Thursday, November 17, 2011

Time is a funny thing....

New AW Tri Kit
It’s been almost 2months since Chesapeakman and tomorrow it will be 4 months since my mom’s passing. It seems like it has been forever for both. I would love to write and say how my training has been going so well and I am refocused and ready for my next adventure, but I can’t be ready for an adventure that I don’t have any energy for or even know what it will be.

I am writing this entry in hopes that it might help someone else not feel so alone in the grieving process and because it’s important for me to share for my own recovery.

My parents have always been supportive of my athletics...well maybe not the cheerleading...but cycling and running for sure! I said in my last post that finishing Chesapeakman was done for more than just myself, it was done for my family. Something happened during the time my mom passed to the time of my race. I never really started my grieving process. Sure I was sad, very sad. I cried everyday. My body and mind were exhausted. But in the end I was just sad. I could still get up each morning to train, I had a purpose. I often thought to myself...in the grand scheme of things, this grief process isn’t that bad...im doing ok...foolish girl!

5 weeks ago I started going to a support group for grief. It has really helped me look at the
different parts of grief and has given me some tools to work through my grief. Since my race I have had no motivation to do anything physically. I used to find joy in working out, now I don’t want to get out of bed. Work forces me to get up, and from there I am typically fine, but as the day wears on, my sadness deepens. It came to me a few weeks ago that this deep grief I am feeling is what I should have been feeling after my mom passed, not 3 months later. I have gotten into a terrible cycle. I am so tired in the morning that I don’t get up to run. I go through my day at work like a routine, I get in my car and drive home. It’s the hardest hour of the day because that was my time on the phone with mom. Then when I get home I keep myself busy, or I stay up way to late watching tv...I do this to avoid going to bed, because there I just think about my mom and it makes me too sad to sleep....then I am exhausted in the morning. In addition to that cycle, daylight savings has also occurred...so I never seen the sun, which is depressing in itself.

Since I have recognized that this is whats happening, I feel a huge weight off my shoulders. It all makes much more sense to me know. I am working through my grief and feel stronger. My drive home is still hard, but is getting much better. I am ready to get back to that crazy training person that I was, and so I have picked a race to train towards. I am still doing the winter series at Tyler State Park, but my long term race will be the Caesar Rodney Half Marathon. I don’t normally pay to run 13 miles, but this is a really famous race in the area and it’s a hard race because of the hills. It’s in March, so I still have time to really get into great shape!!

To wrap this up, my point of this post is to show that I am human and as dedicated I am to my training, and want to be successful even at the amateur level in my sport, it’s more important that I fix “me” first. Otherwise I will just be going through the motions and not really living the experience.

I always knew how tough and strong my mom was...but how I saw her fighting for her life before she passed, put that strength to a whole new level. So if one thing I can take from her passing is that you have to keep fighting and not just for yourself but for those around you that love you.

I am taking it one day at a time.

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