Yesterday, Friday the 13th, felt like a wonderfully lucky day for our family. Lots of great things happened, including the closing on the sale of our house. Woot! We were flying high. That is until we heard the news from Paris. Like all of you, we were horrified, sickened, saddened, furious…you name it. There aren’t enough words to express the depths of our emotions.

News of this tragedy hit right when I was about to drive my daughter to ballet, and I was fuming inside that I would have to explain this unthinkable act to her. How do you explain such insanity, anyway? I tried to keep it simple and age appropriate, but she wanted to know more: the who, what, where, when and why. Especially the WHY. Fortunately, the start of her class let me off the hook from a much deeper conversation. I needed time to process it myself before I could possibly explained it to her.

Because we had such a busy day, I didn’t have time to run in the morning. Instead, I planned to go when Miss O was at ballet, but suddenly I had zero motivation. I just wanted to huddle in a cozy chair, sipping a warm chai vanilla latte at a coffee shop while I obsessed over the news flooding my Facebook and Twitter feeds. Fortunately, because I committed to this damn Chase the Bird Challenge, I dragged myself down to Goleta Beach Park and forced myself to run.

And of course, that’s exactly what I needed.

That’s what runners do. Whether we’re happy, sad, stressed, confused, frustrated, angry, afraid, ____(fill in the blank), running is what we do.

We’re insanely lucky to have the luxury of sorting through our emotions out on the roads and trails. Pace and distance have no place in the conversation. It’s simply about having the gift of health, and time and space to process our lives and the moments that change them.

Yesterday, I knew I needed to get the rage out of me so I could re-center myself and have a meaningful conversation with my daughter.

And so I set out.

It was a lovely late afternoon/early evening…despite the atrocities in Paris. Take that mother fucking terrorists. You can never take this away from us.

Step after step, the f-bomb continually popped into my head, but I was determined to turn it around and focus on all that was still good in the world and not let the mother f’ing terrorists win.

And then if by some “other worldly” design, Continue reading →