I bought my first knickknack for my new place, although I don’t know yet where that will be. I am almost an empty nester. My daughter is a rising high school senior. I have decided that regardless of where she decides to go to college, my four-bedroom house is too much and the property taxes – without a child in the school system – are too high. So this time next year it will be time to downsize. That much of the plan I know.
The other piece of my plan that I’ve been working on is transitioning my career. I now have the flexibility and more control I’ve wanted. Working on the income part. I have enough resources to allocate the time I need to realistically build my business. When my daughter and I first started looking at colleges two years ago, I told her to find the right school regardless of it’s location and I would move within a couple hours drive.
If you are in business, you plan. You work a plan in order to meet the goals of your position and your organization. Personally, you probably plan vacations. You make meal plans and follow recipes. Hopefully you have a budget and financial plan. If you are a runner like me, you probably have meticulously planned out your race calendar with a couple of big goal races, smaller races, and have built a training plan for the season, or maybe the entire year, around it.
But do you have a life plan? You probably have a vision of what your ideal life looks like “somewhere down the road,” but are you planning for it? Or are you simply living one day at a time figuring that everything will just fall into place? Once in awhile we get lucky and we do wind up where we want to be. More often than not though, we find ourselves at a crossroads and unprepared.
I am a coach; I also have a coach. Last year I wrote about the importance of having a coach. I thought now was a good time to revisit that conversation since I have reaped the benefits of having a coach for another year and what a spectacular year it’s been!
I’ve had coaches since 2nd grade T-ball, through High School and College sports and more recently a running coach. Being told what to do, or being told I was doing something wrong, never felt good. From a young age, I learned to embrace the coaches that helped me find my own strength and celebrated my achievements.
That’s what a good coach is supposed to do. In my first course with the Coaches Training Institute last year, I learned that’s the only way to properly coach; to understand that we are all naturally creative, resourceful and whole. We all have the right answers within ourselves that are best for us. A coach is our guide to finding them.
This weekend’s race is the Shelter Island 10k, Shelter Island, New York. You can read about it here. This will be my 14th time doing this race (15 if you count last year, when I ran the course the day before). This is by far my favorite race. But it is also emotional because for so many years my parents were there at the Finish Line cheering.
Life is short. We know this. And yet we are reminded again and again. We always think there will be one more time. Another chance. We take for granted the small moments only realizing long after they’ve passed that they were actually really big moments. Moments that we play over and over in our heads like a scene from a really good movie that has completely captivated us.
June is a difficult month. There’s the wedding anniversary that is now just a reminder of how we lost our best selves. There is this weekend when Father’s Day, my late father’s birthday and the anniversary of my mother’s death collide. There is the end of the school year; which has, in my house, become traditionally a struggle in squeaking out passing grades (or not) and trying to move on.
I procrastinated on this blog all week. I had an idea weeks ago. Wrote a draft. Re-wrote it and then, just now, deleted it entirely. Truth be told, I needed the last couple days to decompress from the weekend before I could figure out what I wanted to say. My emotions were a bit jumbled and I was mad at myself for that. It had been months since I felt this way.
Once I got through Thanksgiving, escaped to be with my family in Ireland for Christmas and made that monumental decision in early January to quit my full-time job to pursue my passion, I was feeling pretty good. Very, very happy honestly. The happiest I had been in a very long time. Cue I Can See Clearly Now (the Jimmy Cliff version from the Cool Runnings Soundtrack, of course). People have noticed and commented and that has made me feel even better. But this weekend, I slipped back into a bit of a funk. And I was mad at myself for that.
Only today, was it finally pointed out to me, that what I was feeling was valid. I must stop being so hard on myself. Saturday was my birthday. Sunday was Mother’s Day. For someone like me, given what I have been through, experiencing the losses I’ve experienced; this was a very emotionally charged weekend. That is my reality. I am not being selfish for feeling this way. It is what it is. It’s not something I have that much control over.
Me, my daughter, and my mom. Birthday/Mother’s Day Weekend. May 2000.
But I tried. I filled my weekend with lots of activities and I am grateful for friends who invited me out both Friday and Saturday night. When I woke up Saturday morning, it was raining. Hard. It was also pretty chilly for May. The alarm was set for six because I had to be at the start of our town’s 5k race. This race was the graduation race for both my Let Me Run boys (which I wrote about) and my running club’s beginner to finisher program. Not a great day for a 5k.
I was planning to run with a few of the boys who had set a goal of finishing in under 30 minutes. I knew from our training runs and what they reported from their mile time trials at school last week that this was a realistic goal. I gave them explicit directions: “We’re going to go out together. We are going to take the first mile slowly. Stick with me even if you feel like we’re going too slow. In the second mile we are going to pick up the pace a little. Once we hit the 2-mile marker and have only a little more than a mile to go, I’m letting you lose to run as strong as you can to the finish.” They followed directions!
Everything went according to plan. Two of the boys finished in 27 minutes. I was still running and pacing a boy from the younger group in that last mile. He was running so strong! I kept encouraging him. I wanted this for him so badly. When the finish line and the clock came into view he saw that not only was he going to break 30, he might break 28! He took off! I was so happy for him, happier than I might have been if it was my own personal record. His official time was 27:59. Mine was 28:01. I finished 4th in my age group. No medal for that. Not my fastest race. But it will be remembered as one of the most special moments in all of my 21 years of running. I walked back to my car in the rain. Smiling. I had forgotten for the moment that it was my birthday.
Mother’s Day started with a 10k race (hey, I had 6 miles on my training schedule anyway) and then my daughter talked me into a road trip to the Philadelphia Zoo. Driving for two hours after running a 10k might not sound like fun for mom, but the prospect of at least 4 hours round-trip in the car with my teenager would mean some good quality conversation – which we had. Plus her suggestion of the Philadelphia Zoo spoke to my soul. As a college student in Philly, the Zoo was a place I frequently went on my own to decompress. In Philadelphia on Sunday, it was warm and sunny. And the Zoo was even better than I had remembered it.
So, on paper, I had a really nice weekend.
Still there were the unspoken emotions ever present as I navigated days that were once shared with people no longer there. That is my reality. I have to remember that and be kind to myself. I have come a very long way, but there are still triggers. There are still – occasionally – difficult days. No matter how much I think I’ve prepared, they still sneak up on me. Now I know to make self-care paramount. Run. Meditate. Take the dog for a long walk. Make one of those “as needed” appointments with my therapist. Maybe go to the Zoo.
