Run a Marathon...called LIFE
I am not a movie person.
Okay, that is not completely true. I like movies. Sometimes I love movies. I can watch the same movie every week for a year and enjoy it as much on week 49 as I did on week 4. Need proof? Watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s every Thursday while eating Prah Ram with fried tofu and get back to me. I certainly lived this for a solid year when I was in college and life was full of possibility but only once you put in the time.
Life is still full of possibility and the same is true, you have to put in the time. Only there is a more immediate desire to control all the aspects when you are a grown adult with a marriage and children. Literally, there is no way I could watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s every week and eat my favorite Thai food because:
Kids
That is bascaially the list. I could list things like bedtime, spelling words, and so on but really, I don’t have this kind of routine simply because I have kids. Should we watch any TV at all, it is Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig, American Housewife or NCIS New Orleans. These are the shows that entertain a 4 year old and 9 year old in my house.
Go to the movies? Right. I did watch Frozen II with my 9 year old and her friend, and when we were telling someone about going to the movies, I was all, “I can’t remember the last non kid movie I watched.” Oh Boy, though did my 9 year old pipe in with the details of every time I have gone to the theater by myself to watch a non-kid movie. Her memory is amazing, but she also only had to remember that I went to exactly one movie without either of them. She even knew the name of the film, Brittany Runs a Marathon.
I very well may have never even known the movie existed had it not been for the movie being advertised on Facebook. I watched the trailer and was pulled in with an unnatural force that told me it was a movie to see. After a week of trying to get to the film with some friends, I decided to go alone. It didn’t work for my husband to go with me and instead he stayed home with the kids (ie. we couldn’t get a sitter and it’s normally him declaring that he needs to see the new Star Wars or whatever other sci-fi movie that trips his light fantastic).
Full disclosure. I am a runner. I coach runners. I run a lot less as a mom than I did before kids. Running makes me feel good. Running also makes me tired. I ran my first half-marathon right around the age of 21. I didn’t have a coach. I also didn’t have bad habits. But I did feel like I need to achieve something because I was struggling with life. I’ll write about that later but I wasn’t living my life for me. At some point a powerful person in my life expressed more interest in my goal than me and I almost hit the roof. It literally felt like nothing belonged to me, not even my goals.
In my early 30’s I traded in my goals to support something else. Someone else. I gave all of me to them and forming a family. My goals, life dreams, and desires took a backseat and the results have been devastating to my emotions and my life plan. However, the presence of my children, while considerably difficult when you consider how long I parented alone, has become the driving force for me to dig deeper and chase some life goals. Running a marathon is not one of those. Been there. Done that. Might do it again.
Brittany Runs a Marathon will undoubtedly inspire hundreds of people, probably thousands, to run a marathon, and maybe even more to just take up running. And they should, if that is what they want to do. But more importantly when you examine your life and decide you want to change something is to make changes that are important to you. Why? Because when you wake up in the morning and look yourself in the mirror, you should like the person you see looking back at you.
I have not been a mom that was settled with staying-at-home. I surrounded myself with judgment. It came from me, I left it come from others, and it destroyed my ability to enjoy those days of reading books and cuddling with my baby. I actually took up running really far in order to give myself a job, so to speak. A regular work schedule didn’t work for me because my husband was in Kuwait working for the US Government. Working brought me a lot of satisfaction. But staying home was a baby was a new experience that came with so much judgement. If you went to the gym to try to shed the baby weight, you were selfish and vain. If you didn’t have to work 40 hours a week and take your new born to childcare, you didn’t understand the working mom, you had it easy. Maybe, but can another mom really make that call? I say no. Why? Because for me, I was struggling in the solo parenting in a town with no friends. I was struggling as the money I had saved from having had a steady job supported me and the baby with my husband out of the country. I didn’t have fulfilling conversations with anyone because I didn’t have job, just a baby, all day, and all night, alone.
Fast-forward 10 years of doing this by myself with my husband out of the country.
I am desperate to run a marathon….so to speak. My marathon is a career.
However, if you are a stay-at-home mom, and maybe it is difficult for a variety of reason, here’s my one piece of advice. It goes really fast and I would urge you to enjoy the time. Maybe you have 3 months, maybe 4 years…whatever the time frame, indulge and enjoy it. But do not let go of you. You are still a person and matter very much. You have dreams? Let’s talk! I’ll write soon about college, training and getting the life you want. You don’t need to run a marathon in order to be successful, unless you want to run a marathon.
“But do not let go of you. You are still a person and matter very much.”
