2024: Farewell Flames

I created a substack today, January 1, but reading it’s involved in a controversy (research first Caitlyn!) I’d like a way to have subscribers like that platform has, but having my own domain and my own platform is power… so I’ll keep copy pasting in both until I learn more or figure out another plan.

Here’s my first substack (with some edits)… which is mostly review… but my goal on substack is the be more brief, so i can write more.

2023… What a year.

I announced my pregnancy with my third child after two miscarriages on Christmas morning 2022. At the start of 2023 I was anxiously sorting through my feelings and the complexity of it all.

After all, I was 38 years old, my youngest was about to turn 6, we were pretty certain we were good with the two we had (well, we didn’t know what we didn’t know) and I had spent literally 4+ years deteriorating. A runner my whole life, competitive one at that, my whole identity had been built around high achievement in athletics. Dealing with increasing leg pain, deteriorating muscles, cold, numb, tingling feet, ischemia, and eventually an inability to run 30 seconds, walk up stairs, or stand on my tiptoes to reach the top shelf without a jolt of lighting down the backs of my legs. In 2021 I learned it is Popliteal Artery Entrapment Syndrome… advanced to the point that I had 100% occlusion with plantar flexion and nerve entrapment that caused damage and took a year of “freedom” to feel normal again

Surgical options were bleak, especially with limited hospital availability during a pandemic, so I gambled with Botox. The start of 2022 I had finally made progress by injecting 400 units of into my poor legs for the third time (third time’s a charm) and running the Boston Marathon (which I maintained a qualification for for three years due to the pandemic)…….

Then accidental pregnancy that resulted in a miscarriage that resulted in a planned pregnancy that also resulted in miscarriage, that resulted in Iris.

It had been about a year from my last Botox treatment and I had over a year to go because it is not approved while pregnant or breastfeeding and that is a sacrifice I was committed to score we agreed for one last try at pregnancy number 5. Contrary to the anxiety I felt in the first quarter of the year where I felt like I was breathing through a straw and couldn’t see an inch in front of my nose, I have a really wide angle view now… but every now and then the competitive athlete boils over, strikes a match and I pour gas on the stoked flames.

In 2023 I exercised 309/365 days. That means I averaged just a hair more than 1 day off per week. Half of those days I was pregnant, the other half I was postpartum and nursing a baby who I had to eliminate dairy, soy, beef, whey (and I can’t have nuts), with a vascular leg condition! I set a goal to lose weight (since I gained so much when my legs were at their worst) and am 10 pounds under my pre pregnancy weight. I’ve gone to PT weekly, therapy bi-weekly, gone to the chiropractor monthly, and have worked really hard to be the best mother I can be and somehow my Athlete Brain defaults to “not enough”…

Because “…if it’s not at least 50 miles a week you’re not serious, and if you don’t run at least 3 miles it doesn’t count, and if the weight isn’t heavy enough that 10 reps gasses you, it’s not worth it… you may have walked 15,000 steps today trying to clean the house and get a baby to settle, but it doesn’t count. Also all those calories you though you burned breastfeeding probably was a high estimate, and why aren’t you sleeping more? That’s why your legs hurt, you fool! …. Anything other than what you’re doing is better than what you’re doing!”

Gaslighting may have been the 2022 “Word of the Year” but in a stable loving relationship, I didn’t have much use for it… until 2023 when I realized It’s me, Hi, I’m the gaslighter (it’s me)…
I’ve lit myself of fire for years. No. DECADES… saying the pain I felt in my legs wasn’t real… I wasn’t tough enough. I wasn’t trying hard enough, I was wasted talent and that I deserved failure. I deserved the pain. I deserved the losses and the condition… and that 309 days of working out while pregnant or postpartum and breastfeeding with a vascular leg condition that a doctor literally told me I could never run a marathon with (and I did) wasn’t enough.

I’ve worked hard to change my perception and the content I create or consume to speak more to the person I’m trying to become (and I never ever think this about others… so why do I about myself?)

I want to be patient, I want to honor my body, my needs, and meet myself where I am physically and mentally. I want to exercise in a way that energizes me and doesn’t leave me in pain and angry. I have goals! I still hold big athletic pursuits close to my chest and when I turn 40 at the end of 2024 those will already be set in motion for 2025… but for this year?
Farewell flames that I poured gasoline on. I will rise from the ashes with an ember glow leaving me unrecognizable and hidden from my own judgmental eye …

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At least I hope.

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