Healing my inner child through running
Some thoughts on running a half marathon for the first time in my life.
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Today’s letter is coming from a very vulnerable place. I mention my experience with diet culture and body image issues. Be mindful of reading if this might be triggering for you.
Today, on the first Sunday of May, I ran the BMO Half Marathon in Vancouver along with 20,000+ people. If you had told me 10 years ago that I would get into training to run a race like this and actually run the thing, I would have never believed it. Yet, I finished the race with just a couple of blisters and very sore legs. I felt so much pride when at the finish line I was handed a silver medal that I showed to my parents through Facetime, feeling victorious. Today, I want to share with you how that medal helped heal my inner child.
A complicated fitness journey
I have always been an active person but I was never that kid whose parents enrolled them in an individual or group sport at 5 and they got scholarships for it. I didn’t grow up with that discipline in me. When my parents decided to put me in a private high school in my hometown, where more than half of my class was an athlete, I felt like an alien in a class full of kids who were representing the state in different kinds of sports.
Everyone in my class also knew each other since kindergarten so I was an outsider to them, I never fitted in and they made sure to remind me every single day that I didn’t belong to their circle. Feeling the pressure to be one of them and be sporty, I tried karate, basketball, and track and field but none of those sports were for me. I h a t e d being yelled at by coaches, staying after school for practice, and wearing sports clothes in public that didn’t make me feel comfortable. The worst of everything was the constant pain of my knees. Always hurting, always sore. A genetic burden that was passed down from my mother, who also has pretty bad knees. I remember once someone from the group of bullies in my class told me that I should give up because someone with a body like mine would never be good at practicing any sports.
I always saw movement as a medium to lose weight. I wasn’t passionate about winning medals or had a single competitive bone in me. Whenever I decided I wanted to start going to the gym, I would obsess with seeing results quickly and giving up when I wasn’t losing weight as fast as promised by coaches or class instructors. Nothing mattered to me more than being small. It was like that for the most part of my early twenties.
Today
When I moved to Vancouver, something shifted in me and I started approaching exercise as a way of taking care of my myself, as a way of loving me more. Therapy helped a lot to build a new relationship with my body and how I want to take care of it moving forward. One day I realized that I no longer wanted to be skinny, I just wanted to be healthy and not hate my body every time I saw myself in the mirror.
Moving to this city also allowed me to start fresh, because after all, nobody here knew me. Vancouver is one of the fittest and most wellness-obsessed cities in North America (if not the most) and here nobody was paying attention to the way I looked, I was just one more person out of thousands running in the street. I was finally free.
Running has changed my life and I don’t say it in a fitness guru kinda way. I mean it in the sense that building the discipline to go outside and train, even on the days I don’t have the motivation, on the days that I am tired after the work day or it’s raining outside, has made me realize that I am strong and that I can do hard things. I’ve learned how to take care of my body and nourish it properly. Learned what foods are good for me and also how to treat myself when I want to. I have developed a new relationship with my body, a connection so deep that allows me to know when it’s time to stop if I don’t want to get injured and be able to continue training. Running has also let me know this new city I inhabit, find hidden gems, and learn about new corners of the city that I wouldn’t find otherwise.
If you take anything from this letter today, I want it to be the fact that it’s never too late to heal your inner child and start doing the things you were told by society you couldn’t do.
Thanks so much for reading this letter, it means so much to me that you are here!
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You can do this and MORE!!! Nobody can't tell you what you can't or can do. So inspiring 🩵 I am so so proud of you!!! Thank you for sharing these words.
I'm so happy for you and a lot of what you said resonated with me <3 As I get older I'm understanding that I don't need to be small and skinny or have a tiny head to be able to wear baggy clothes, I just need to take care of myself, be healthy and love myself <3 Thank you for writing this and congratulations!!!!!!!