptly moved out. We never stopped spending time together, though. Instead I pushed down my hurt feelings and abandonment and tried to go back to dating each other like the old days. But my nervous system had gone haywire when he left and I fell into a terrible habit of campaigning for why he should want to be with me. I tried to make myself small and palatable. He came back to me, but I never recovered my original confidence in our relationship.

You’re the only thing I know like the back of my hand
And I can’t breathe without you, but I have to.
-Breathe

The Folklore album came out the day we signed our second lease together and became the soundtrack to our big move into our new home. We had spent months talking things through, making sure we were on the same page, making promises to each other that we would never again make decisions without an open and honest discussion. We were bonded together by the covid lockdown in our country and a civil uprising in our streets. We were best friends and we planned to get married someday.

Just shy of a year into our new nesting we decided to make a move back to the San Juans. It’s where we met and it’s where my heart belongs. It was ultimately his idea to move, and I was elated that we would be returning on mutual terms. We spent a month plotting jobs and housing logistics. One day I came home from work to find him sitting alone in the back yard. I pulled up a lawn chair to tell him about my day. Staring down at our feet, toes almost touching, he told me he wasn’t going to move back to the mountains. And when I asked him if that meant we were breaking up, he said, “I guess so.” He never once asked me to stay. So I left.

And it took you five whole minutes
To pack us up and leave me with it
Holdin’ all this love out here in the hall.
-Exile

That breakup left me feeling unmoored. I had nowhere lined up to live. I was staring down a series of difficult decisions that needed to be made in order to start a new life on my own. But all I could do was cry. And run. So many miles of trails in Michigan, New York, Vermont, Maine, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and California.. All in search of a new home. I crisscrossed the map sobbing and trying to soothe myself with audio books and Justin’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups. I finally landed back in the San Juans after four months in my van and have been trying my best to put down roots. The community being created here is welcoming and supportive. Over the past year and a half I have unraveled and repaired, unraveled and repaired, unraveled…

I am trying anything and everything to make sense of the stories I have been telling myself all these years. To excavate why it’s so easy to judge myself for something I said or did, turning it over in my mind for hours on end, investigating every angle and possible outcome. I’m trying to give myself grace and compassion for my misguided survival modes. Writing helps. Laying it all out, connecting the dots. But it doesn’t work if I can’t quiet my mind. This winter I was introduced to breathwork, a combination of science and ancient wisdom used to support the body in releasing stress and trauma. I feel everything so intensely on a daily basis; the positive and the negative. And while the good feels expansive and uplifting, the bad constricts my chest and I hold my breath, unwittingly disrupting my nervous system even further. That self-critical loop turns on in my head at a deafening volume and it takes every thing in me to shut it off. I need to recalibrate, to learn how to validate my own experiences. Recondition myself. Practice how to respond, instead of react.

Inhale into your belly.
Inhale into your chest.
Exhale.
Who are you?
Why are you here?

I met a boy over Christmas who reminded me a lot of myself. Kindred spirits, he said. Falling for his emotionality, intellectualism, and endearing awkwardness felt like a kind of permission to finally love all those same things within myself. Traits I’ve tried to stuff down and minimize because they have always been criticized and ridiculed. My entire life, people have told me that I’m too sensitive. I’m too emotional. I ask too many questions. I’ve always hoped that engaging in hard conversations would be considered a super power, and for a while his invitation to be vulnerable felt like a strength instead of a weakness. It felt bold instead of risky. Safe and seen. But when he put the brakes on getting to know me and clarified his intentions, being wrong about what we were doing felt unsafe in my body. I had misunderstood his commitment of time and energy as something more than it was, and I felt terribly foolish. I didn’t want to be in that overwhelming discomfort. I wanted to continue to luxuriate in the safe space we had enjoyed in those hours on the phone and all those weeks writing to each other. So, instead of being honest about how it made me feel, I betrayed myself. Anything not to be a burden. When he asked me how I felt about just being friends my “imposition complex” engaged. I tried to be the cool girl and just go with the flow. Our conversations alway light me up, but that one shut me down. In an attempt to maintain integrity, he told me he was also getting to know someone else. My nervous system went on high alert and all I heard was that he wanted more/better/different than me. I should have stayed with those feelings and excavated their intrusion, but the rejection felt unbearable at the time. The experience triggered in me a disproportionate amount of panic. I was overcome with embarrassment. I withdrew.

The other night I took a deep dive down a psychology rabbit hole to sort out the source of my [over] reaction: hyper vigilance, over-explaining, over-apologizing, forfeiting boundaries. I was familiar with fight, flight, and freeze, but I was not aware there is a fourth trauma response. As I read the characteristics of Fawning/People-Pleasing, it was like being handed a user manual to myself. See Figure: A. Mann

It’s me.
Hi!
I’m the problem, its me.
-Anti Hero

The dis-regulation in my nervous system was later compounded by a phone call. My ex-partner and I have remained friends, though I sometimes struggle with maintaining a boundary that protects me from the fallacy that I’m too much or not enough. When you spend the last month of a four year relationship doing all the things you haven’t done yet and redoing all your favorites, saying goodbye is incremental. A little bit over vegan ice cream cones, a little bit on long runs by the Mississippi, a little bit in hammocks with a good book, and a lot over Chinese take-out and movies on the projector. His parting gift to me was a beautiful video he edited together out of all our best adventures, set to two of my favorite songs. He sent it in an email expressing that I was the kindest and most thoughtful person he had ever met. I am really proud that we have managed to remain in each other’s lives and genuinely cheer each other on, but sometimes that trauma loop rages inside my head demanding I defend my self-worth. In those moments the noise gets so loud the only thing I can hear is, “A lot of fucking good that did you, Audrey!”

We FaceTimed last week for a couple hours, catching up on the going-ons of each other’s lives. He had just gotten back from a snowboard trip, is buying his first house, and has been dating the same girl for a few months. I had just gotten back from Los Angeles, the house I’m renting is buried from yet another massive snowstorm, and the boy I liked just wants to be friends. He told me he hopes this boy will come around with time; that he will see how great I am. I know he meant well, but the sentiment was a slow burn. It smoldered in the hollow of my chest overnight, and I erupted into tears the next morning. Rationally, I know it’s not black and white, but opposing forces battle it out, and my brain buzzes with static. My trauma loop shouts obscenities while I try to self-soothe. Grieve. And breathe.

I am currently focused on how and where I invest my energy, figuring out what it feels like to choose people and things that actively choose me back. Personal narrative has been an important tool in that process. Self-witnessing thru writing offers the opportunity to become a neutral observer. I am able to reframe my experiences, notice patterns, and create meaning. I don’t have to make myself small and palatable on the page. There is plenty of room for every emotion. I may not be able to change what happened to me, but writing through my experiences gives me some say in how I respond moving forward. Agency promotes body autonomy and helps me interact with my world. When my nervous system goes rogue and I find myself reacting, I hope to care for myself with greater kindness and compassion; to pause, breathe, and get curious.

I went to see Taylor’s Reputation Tour in 2018. The concert ticket only cost me $75 and a fifteen minute bike ride from my house. My partner was overseas at the time, and I didn’t know anyone else in The Cities, so I went by myself. I got all dressed up, took myself to a fancy dinner, and stood in that arena singing my heart out until Taylor pointed out the light up bracelets we were meant to be wearing. She told us this was her very first all-stadium tour and she wanted to make sure, that no matter what, she would be able to see every single one of us from the stage. I looked down at my bare wrists. Somehow I had not received a bracelet upon entry that evening. The stage blurred, my eyes welled up and over. Taylor couldn’t see me. I was invisible.

I’ve been having a hard time adjusting
I had the shiniest wheels, now they’re rusting.
-This Is Me Trying

The damage done in relationship can only be healed through relationship. That trauma does not disappear in self-work. Being seen helps you see yourself. And while I crave deep, intimate connection, it can feel precarious. How do I maintain equilibrium while opening myself up to someone else? How do I find a safe individual to commit to working through things together? How do we establish trust and reciprocity? I have beaten myself up over the years for trusting people’s promises and for letting them get close to me.

‘Cause when you’re fifteen and someone tells you they love you
You’re gonna believe them.
-Fifteen

Or twenty-two. Or thirty-three. Or thirty-eight. Or…

Being vulnerable and believing people is not a weakness. Say it again for the folks in the back! But being hurt can make you feel weak. Taylor’s lyric, Can I go where you go? is a tentative declaration. I love you. Do you love me back? It’s a question and a vulnerable confession. I want to continue being vulnerable and brave. I want to keep asking the hard questions. Can we always be this close? As much as we might want, we can’t just cherry pick the comfortable parts of relationships. Fear, rejection, abandonment, and shame also abound. Our job is to attempt to understand what these feelings are informing so we can avoid making “fateful life-altering mistakes.” And if we fail, it is my hope that we learn to give ourselves grace for trying.

While I probably won’t be getting decked out in my best bejeweled Eras outfits, TikTok has made it possible to watch Taylor Swift perform all three hours and fifteen minutes of her concert from the comfort of my own couch. Curled up in a blanket, tissues in hand, dog by my side, listening as Taylor turns her pain into poems, transmuting heartbreak into chart-break, a record 70,000 voices scream-singing Fuck the Patriarchy. When you find the perfect words for an experience you can pin them to the page, releasing it. When your story exists outside of you, it is proof that you were here. That it happened. And that it mattered. “Telling our stories is an act of belonging,” says Katherine May in her book, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age.

This was the very first page
Not where the storyline ends
My thoughts will echo your name
Until I see you again
-Enchanted

The next time I see Taylor Swift perform I’m going to go with someone who truly sees me.
Someone who shows me that I belong.
Someone who decided to stay.

I wanna still have a sharp pen, and a thin skin, and an open heart.
-Taylor Swift

Present and in Awe.

“I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world - present and in awe.” -Anne Lamott

This time last year I was enroute to Minneapolis to empty out my storage unit and drag all my personal belongings back to Colorado in a tiny U-Haul trailer towed behind my minivan. This was the last step in a long process; my official return to the San Juans.

The previous summer I had spent three months driving around the country trying on mountain towns like Goldilocks tried out beds; Vermont, Washington, Oregon, Northern California, too small, too big, too smokey, too high desert, too temperate rain forest, too… NOT the San Juans.

I’d long ago decided that the Western slope was my home, but I accidentally took a three year hiatus in the Twin Cities. I didn’t mean to stay so long, but I just kept not leaving. And then Covid happened and before I knew it I’d put down some roots. But the mountains never stopped calling. 

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it is about this area that draws me in like no other. My body feels different here. These mountains are a balm. 

Over the last few years, the scientific study of “awe” and its effect on mental health have repeatedly found their way to me through books, podcast, and research papers. 

“Awe is a positive emotion triggered by awareness of something vastly larger than the self and not immediately understandable – such as nature, art, music, or being caught up in a collective act such as a ceremony, concert or political march,” said UC Berkeley psychologist Dr.Keltner. 

When we experience a break from what our brains register as the mundane and enter into an experience of awe, our bodies respond on a physiological level. These mountains and forests are my daily escape from the mundane. The feeling of being so small in such a vast landscape is visceral. I am changed at a cellular level. And these changes are paramount to my mental health. 

I don’t know what it’s like to want to die, but I do know what it’s like not to care if I go on living. Family memebers’ attempts at suicide or the threat of, have paralleled my personal narrative since I was five years old. By some point of grace, I have managed to stay on “this” side of an invisible line I imagine, dividing a here and a there. I don’t want to cross the line, but I have found myself very close on three occasions in my life.

Over the years I have gathered tools to help me through the rough spots. Getting into nature has become a non-negotiable. City life was a detriment. Moving my body helps. Running. Hiking. Yoga. Listening to bittersweet music connects me to my core. Frightened Rabbit’s “Footshooter“ plays on a loop in my head. Writing helps too. Organizing my personal narrative helps my brain make sense of situations, and gives me distance to have empathy and compassion for an experience that isn’t often available in the moment. 

I’m also lucky to have a few good friends who really see me. When you find yourself lying on your best friend’s living room floor because you have to literally ground yourself, and she places the television remote and a chocolate bar on the carpet beside your rib cage, and then directs your attention to the hall closet and says, “The vacuum is in there if you need it,” you feel understood in a way that wells up inside you. If you’re able, try to be this type of friend to someone else in your life. Those tiny gestures make an enormous impact. 

I’m no good at small talk. It makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. But if you ever need a safe space to express something that feels too big or too heavy to carry by yourself, or if you need someone to hold your hand, literally or figuratively, while you go somewhere safe to do just that, I am here.

That I understand. That experience I know. You are not alone. 

The Alchemy of Running

I don’t often claim to be a writer or a runner, though I have done both in some capacity for as far back as I can remember. I use both outlets to organize my thoughts, to manage my mind, to maintain positive mental health. They have always been tools I implement to return to myself, not pillars of my actual identity. I think this has been a vital distinction.

In March of this year I took a gamble on myself and signed up for my first ultra race. The Telluride Mountain Run (TMR) promised to take me over forty extremely technical and steep miles through the San Juan Mountains with 14,000 vertical feet of elevation gain, running to altitudes of over 13,000 feet on exposed ridgelines and rocky summits. “THIS IS NOT AN EVENT FOR BEGINNERS,” the website warned. I was naive enough to pull the trigger anyway, and smart enough to know I needed to get down to business immediately.

Spring off-season found me running warm and windy trails in Flagstaff and snow dusted fire roads in the eastern Sierras. I started off slow and awkward, combating extra winter weight and the heavy sadness of my solo-ness; a return to adventuring on my own after four years of partnership. The freedom to move back to the mountains came at a cost, and although I knew it was the right decision, the very best decision, it fractured my spirit. All the insecurities, the feelings of being too much and not enough, flooded into the absence. I fought to keep my May miles free from feelings of lacking, of overwhelm, and instead tried to land somewhere in the healthy spectrum between. Exploring brand new trails and novel views made this easier; soft light spilling through the canopy, the potency of pine on the breeze, the exquisite smallness of once again being cradled in these massive mountains.

One foot in front of the other carried me through to June and I arrived at summer’s doorstep armed with info from a stack of borrowed ultra-running books, new trail shoes, a budding relationship with my hydration vest, and a very solid crush on a friend. The former, all of which would contribute to building my confidence as a runner, and the last would find its way into those pointy dark corners that keep a person up at night. These unrequited emotions became enmeshed in a story I believed about myself, and would continue to wrestle for most of the summer:

My company is desirable, but I am not good enough to date.
If I were a “real runner” he would want [to run with] me.

The mind is a complicated master and long distance running lends itself to an unparalleled quantity of alone time with your inner workings. While I had mentally prepared for potential injury and problem solved ways to avoid triggering old disordered eating patterns, this lie, this blazing feeling of not being good enough, blindsided me with its voracity.

But I kept showing up.
I kept putting in the work.

I ran uphill. I ran downhill. I ran in the rain. I ran in the sunshine. I ran in hailstorms and beat down heat. I ran after long days at work. I ran in the early hours of the morning. I ran while embracing the ridiculous beauty of these mountains. I ran while choking through tears and loneliness. I ran. But I didn’t run away.

There is nothing sexy about long distance running. It’s messy and sweaty and possibly bloody. There’s snot and spit and sometimes vomit. There’s dirt and tears and a tiredness that comes from the depths. But there is also overwhelming joy. Running strips everything away and leaves you bare. It turns suffering into resilience. Nothing is different, but everything has changed.

On August 27th I took my months and miles of training and trying to the start line. In the weeks leading up to TMR I had put some metaphorical distance between myself and my favored friend, and on race day there was also a literal ocean. I was determined for this to be “my” run. No one else’s. It wasn’t a race. Another vital distinction. I had nothing to prove. There was nothing to win. There was nothing to lose. The entire point was to be present. To stay curious. To let myself be changed.

Running by headlamp was surprisingly comforting. Enveloped in darkness save for my bubble of light, the sparkling glitter of rocky quartz, and the glowing, bouncing orbs of fellow runners up in the distance. The sun crept above the horizon and the silhouette of the San Juans struck a jagged crack across the sky; stark black against an ombre of the palest blue to the darkest indigo. Bridal Veil Basin ushered me into the sunshine. First light on my skin and a long stretch of downhill warmed me and welcomed me all the way into the first aid station.

A friendly face and a snarky comment goes a long way at 11.5 miles in. My friend/family Sean is always good for both. There are no words to convey my gratitude for the time he took to show up and cheer me on and relay updates to other friends for the entirety of the day. I spent the whole summer thinking I wouldn’t have that, and the difference that it made is immeasurable.

The next section of the course commenced with the familiar Ajax ascent and the reward for my efforts was a 1.5 mile traverse between Telluride Peak and Imogene Pass; sun drenched, blue sky views in every and all directions. The ridgeline was extremely exposed, but the rocky footing felt familiar and comfortable. Unfortunately, exertion at elevations above 13,000 feet often make me dizzy and I spent the stretch of downhill to the Tomboy Aid Station lightheaded and off my game. Greeted by my neighbor, Rebecca with big hugs, words of encouragement, and a swig of gingerale, I donned dry socks and a smile as I took off towards Mendota Pass.

As I rounded a bend I encountered a man resting on a rock, phone in hand. When I inquired if he was okay he cheerfully replied that he was merely answering a work email, arranging to guide a man up Wilson Peak on Monday. We quickly put it together that we shared mutual friends and he joined me in the charge up the next big climb. Somewhere along the way he mentioned that he was basically doing this run off-the-couch and wasn’t sure if he was going to finish. When I asked him if he would be okay with that, he casually replied, “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” And right then, a long string of expectations I had woven together for myself instantly unraveled. “How do I get to that place?” I asked him. And he looked over at me with a questioning glance that must only come from being so at home in that place of peace that you don’t even know there is anywhere else to be.

Head down, hands on hips, I continued to climb. A summer of summits had prepared me for that feeling of impermanence. I am in pain now, but there is always potential for change. “Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Cresting another ridgeline and pointing it down dusty single track towards Liberty Bell Aid Station, I realized my lightheadedness had subsided and the flow of oxygen at this lovely altitude made me feel lighter than I had felt all day. Gravity did its good deed and delivered me to Mile 22 at 2:22pm to the delightful sounds of Caamp’s By and By streaming from the aid station. Fucking Portal! The angels of the aid station refilled my water bottles, I forced down one measly square of PB&J, rubbed my fiery toes into submission, and took off again into the late afternoon.

When I was originally contemplating signing up for TMR I waffled between the 24-Miler and the 40-Miler. For five years I had been wondering to myself, “What If?” but it took a gentle nudging to stick to my guns with the longer distance instead of trying to waitlist and drop down as last minute cancellations made space available. The miles between 22 and 24 ended up being the strongest and most excited I felt all day. I would have regretted not pushing myself past that looming question. Even though I went on to time out at the last aid station, a mere two switch backs below the cutoff, with only 28.5 of the total 40 miles under my belt, it was still the farthest I had ever carried myself on my own two feet. As I stood panting at the top of Bridal Veil Falls, I overheard one of the volunteers on the radio confirm to the finish line, that #299 would not be continuing. I burst into tears.

I’m learning that long distance running is a lot of words of encouragement and hugs from strangers. It’s learning that even if you feel lonely, you are never really alone. It’s about expecting to encounter the unexpected. Pivot. Pirouette. Propel yourself forward by whatever means possible. One foot in front of the other.

I ran down from that last aid station to Sean’s van parked in the lot. Running is how I decompress. And even though I was tired and disappointed, under-caloried, and smelled “amazing” due to said running, I still wanted to run a little more. When we descended the last switchback Sean looked at his watch, “Thirty-one miles. Congratulations on your first 50k!”

Nothing is different.
But everything has changed.

Dig In.

Nourishing my body is a key component to my mental health maintenance. The inclusion of more and more physical activities that get my body moving and into nature has been a game changer. Sometimes it’s a long trail run, other times a brief dog walk may be all my motivation allows, but I have never once regretted getting out the door. I also find yoga grounding when I am in a decent headspace. When my nervous system is on high alert, holding still can often feel uncomfortable, but I find when I am at my most uneasy or upset taking a few minutes in child’s pose - forehead pressed to the floor - provides a literal grounding that allows me to find my breath again.

Reading and writing are two other ways I have learned to come back to myself. Tucking in with a good book connects me with the author over time and space. When my nervous system is on edge and I find myself reading the same passage over and over, popping in my earbuds and listening to the audio edition on a long walk or trail run usually does the trick. Or try listening while you fold laundry or do the dishes. Getting my own words on the page is another story. Creating a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end not only helps me organize my thoughts and feelings around a particular subject, it also helps me create meaning and provides a healthy distance and perspective for healing. Storytelling creates connection and reminds us we are not alone.

Nourishment, in the traditional sense of the word, is a loaded topic. As someone who has struggled with disordered eating for a large portion of my life, food has come to hold a very complicated but special place in my heart. I have come to believe that cooking is love made visible. Making a meal or baking a sweet treat is how I show love for my friends and family - literally providing sustenance. But for a very long time I was unable to equate eating food with loving myself. Starving, restricting, over exercising, and limiting any social interactions where food might be available, were all tools I employed to punish myself. I had a lot of overwhelming emotions and while I couldn’t yet get a handle on how they were tumbling out, I found I could control the food that was going in. The amount of life I have lost to thinking about what I was or was not going to put in my mouth is devastating. The parties I skipped because I was so fearful of an appetizer spread that I stayed home and sobbed in the shower instead. The delicious desserts I ate but then promptly spent three weeks grabbing at my thighs so harshly I left bruises behind. The miles I logged to counteract the calories that left me on crutches with shin splints. A whole lifetime of hating my body instead of recognizing it does every single thing I ask of it with strength and humility. Today I am able to enjoy food; the cooking and the eating. Each bite is a promise to myself; you are loved.

This will be a blog where I will post recipes and playlists and essays and quotes and book recommendations and art projects and podcasts and movies. This will be food for the soul. Dig in!