Author: Mina

Writer. Playwright. Performer. Citizen. Traveler. Enthusiast. Author of Run Like a Girl: How Strong Women Make Happy Lives and Run Like a Girl 365 Days a Year, plus other stories, books and plays.
When Can I Be Awesome?
celebration · challenge · femalestrength · running

When Can I Be Awesome?

Mina2 Comments

A few weeks ago, I ran rim to rim in the Grand Canyon. The effort was a moment to remind myself of the strength of my spirit after a period of enormous loss, chaos and instability, including health setbacks. As I ran from the night into the dazzling first drops of sun gilding the tops of the cliffs, the dawning day called me back in to myself. 

My youngest brother, Noah, proposed the adventure. His goal was to run rim to rim to rim (R3)—across the canyon and back again. My goal was rim to rim. I would accompany him for the first half of his effort.

It had been more than a decade since my last ultra run. Yes, I know, technically, rim to rim is not ultra, because it is not longer than a marathon. That said, those 21 miles are challenging. I underprepared. By a lot. One month out, I broke my toe.  I wasn’t sure I could even join my brother for the first steps. A few days before we were set to leave, I was fretting about my lack of training, when the universe delivered me a lightning bolt of clarity. You know how to do this. In that moment, I felt a fizz of recognition, the running was the least of it. To be prepared was to believe in myself. I could give the rest over to the universe. I felt a sudden sense of being anchored. I know how to do this. I’ve done ultra runs before. The experience is inscribed in my cells. Yes, in the past I have always trained. A lot. And that wasn’t an option this time, so I will run with what I do have. My knowing.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t suddenly think that I had the whole thing in the bag, and it would all be a dawdle. Not at all. Rather, it was an acceptance that I might well turn around and that would be okay, combined with a confidence that I could do it, if all else aligned (weather, health & sleep, being the three primary things that needed to be in alignment).

We started running at 4 a.m. Descending 4500 feet. In the pitch dark. For more than 2 hours.

At one point, my headlamp caught a lone, bare tree, which looked like a staging of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot.  I thought about Didi and Gogo, near the end of the play, contemplating whether to hang themselves from the scrawny tree. A current of energy passed through me and a voice in my head said, I want to live. I want to stop waiting for something external to happen, to give me a reason. Life is happening now. This is it.

I relaxed into the pleasure of the run. We reached the bottom in the dark and began to make our way across. I’ve been down into the canyon twice before and come right back up. I had never traversed the canyon floor before. Never been hugged by the canyon walls, as I passed through the sometimes narrow, winding passage to the far rim. The light began to seep into the canyon, long before the first sunshine splashed over the highest rock faces. The North Rim loomed 5000 feet above. It didn’t seem possible that there was a trail leading up the sheer walls. And yet, there it was. Sometimes skinny and precipitous. Sometimes breathlessly steep. With views to astonish.

Tears prickled as I reached the top after 7 grueling hours. I was overcome with the full body pleasure of finishing. Despite all. I’m awesome. I thought. For a moment. Only to watch most runners who came after me turn around (as my brother did) and run back again to the South Rim.

I was so proud of my brother for achieving his desired goal. And, at the same time, all the runners out there covering twice as much distance as me that day made me question my own sense of accomplishment. I only did … I made a halfway effort. In our world of increasingly extreme efforts, in our world where people are routinely pushing their bodies to the very edge of their human limits, what counts? What is enough? What am I allowed to be proud of? Wait a minute, who is doing this allowing? Why can’t I allow myself to be awesome?

And then on the Thursday after the Grand Canyon, I read these words from David Whyte (from his book Consolations. Words I had read before, which took on new resonance: “…taking a new step always begins from the central foundational core of the body, a body we have neglected, beginning well means seating ourselves in the body again, catching up with ourselves and the person we have become since last we tried to begin …”  I felt my first steps down the South Kaibab trail again and the intensity of everything that moment contained. The flood of memories of other physical challenges, like this run, that I’ve done in the past. All the ways in which my life and how I see myself have changed since then. All the doubts I was carrying into the canyon about my own capacity. Would my Addison’s Disease be a factor? The run was an opportunity to catch up with myself and the person I have become since last I tried to begin. I discovered a woman who is doing better than she thought. The light of resilience is seeping into her cells. Soon, the only-seemingly-insurmountable cliffs ahead will be painted gold and the trail will show itself. Step by step.

Am I My Own Delilah?—choosing the radical road to grey hair
fitness

Am I My Own Delilah?—choosing the radical road to grey hair

Mina14 Comments

These past months I’ve been feeling the call to begin the transition of accepting my grey hair. Now (and for the past 25 years) I’ve had a variety of shades of red. I started by sticking close to what had been my natural colour (from birth!), before I started to go grey. I have since strayed into bolder territory. At first, I thought I’d stop at 50. Then I didn’t. I wasn’t ready.

Because I get comments on my long curly red hair from strangers almost every day and I am addicted to the attention. Random, unlikely strangers, tell me how beautiful my hair is, how much they love the colour, or they just smile and point at their heads, to let me know my hair has prompted the smile. Just last week, at a drum circle, a woman told me that I was like a dancing flame in the corner with my drum.

I hear how women my age become invisible. I feel visible. I’m scared of not being seen. More. I am a reasonably energetic person. I ran in the forest in Lisbon for two hours this morning, before settling on the couch in my Airbnb to write this. I laugh loud (maybe too loud). I love to dance almost anywhere, anytime. I can get carried away on a wave of enthusiasm. And somewhere along the way, I began to bundle those traits with my hair colour. As if my presence and personality depend on me being a redhead.

Yet, my hair doesn’t feel right anymore. There’s a voice inside that says I’m too old for my hair, or that the colour is inauthentic, that I’m hiding behind my hair, or that it’s just plain time to see what the grey is like. When I see women with beautiful grey hair now, I admire not only their hair, but also their bold authenticity. I feel the call to step up to their courage. Which means, for me, that I will need to cut off all my hair and start over again. I do not want to keep my hair long and slowly grow my grey out. And that radical road also scares the crap out of me, because what if I not only become invisible; what if like Samson, I lose all my strength, energy and enthusiasm for life? In the Book of Judges, Delilah betrays Samson by cutting off his hair, knowing it will destroy his strength. Will I be my own Delilah to my own Samson?  

Forest in Lisbon
Forest path in Lisbon

I have, of course, investigated my options, which is what eventually tipped the scales to the radical road. I had the idea that maybe I’d just dye my whole head blonde, to make it easier to start growing out my hair. I consulted with a colorist I used to go to. Before I started colouring my hair myself with an all-natural-add-only-hot-water product that is shipped from an organic salon in Paris. Here’s the text message I got from my ex-colorist when I asked if he’d be game to help me with my transition-through-long-blonde-hair plan:

Hi Mina. Of course I remember you!

I would not touch your colored hair with a 10-foot pole, considering you’ve been using henna! Sorry

I have seen the detrimental effects of trying to correct or remove henna color firsthand. Your hair could turn green, or just break off randomly so you end up with a “chemical haircut”

While henna itself is “natural”, so is snake venom and gasoline

Henna is a metallic vegetable dye that leaves a permanent residue on the hair that can react really horribly with any other treatments.

If you truly want to go grey, the best (and in my opinion the only) option is to just wait it out as your hair grows in naturally grey

For my 2 cents, no matter how young and beautiful your face is…gray hair makes you look at least 10 years older As long as you’re ready to look, and be treated, as “old”, go for it!

Well okay then. Thank you. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve heard this kind of opinion. I have friends who have said that going grey will age me by 10 years, instantly.

Setting aside his hostile tone and harsh judgment of grey hair, I did some research into what he said about henna. I asked another hairdresser who confirmed that henna was bad. He generously dyed a sample lock of hair blonde, to show me just how wrong things could go. I now have a lock of yellow yarn doll hair.  I did further research and confirmed, to my distress, that henna is indeed quite toxic and contains heavy metals, which end up in the body. So much for my pure, organic Parisian colour. I’m not putting that in my hair again, since I’d also be putting it in my kidneys again.

As I’ve been agonizing about my hair, a friend sent me this article about taking a year of celibacy: The Sexiest Year of My Life Involved No Sex  So, if I cut off all my hair and let it be grey, should I also prepare to be celibate? And not by choice, according to my ex-colorist. I know my friend didn’t intend the article to land that way. Yet, I do worry that my colleagues at work will no longer respect me. That my friends won’t want to hang out with me. And yes, that no one will love me or want to have sex with me. Ever again. Apparently, my own judgments are worse than my ex-colorist’s.

These fears are all the reasons to go for it. Reset. Restart. It is time to find out if I am more than my hair. November 15 is the day. A friend has undertaken to accompany me during the process. To hold my hand. Console. Celebrate. Scrape me off the floor or ceiling, depending on what happens to my psyche.   

Yes, I know, I am not making an irrevocable decision. In my teens and twenties, I was constantly changing my look. I can start colouring my hair again (just not with henna). Hair grows back. What’s time anyway? 

Onward, with curiosity.

Running Through the Past to Renewal
running

Running Through the Past to Renewal

Mina3 Comments
View over Palisades Park in New Jersey from Fort Tryon Park

When I lost my relationship of more than 28 years, I also lost the extraordinary complicity of shared memories that is built over that much time. The way a we can hear three notes of a song and be transported into nine different times when they listened to that melody together. The way a we can walk by a restaurant that’s been six different restaurants and remember the first time they ate their together and all the meals in all its different iterations. The way a roadside rest stop can conjure a decade of drives to Vermont.

I am still too often surprised by a wave of grief, which washes through after an experience that hearkens back to a past that no longer exists in the same way, even as a memory. My ongoing divorce has not only radically changed how I live now; it has shattered the lens through which I look at my past, too. Joyful memories, comfortable memories, loving memories—they are all cast into doubt. Spoiled. Was what I lived real? And if it was, how did I lose my life?

Starting a few weeks ago, I have literally been running up against one such file folder of memories. In late August, I decided to run up to The Cloisters Museum and Fort Tryon Park in New York. From my old apartment, it was a 14-mile run, there and back. I’ve moved further north, and further east, so I wasn’t sure how much shorter the run would be. 3 miles shorter, it turns out. Which is just right for what I want to run now. I’ve done the run three times now, and I hope to do it again this week. Just because, I can. After everything (divorce, diagnosis and more), to feel alive and be able to run this route is joyous and comforting. Not only for the physical accomplishment, also for the view of the Palisades cliffs in New Jersey across the river and being on the grounds of the museum that was always my paternal grandparents’ first stop on their semi-annual road trip to New York from Regina, Saskatchewan. My grandmother had a particular love of the unicorn tapestries. Which is why it was also one of the last places I visited in New York with my father before he died, so that we could stand where his mother had stood so many times and feel her spirit. I don’t know if my father knew that his health was failing that day. He had a small growth on his face that he’d been ignoring, which turned out to be melanoma.

The first time I ran to the Cloisters was 30 years ago. There was no beautiful bike path up the west side to the little red lighthouse beneath the George Washington Bridge and what path there was by the river was sketchy and not something I’d run alone. The first time, I ran it with my ex and two other running friends, who have long since moved away. I’ve run it with many different friends over the years. At least once with one of my brothers on a crazy windy day. It’s a great tourist (who is also a runner) outing. And, of course, I ran it with my ex. Many times.

Until 2022, when my marriage started to fall apart, I had done that run every year, often many times (especially during marathon training). I didn’t do the run in 2022, nor in 2023. That was when I started to feel tired. So tired that that kind of distance moved out of reach. Deciding to do the run again, even if a shorter version, was a declaration of renewal.

I can still do this. Even if I’m alone and every step contains a memory. The super steep climb out of Riverside Park. The water fountain in Fort Tryon at the turnaround. The hill one of those OG running friends named, Where the Fuck Did This Come From? Because we’d run steadily up to get to the cloisters. So how was it possible that on our way back down, a few blocks east of where we’d climbed, we were running up yet another hill, which seemed impossible, geologically. Such is the variation in terrain a few blocks apart in Manhattan. And, as if to further taunt us, at the bottom of the hill named Where the Fuck Did This Come From? is a pharmacy called Hilltop Pharmacy. I never pass that corner without a bubble of inner bemusement. I wanted to share that bubble with you, here. To help build new neural pathways into my memories.

As I run, I am filled with a strong brew of melancholy and joy. Each time I trace this route, I carry with me all the iterations and all my companions. And I imagine my grandmother, walking in Fort Tryon Park, stretching her legs after a day of driving, thinking about that dying unicorn. And I remember walking the park paths with my parents. I contain my ancestors and all the girls and women I have been. I revel in the joy of being gifted another opportunity to make my way up to the cloisters on my own two legs.

Aging with Grace: What I Want Versus What I Ought
fitness

Aging with Grace: What I Want Versus What I Ought

Mina4 Comments

Here on this blog and elsewhere, there’s lots of information about the benefits of strength training for women, particularly as they age. Cardiovascular fitness and endurance focused fitness have lost their luster. They are not considered as productive for women’s long-term health—maintaining bone density, healthy sugar levels, heart health and such like.

I’ve added some strength to my mix. I have a pull up bar. A nearby CrossFit-like class I go to. Plus, streaming Pilates around the edges. I am taking pleasure in getting stronger. And I know that really, I’m doing the classes because they keep me fortified for what I truly love doing—running, hiking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, mountain (and regular) biking. I get way too much joy from being outside and moving through cities, parks, forests and mountain trails to give up cardiovascular and endurance focused activities. I barely think of them as fitness. They are my way of being and moving in the world, an expression of my heart’s desire, my deep wants. The impulse to do strength classes comes from a very different source. Yes, I want to do strength classes, but in that ought-y way. As in, eat your peas, they’re good for you (though I quite like peas). As a result, I’m probably doing less strength work than I ought to be doing.

So, I wonder, should I rebalance my activities to a more productive mix? What about my joy? Is it productive (by which I mean, long-term healthy)?

This week I was provoked to think about the distinction between productive and fruitful. The talk I was watching, made the distinction between getting shit done, no matter the toll it might have on me. Think of a machine metaphor, where the machine breaks down and we fix it, give it some oil, solder the fissures, plug it back in. Versus, being in flow, which, yes, in and of itself might lead to a lot of shit getting done, though possibly at a different rhythm. A fruit tree metaphor is apt here, a metaphor of seasonality, of cyclicality, of dormancy and blossoming. The fruit tree in my mind’s eye is an apple tree from my grandfather’s orchard, my mother’s backyard growing up.  

This idea of productive vs fruitful resonated with this internal wrestling match around what I ought to be doing for my health versus what I want to be doing for my health. While my workouts might not be as productive as they could be, maybe they are fruitful (for me—you do you and will have your own version of fruitful). The feeling of flow, of connection to nature (as precarious as that can sometimes feel in a city), the sky in all its moods, the weather imposing its presence, has a discernible impact on my wellbeing. How can my heart be healthy without joy? Maybe my bones densify when I feel awe in nature? (The study has yet to be done.) My friend, Kim (of this blog!), reminded me that “studies show” that our parasympathetic nervous system grooves well with the smooth pleasure of a flow of repetitive movements, like running, cycling, dancing, hiking, skiing and such. For me, connecting with the joy of movement and the beneficence of nature invigorates me in a way that Pilates or CrossFit don’t.

Getting groovy feels fruitful for my long-term health.  

Yes, I want to do the things that help a woman stay vital as she ages. Of course I do. And a good part of my vitality is sourced from the outdoors. With only so much time, what’s a woman to do? In my case, I am going to keep experimenting with the balance. Like fruit trees, I have cycles where I am more focused on outdoor activities—like when I am in mountains and focus almost exclusively on cross country skiing or mountain biking and trail running—versus when I’m in the city, and more likely to incorporate specific strength training. These cycles feel fruitful for my wellbeing. No doubt there’s tweaking to be done. I’m trying to listen to what my body wants (what my spirit wants), hoping that coincides with what I need. If that doesn’t sound scientific, it’s not; or is it? I’m listening to intuition and felt sense. Increasingly science is showing that our mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing have an impact on our long-term health. This is where fruitful joins hands with productive.

Aging is complicated. Every day, I feel like there’s a new something I should be doing. How can I stay vital and age with grace? For this moment, I’m going to focus on being fruitful and bring that spirit of wants, of heart’s desire, into my movement, whether it’s a run or a CrossFit class.

Rewriting the Stories I Tell Myself
fitness

Rewriting the Stories I Tell Myself

Mina3 Comments

I tell myself stories all day long. Stories to soothe. Stories to motivate. Stories to console. Stories to provoke fear and anxiety. Stories of success. Stories of failure. And, as hard as it is for me to believe at times, I can rewrite any of those stories at any time.

Here’s one.  It is a story that’s ostensibly about mountain biking. And, as with all our stories, it is a story I’m telling myself about myself. Where I used to mountain bike in the California Sierras, most of the trails l rode were longtime friends. I knew exactly where the tricky spots were. I assessed my ride by how many times I touched a foot on the ground, how long I stayed on the bike during a treacherous or super steep stretch and how many times I got off the bike. I told myself stories about my focus and strength and resilience, which were not always supportive.

This summer I was in new terrain, as I am with so much of my life in this moment. The mountain bike trails were unfamiliar and challenging in different ways, a lot more slippery giant tree roots, for example. I was off my bike significantly more often than I used to be on my longtime trails. At first, the story I was telling myself went like this: You’ve lost your mojo and finesse, maybe your fitness, too. You are too old to mountain bike. That I had a sprained ankle didn’t help, though my ankle was surprisingly cooperative when I was riding and even when I was hopping off to walk the bike for steep uphill stretches, a water feature or a tree root festival.

Then one day, as I was walking my bike through difficult terrain, berating myself for my weakness, lack of talent and age, I suddenly thought. No. This is not the story!  I decided on the spot to rewrite the narrative. To tell myself a new story. Wow, Mina. Impressive transitions getting on and off the bike with such speed and grace. Never mind all the effort of the hopping off and on, even carrying the bike over some obstacles. I didn’t even stop there with my new version. All this on and off requires more strength and agility than just riding. Great functional fitness benefits, especially as you age. Rockstar.  

The story of my shortcomings morphed into a story of grace and resilience, of healthy aging. Was I lying to myself with the new story? No. The stories are nothing but interpretations of these neutral facts: I was hopping on and off my bike on a mountain trail. The story I tell myself to make meaning of that experience is up to me, as it is with every story I tell myself about what’s happening in my life.

My life could benefit from any number of rewrites these days. Without becoming delusional, I want to tell the stories that support me into the future, rather than the stories that mire me in sadness and fear. I’m not talking about stories that negate what is. I mean stories that help me make sense of what’s happened, without stopping me cold in my tracks.

Here’s an example.

Version 1 of The Story of My Addison’s Disease: You failed to manage your stress. If you had been better able to manage the fear, sadness and distress of your relationship breakdown (or if you’d not failed at your relationship in the first place), and, also, if you had better managed the grief after the loss of your mother, your cat and your home, plus a suddenly financially precarious situation, then you wouldn’t have this disease. You brought this on yourself. You have only yourself to blame.

Can you hear the brakes squealing in my life, as I run aground in the quagmire of depression and hopelessness this version of the story engenders?

Or there’s Version 2 of The Story of My Addison’s Disease: Shit happens. And, in your case, a lot of shit happened all at once. Also, way back in 2016 your potassium was already elevated and your egfr was low, but after seeing a kidney doc, the conclusion was that you were in excellent health. When those pre-existing fragilities, along with some viral load that is also common in Addison’s Disease, then combined with the perfect storm of stressors (which any normal person would have found difficult to live through), they triggered the onset of the Addison’s. And how amazingly lucky are you that it wasn’t worse? That you are alive. That, even as much as you’d like to heal and get off your medication (a work in progress), the medication works beautifully, and you have the energy to be your same old exuberant and enthusiastic self. Hallelujah.   

Version 2 is a story to dance to. I need dancing way more than I need brakes. I need to celebrate getting off my mountain bike to walk through tough obstacles, not criticize myself. Also, mountain biking has always felt like dancing on a bike, so I want to open space for the full pleasure of that experience. Side note: I’m loving that the women mountain bikers at the Olympics were so huggy at the end of their race. That’s what dancing on a bike can do for you.

My goal: More dancing (and more hugs) and less blaming in the stories I tell myself about myself.

Maybe: In the Washing Machine of Life
fitness

Maybe: In the Washing Machine of Life

Mina2 Comments

Last month I wrote about healing rollercoasters. I had planned to write something less turbulent this month. Instead, I’ve gone from rollercoaster to washing machine.

As I write this, over the holiday weekend in Canada, I am surrounded by the Rockies in Canmore, Alberta. I’ve been looking forward to this sojourn for months. The gift of looking up from my computer to see mountains outside my window. And to get out on the trails every day, to trail run, hike and mountain bike.

My fourth day, finishing up a run, I sprained my ankle. Badly. I watched it swell as I hobbled home crying, as if my ankle was being inflated by a bike pump. The physical pain was eclipsed by my mental anguish. Really? Was I going to be imprisoned inside, when just out my door there were miles and miles of forested mountain trails?

What was the universe trying to tell me? What message was I supposed to receive?

I was devastated. Here I am, trying to rebuild my life and instead of three weeks of heavenly nature immersion, I was going to have three weeks of psychic torture and physical pain. Here’s the first message I received: You, Mina, are a detestable person who deserves to be knocked down, repeatedly. Your ongoing, excruciating divorce is not enough. Nor is your financial precariousness, nor the Addison’s Disease. You have still not been punished enough. Yes, even as I was hearing this particular voice in my head, I was fully aware that whether or not I was going to engage with this psychic torture was in my control. Or at least theoretically. It’s easy to say that our state of mind is a decision we make. It’s harder to actually exercise that control.

I have been trying hard to control my mental condition. And for those of you who have read previous posts from me, you know that I was already fully immersed in an effort to visualize my future health (I am actively exploring the potential to heal my Addison’s Disease with a functional medicine practitioner). In that context, injuring my ankle felt like the universe just being plain mean. Understanding that the universe is not personal was my first bit of mental jujitsu. This is not a punishment. I was trail running. And as my friend Kim reminded me, ankles get twisted. This did not happen because I am a bad person. I realigned expectations.

I put flat pedals on my mountain bike and imagined riding around very gently on the flattest ground I could find with the hard plastic sprain boot on my foot. I have some experience with sprained ankles. I’ve also broken my foot, cracked ribs and done quite a number of other things to myself. So, I’m familiar with the healing trajectories.  I was calm. Or resigned. It’s sometimes hard to discern the difference. I knew what to expect. A lot of streaming Pilates at home. A sore hip from wearing the hard boot, which makes one leg longer than the other. Enforced stillness. Restlessness.

At the same time, I redeployed the Gladiator Therapeutics far infrared wave device I’d been using to heal my adrenals, and am now wearing it night and day around my ankle. While I have no idea if it’s actually working for my adrenals, I know it’s been working for my ankle.  How? Because, as incredibly swollen, ugly and wildly-colored my whole foot is, including my toes and my lower leg, I have experienced little pain. Certainly, there’s discomfort when I walk, especially down stairs. My ankle is stiff when I get up from sitting or lying down. And, I can walk on it, progressively more each day. It’s only been 9 days, as I write this and I went out for a 30-minute walk today (wearing flip flops). And I can ride my bike. On anything. Wearing a small ankle compression support and regular running shoes.

On my bike with the Three Sisters in the background. Inspect before riding sign, which made me laugh and was also accurate. And a surprisingly gentle section of the Rundle Riverside Trail.

I have never experienced ankle healing this quickly before. So, now what is the universe trying to tell me? What message am I to receive?  

I feel like I’m living in a washing machine, being savagely bounced around from one emotion to another. I am realigning expectations almost daily.

At this very moment, I am not hiking in British Columbia with my work colleague and friend, Michelle, who I’d planned to meet in person for the first time this holiday weekend. I was so excited to be with her. Michelle was going to drive from Nelson, B.C and we were to meet up in the middle, in Invermere. Instead, I’m alone in Canmore, nursing the enormous disappointment of not connecting with her. And then the washing machine flips me around, and I’m simultaneously ridiculously grateful for the grace of being able to mountain bike and get outside in the mountains, when I thought that would be impossible. Every turn of the pedal, every technical trail section I walk my bike, every mud puddle I splash through, I’m filled to the brim with the sheer unexpected pleasure of communing with nature.

Daily, I spin through a cycle of emotions, from devastation to elation and back again. I keep hoping to be rinsed clean, to spin into stillness, to be hung out to dry in a gentle mountain breeze. I am searching for meaning in what’s happened, for a story of why.   I wonder, is the universe offering me evidence that I can heal? To shore up my faith for the steeper climb to health I’m facing with the Addison’s? Or is the message more straightforward, simple—be grateful for what you can do, it’s not nothing, in fact, it’s a lot of something pretty joyful.

Maybe that’s the story. Or maybe not.

Michelle, my Nelson friend, reminded me of this Taoist story: An old farmer’s horse ran away, so the farmer could not tend his crops. His neighbor said, how awful, to which the farmer replied, maybe. The next day the horse returned, with three wild horses. What good fortune, the neighbor said. Maybe, the farmer replied. The following day, the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses and was thrown off, breaking his leg. What misfortune, the chatty neighbor said. The farmer replied, as always, maybe. Not long after, war broke out and the army came around to the villages to draft the eligible young men. Not the farmer’s son, who was healing from his broken leg. The neighbor, always quick with his take on any situation, said, well aren’t you lucky. Guess what the farmer replied … Maybe.

The story isn’t over. There’s no clear message. Maybe. In the meantime, I can try to minimize the frustration and be grateful for my body’s (or is it my mind’s?) capacity to heal and move.

Notes from the Healing Rollercoaster
health · illness

Notes from the Healing Rollercoaster

Mina4 Comments

I am on a healing journey (as many of you already know from my posts here and here). Or, if I can describe my current experience with more accuracy—I’m on a healing rollercoaster. Less than a year ago, I was diagnosed with Addison’s Disease. The short of that diagnosis is that I’m on 3x a day medication and I have to eat a low potassium diet, aka a pleasure deprivation regime. To keep hope alive, I have engaged with a functional medicine program to explore alternative options to healing my disease, which my endocrinologist says cannot be healed. Ever.

Right now. I need to believe otherwise.  

There are a number of challenging questions that pop up as I embark on this alternative (functional) medicine undertaking:

  1. How do I define healing?
  2. Does being healed equal being off my medication?
  3. What about supplements? Do they count as medication?  
  4. Is being healed coming to a place of acceptance around taking my medication? After all, my energy is good and I am able to do all the activities I want with my enthusiastic effort levels of old. The one thing I can’t do—eat high potassium foods.
  5. Is being healed eating avocado toast and chocolate whenever and in whatever quantities I want? Even if I’m still on medication?  
  6. What is the measure or metric of being healed? What is the function in functional medicine?
  7. Or (the big or) is being healed a state of mind?

As you can no doubt discern from these contemplations, I have not yet accepted that Addison’s Disease is going to be a lifetime companion. Nor do I have the capacity yet to see this disease as a golden opportunity to explore my patience and acceptance. Addison’s has afflicted me, it is not a cascade of liquid sunshine, showering my life with unexpected gifts. While I am no longer fighting the disease, the way I did at the beginning, not wanting to believe I even needed the medication and being uncooperative on that front, I still can’t find solid ground. Which brings me hard up against that last question.

Is being healed a state of mind?

This question is particularly nagging. One of the elements of my alternative (functional) healing program is a brain rewiring technique, by which I work through negative thought loops on a daily basis, cultivating neuroplasticity with a series of movements paired with scripted acknowledgments of my current condition and visualizations of my future. The promise is that as I rewire my brain, my body will follow.

I’m torn between the part of me that thinks the practice is kooky, possibly even hokum and the part of me that knows that the practice can only work if I throw myself into it wholeheartedly. That part also knows (and research shows that) our bodymind does not necessarily know the difference between a role we play and reality. So much so that playing the role of believing in the practice may be enough for the practice to work, if I play the role of engaging with wholeheartedness. As I do the movements and speak the script with the conviction of the role I’m playing, the change will begin to happen. This will lead me to believe in the practice, amping up my wholeheartedness. More change will happen, deepening my belief and engagement and so on.

A virtuous cycle. Which risks sounding as loopy to some of you, as it does to that part of me, who I mentioned a moment ago, who is on the lookout for snake oil sales people.

I started less than a week ago on the brain rewiring practice. And two weeks ago, I embarked on the supplement regime and using a device that emits far infrared to boost stem cell production and reduce inflammation.  

Here’s how everything is going so far … during the first two weeks of supplements and far infrared therapy, I swung between the conviction that I am on the road to healing, which was boosted by the fact that my tweaky hamstring healed in record time (for which I give credit to the far infrared) and the conviction that I’m a fool who just wasted money on a functional medicine guide to cure a hamstring injury that would have healed in a few months anyway. In other words, I was high and then I was low and then I was high and then … After two days of the brain training, I felt a full body thrill of optimism. That was last Thursday.

Last Friday, as I was setting out for a hike, I got the results of a blood test I’d taken the day before (so, for perspective, less than two weeks into my new supplement and far infrared regime and two days into brain training). The results were, at first glance, not what I’d hoped. My potassium was back up to the highest end of normal, despite medication, diet, supplements, far infrared, and brain training. All the everything. Yes, I know, I’ve barely started the new regime, what did I expect? Still, I expected.

I was devastated and cried sporadically while hiking, when I wasn’t furious with the world and myself. Overcome by hopelessness and self-pity. Why does nothing ever go right for me? Which then plunged me into the steeper drop of, why am I never the right person? And so on. All of which was a nauseatingly precipitous drop from my I’ve-started-brain-training-and-I’m-going-to-heal-myself-with-my-mind optimism from the day before.  

Later, looking more closely at the results with my endocrinologist and my FM guide, there was actually more good news than bad. My cortisol has gone up to “very normal, even high,” as my endocrinologist said. My ACTH, the hormone which stimulates the release of cortisol into our system, was down into normal mid-range, the lowest it’s been in at least a year. A year ago, my ACTH was at 15x the current level. My body was screaming at the top of its lungs for more cortisol production. To no avail. This normalization of my cortisol production, according to my FM guide, is, at least partly, thanks to the licorice root I’ve started taking. Plus, both DHEA and Vitamin D, which were concerns for my FM guide and are part of my new regime, are now in healthy ranges.

I took the weekend off to put myself back together after my vertiginous mood plunge, followed by the upswing of the closer look. Optimism returns. Cautiously. And then yesterday and today with more vigor, as I renew my commitment to my brain training.

Photo of rollercoaster by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

The questions I listed earlier continue to rattle around. I have no idea of the answers. And I know (really, I do) that it’s too early to have any idea if anything is working. When I signed on with the FM guide, I strapped myself into a rollercoaster. I don’t know how long the ride will last. I can’t see the full extent of its climbs and plunges. I could get off, but then I’d probably just be on a different rollercoaster and this one comes with a dose of hope. I’m choosing to keep my seat belt on.

In the meantime, out for a ride this morning, I indulged in the enormous pleasure of setting my gear at a harder level than usual for the uphills and feeling into the power of my legs and the joy of movement.  

Is My Fitness Fake if I’m Taking Medication?
health · illness · running

Is My Fitness Fake if I’m Taking Medication?

Mina4 Comments

I ran three days in a row for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-many-years. Not even three short runs. The first two alone, 7 miles, then 8 miles, felt solid and shocking. One day. Two days. And … I felt good. I rinsed and repeated because I couldn’t believe it was true. The third day was giving into the temptation to see how far this feeling good could really go. Another 8 miles, it turned out.

On that third day, I was so surprised to be running, that I started playing. I ran short stretches backwards, because I once heard that helps to balance the muscles and stretch the legs and I figured my legs, which might be in as much shock as my mind, could use the variation. Each time I turned forward again, my legs felt momentarily tired and disoriented. Then I’d catch my groove again. I threw in a few sections of running faster. Not exactly speedwork, more just seeing what the engine could take. Most of the run was on a long causeway that juts out into Lake Champlain. The dirt path was flat and gently curved. So, it was easy to designate far ahead trees as my destination for each of these backwards and forwards interludes.   

When I finished that third run, I felt good. Like there was still a little gas in the tank.

For the last many years (at least 5, possibly 10), there’s always been some objection from my body to running even two days in a row. A tweaky toe. A hampered hamstring. A pesky plantar. And then last year, it was the increasingly extreme fatigue of what was eventually diagnosed as Addison’s Disease. I’m now on daily (multiple times a day) medication, which, along with a low potassium diet, has returned me to health.

And I wonder …

When I got back from that third run, the friend I was staying with commented on my level of fitness, expressing her frustration that she couldn’t run those distances days in a row anymore. A good and healthy response might have been to just say, Thank you. Instead, I started by attributing the runs to luck (maybe it was total eclipse energy) and to the incredibly restorative Normatec leg massage device she has, that I used after each of the runs.

Then I got to the heart of my hesitation to receive her compliment. Maybe I could run three days in a row only because of my medication. I’m not talking about the fact that without my medication I would not be here, because my potassium would have spiked to a fatal level, as it almost did last year when I spent 3 days in an emergency room. Certainly, the fact that my medication keeps me alive allows me to run and do pretty much everything else that’s involved in this business of living. Still, that’s not the heart of my hesitation. It’s that one of my medications is hydrocortisone, which is used to treat adrenocortical deficiency (that’s me), and swelling and inflammation and/or replaces the cortisol hormone that helps your body respond to stress. In other words, maybe if I weren’t taking this steroid, I would not have the energy to do those runs (because my body couldn’t handle the stress), not to mention the anti-inflammatory benefits.

Pill bottle spilling out multi-colour pills, by towfiqu barbhuiya on unsplash

In other, other words, maybe my fitness level is fake. My ability to recover from the runs is rigged, because I’m taking a performance enhancing medication. I’m a Running Ripley (I just started watching Andrew Scott’s formidable performance in this role). I can’t take any credit for the myriad ways in which I work to maintain my fitness level (my foray into Chi running), because none of my effort has real impact, it’s just the drugs. I should just feel lucky and leave it at that. (Recently, a friend pointed out that we need to stop shoulding on others … and ourselves). So, to re-frame, I want to just feel lucky and I’m not quite there.

I am indeed ultra-grateful for all my body does for me. And, I notice there’s a part of me that wants to take credit, to point to this or that training, or eating, or sleep habit. I want my fitness to be the appropriate reward for the Protestant work ethic I grew up with (in a Jewish household). I want to be grateful and feel like I have some control over what my body can do. The conundrum is that the Addison’s took away that feeling of control and the medication gave me back a feeling of control, which I now question.   

This is the psychological wrestling match going on between different parts of myself.

At the moment, there’s nothing to change. I can’t stop taking my medication.

The bottom line is likely the same as it always is: Be grateful. Every day.   

How Cold Water Helps Me Cope
fitness

How Cold Water Helps Me Cope

Mina2 Comments

At summer camp, I was notorious for taking the longest to get into the frigid lake for swimming lessons. Once the camp director had to yell at me to get me in the water for a swim test (I did pass and get my red cross badge). Over the years … nothing has changed. I have honed the art of slow immersion—one toe at a time, one ankle at a time, light splashes on my arms and face—often only to retreat out of the water before fully plunging in. No matter how many people said to me, “You’ll feel great once you’ve plunged,” I never found this encouragement a motivation. I know how great I can feel after a cold plunge. I just can’t bring myself to do it. You don’t need to tell me that doesn’t make sense. I know.

Until a few days ago.

I went to a spa for the afternoon with a friend. We followed the guidelines to the letter. 15 minutes in the sauna (or steam room, or hot pool), followed by a brief cold plunge, then a period of rest (in my case, with Marilynne Robinson’s novel Jack, which I’m loving). Repeat. And again. And again. For the first time. Ever. In my life. I walked right into the cold plunge. Not one moment of hesitation. Full immersion. Pause for a few breaths underwater and then climb out an unhurried pace.

I know that there are many stalwart winter swimmers and WimHoffers who read and write for this blog, so I feel some trepidation sharing this as a personal transformation. Yet, for me it is the kind of change that makes me pause and look around, wondering, “What happened? Am I me?” The seasoned cold wateristas may be wondering what rock I’ve been hiding under to not already be where I’m barely arriving. All I can say is, I’m late to the party and why I’ve arrived at this particular time is still a bit of a mystery.  

Here are three personal theories:

  1. In the last two months, I’ve been ending most of my showers with 100% cold water. At first, I could feel my body curling up like a hedgehog against the cold. Over time, I’ve become bolder. Face. Head. Heart. Back. Making sure to attend to each body part. I’m such a pro now that in NYC, the cold doesn’t get as cold as I’d like. When I was in Canmore or when I’m visiting friends in VT, the water is glacial. Such invigoration. And preparation (increasing resistance) for those cold plunges I did a few days ago, which are next level (for me).
  2. Another possible reason: I’ve been in the process of changing a host of other things in my life. In particular, for example, my diet. As I search out low potassium foods, and replace my favourite foods (Avocados. Dark chocolate. Broccoli. So Many Leafy Greens. Sweet Potatoes. Salmon. Mackerel. To name a very few.) with less favoured foods. I am teaching myself to enjoy flavours that I’d lost the taste for, or never had—Asparagus, Parsnip, Green Beans, Shrimp, Clams. I am teaching myself to be different. Maybe my body is responding with being different about cold water?   
  3. A final reason (and you’ll notice my reasons are getting increasingly distant from the practical & physical conditioning I’ve mentioned above) is that my body knows it needs the shock to reset in this period of greater stress than I’ve ever before experienced in my life. Sometimes, as the cold water pours over me and I feel the edge of an ice cream headache (which does not come, interestingly), I can almost hear my adrenal glands stirring, flexing, considering whether they will begin producing aldosterone again (the hormone lacking with Addison’s Disease, which enables the body to process and get rid of potassium—I wrote about my diagnosis here). Other time, the awareness is more around the general need for a reset in my nervous system. I may have woken in the morning from some complicated and unsettling dream that mirrors the extreme distress of my divorce-in-process and which I have not quite succeeded in flushing out of my system during my workout. The icy flow over my body startles me into the here and now, offering perspective and, dare I say, hope. In other words, my body knows what it needs (cold water!) and my slow immersions and arms crossed firmly across my chest with shoulders hunched against the cold no longer suits my body. The cold has been transformed into a coping strategy. I’ll take it.

Of course, all this theorizing could fall overboard, if I tried winter swimming. For now, I’m not going to. I don’t need more tests of will and toughness. I have enough of those already. What I need above all right now is any reassurance that I will make it through this moment. So, I’m giving myself a high five for my new tolerance to cold water and adding it to my resources.

meditation · mindfulness · motivation

The 10-Minute Train-in-a-Sliver-of-Sun Meditation and Other Moments Seized

Mina

On a recent walk home from picking up groceries, I got stuck on the wrong side of the tracks, waiting for a seemingly interminable freight train to pass. Already, I was frustrated. Grocery shopping and cooking have become a whole fraught story, since a bad blood test in mid-January has forced me onto a super low potassium diet. This means cutting out nearly all my favorite foods (Chocolate! Avocado! So many leafy greens! Sweet potatoes! Broccoli! Beans! Almonds!) So, the groceries were extra heavy with my resentment. I was primed to fight against the reality of the train preventing me from getting back to the place where I was staying (I was away). And a strange thing happened. Instead of feeling frustrated, I seized the moment.

It was a day of thin winter sun, but still, sun. Wow. After so much grey. I turned my face to the light and closed my eyes. Without any conscious thought, the gesture transformed into a meditation. I listened to the sounds around me. I was standing close to the tracks. The thundering of the passing train drowned out the world, except for the occasional near sound, which I couldn’t identify and didn’t open my eyes to understand. I trusted that the source of the sound was not threatening, even though I wasn’t in familiar territory. I let everything wash over me. The sound of heavy metal rolling over metal. The heat of the sun and around the edges of the sun’s reach, the crisp cold of the day. I stood this way, eyes closed, ears tuning, face basking, my arms hanging still by my sides, grocery bags in hand. Legs straight, but not locked. Relative stillness. I knew that cars and pedestrians and bundled up winter cyclists were building up on either side of the train track. I could have felt exposed, with my eyes closed as the world changed around me. Instead, I felt the energy inside me, expanding like a balloon, offering me ballast. I felt the freedom of being somewhere nobody knows me; a lightness of being.

I don’t know how long it took for the train to pass. My best guess is around 10 minutes. I felt refreshed and invigorated after my impromptu meditation. When I got on my next call and the woman asked me how I was, the sparkle in my answer surprised both of us.

Why don’t I always do this sort of thing when ten spare minutes present themselves? Instead of flopping on the couch and looking at my phone. I set an intention to seize more moments. I would not say that I have knocked that intention out of the park exactly. I have been more conscious of noticing the short bites of time between things and enjoying them more.

Out in Canmore, Alberta, where I was for the last weeks to feed my profound love of cross-country skiing (and see Calgary family), I took to heading out on a fat bike for 15-20 minutes in the afternoon, to break up my work day with an afternoon snack of fresh air and snow (in addition to my food snack!). It was my first time trying that sport and I rented the bike without knowing whether I’d like it (would my hands and toes be frozen?). I had so much fun pushing the bike up hills too steep and/or deep to ride and floating back down on the bike; often falling into a soft cushion of snow.

My ski first thing in the morning was a profound pleasure (it’s one of my favourite ways to move) and, as my workout for the day, there were goals (the work in workout). Side note: In one of those there-are-no-coincidences, one of the few sounds I would hear during my forest-quiet morning skis was the early train, whispering to me, seize the moment.

Canmore forest and mountains with mountain bike. Mina in her bike helmet. Canmore sun rising over the mountains at the ski center and just before the sun hits the mountains.

The afternoons were for seized moments. I had no goals on the fat bike. When I saw a gap in my work flow, I’d jump into my winter gear and ride into the forest behind the house.

And, I want to release even more pressure from this idea. Seizing the moment has such an active ring to it, which can be pre-defeating, when I’m not feeling go-get-em-ish. Sometimes seizing the moment simply looks like not wrecking the moment. Here’s some recent examples of me not destroying a moment:

  • I am just about to turn into the Nordic ski center, when I realize that I forgot to put my skis back in the car after I returned the rental fat bike. Instead of cursing myself out for my stupidity (which is so classic and why am I always so stupid), I sighed, made a U-turn and told myself that the podcast I was listening to in the car was excellent and now I had 20 more minutes to listen to it (given the extra drive would be 10 minutes each way). Plus, I wonder if this mishap was the universe’s way of ensuring I kept my ski to 45 minutes (as my body needed, after 13 days straight of skiing/fat biking), because now I had less time and couldn’t fall into my usual pattern of oh-it’s-so-beautiful-and-rare-to-be-out-here-I’ll-just-do-another-hill until my ski extended to 90 minutes.
  • Sitting at a bakery in Canmore, I realize I forgot the last bits of food in the fridge at the house where I’d been staying and had to pass back by again before heading to Calgary. See above for my wreck the moment reaction (stupid, stupid, stupid). Instead, I shook my head and was glad that I had lots of time.
  • On my taxi ride back from the airport, after a 90-minute flight delay and then a further 75 minutes waiting for my skis to come out at the oversized baggage area, and now an hourlong drive home, which meant I was going to be cutting it very tight for my dinner plans with friends; instead of texting about my aggravation to lots of people, I decided to watch the last episode of season 3 of Derry Girls, which I’d downloaded to my iPad and had been reveling in on the plane. Okay—so maybe Netflix doesn’t seem like seizing the moment or not wrecking a moment, but in the moment, the choice felt so enjoyable and peaceful, which is not how I’d normally think of a cab ride home from the airport after many delays.

None of these are quite the train-in-the-sunshine meditation. Still, each of these is a baby step in the direction of seizing more moments (and wrecking fewer). Celebrating the baby steps is at the core of moments seized.