UNBROKEN
If you were holding this page in your hand, you’d feel the particular crunch of now dried paper that had been previously wetted by salted tears.
I’ve actually been crying since Thursday.
Off and on…but definitely since then. You see, I was in Flagstaff, Arizona holding space for women who craved some.
Showing up morning after morning, the highest version of myself, with ears primed to listen, arms ready to hold, lips ready to speak words of encouragement or the unique wisdom that only a 35 year old woman that’s lived and died as many times as I have can deliver.
It was a heart-piercing, life-changing week, I hope for the women who attended but definitely for me.
I walked out onto the tarmac of Flagstaff’s two gate airport wondering how much of myself I’d left behind, and what version of myself I’d be taking with me.
A week earlier, I opened my laptop to set up for a talk with the Arete Running Club. The topic was Radical Resilience and I was excited to give this talk for the first time. I’d been working on it for an entire year, and this was the first time it’d be presented in this way.
With the laptop and ring light set up, I momentarily switched focus to my still incomplete to-do list for the women’s retreat. The women were scheduled to check-in the following afternoon and there were still a couple things I wanted to purchase to make my offering to them complete.
Hmm, I thought as I glanced at my various accounts’ balances. I clicked the deposit tab to be sure.
Closing the app, I type:
Please find out what’s happened with this payment. I ran all of those meets during the peak of the pandemic just to make sure I wasn’t in breach of my contract.
He says he’ll see what he can do.
I return my attention to the hotel room and decide to move furniture around for a better scene. You see, I’ve become somewhat of a set designer with all of these Zoom calls I’ve been on for the last eight months.
My phone rings.
I contemplate not answering because it’s nearly time to join the call. But I do, it’s my manager.
“Well”, he says in his recognizable Australian accent. “You did the right thing by competing so that’s not what the problem is.”
I sit down hard, sinking between the cushions on the suite’s sleep sofa. So it wasn’t oversight and it wasn’t a mistake I think to myself.
“Okay…” I say, equally wanting him to come out with it but also not really wanting to know.
“You were reduced 20% for not competing in the Olympic Games this year”. He says.
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First, there was silence. Then there was a maniacal laugh. Then I said thank you. Then I hung up the phone. Then I checked the time. Then I sat back, head resting against the wall.
Two minutes until I join the call.
Two minutes until I talk to over a dozen women about Radical Resilience and how to cultivate it and why I have it.
Two minutes to figure out how to not be a hypocrite when I’d like to break everything within reach, throw my hands in the air and GIVE THE FUCK UP.
I make a decision.
I decide that there is no better place for me to receive news like this than in Flagstaff, Arizona. Two minutes before giving a talk about resilience to women, less than 24 hours before the first of two Grit and Growth retreats and a lot of quality time with Stephanie Bruce, Ben and their two kids Riley and Hudson.
There is no place I’d rather be. And no better place for me to receive this news. Because even when I haven’t yet figured out how to keep showing up for myself I show up for other people.
In serving others I reconnect to my highest self and I find a way out of the dark.
But now, I’m boarding a flight back home and I’m anxious. I made it through the week, but how will I make it through the end of the year? Or the next one? I asked Sara, the Pelvic Expert on our retreat who lives in Santa Cruz to check on me in a few days because I wasn’t sure if being out of that environment, where we took such care to create an atmosphere of support, empowerment, and joy, if I could remain unbroken under the weight of my current reality.
I’m happy to report that I remain so, unbroken that is. Even after the car was broken into on Sunday in the driveway and my two freelap systems were taken.
Even after not getting a check I thought I protected by risking planes, travel, and competition during COVID.
Even after getting iron infusion after infusion, and a blood transfusion and getting my bloodwork back and seeing that I’m improved but still severely anemic. (I did improve from 6 to 20 so that’s something-goal is 40 minimum though).
Even after having emergency surgery for a fibroid tumor that I’d been nursing in my womb for years, that grew tired of simply draining the life out of me and so decided to hemorrhage just to seal the deal.
Even after spraining my ankle so badly it ended my season.
Even after taking a 65% cut in pay after a season in which I jumped 7 meters (23 feet) more times anyone else in the world AND came home with a medal.
Even after years of divorce court that dragged on and on and produced an attorney’s bill that was closing in on my yearly salary.
Unbroken.
I told Proctor and Gamble’s Oral Care division via Webex Meeting on Monday that the truth of the matter is this: whatever it is you’re facing-whatever the adversity or the obstacle- there is a solution.
Yes. There is.
The question is- are you going to take quitting off the table in order to free up the space needed for the creativity and new perspective to find it.
And then…and here’s the biggest piece…once you find the solution, find the way forward…
Will you take it? Will you do it? Will you go for it?
Yea…I think that I will.
Blogger’s Note: On any given day I’m not actually thinking about the running inventory of bad things that have happened to me. In fact I spend most of my time doing or creating something that will inch me closer towards the athlete and woman I want to become while crafting the life I want to live. But occasionally something happens and it knocks the wind out of me. When that happens I give myself permission to shout at the universe, “WHAT IN THE ENTIRE F**K IS HAPPENING! ALL I’M TRYING TO DO IS THE RIGHT THING AND THE NEXT RIGHT THING!” And then I’m reminded of The Alchemist and The Bhagavad Gita and I calm down a bit and I eventually return my focus to putting one foot in front of the other. Radical resilience isn’t always obvious. It’s waking up to face a new day when it feels like you have no reason to do so. It’s continuing to believe in the validity of your goals and dreams even when it seems delusion or impossible to others. What makes it radical? It’s radical because quitting is easy. Who willingly chooses the hard thing, every time? The Radically Resilient.