3 Lessons I've Learned Running

What Has Running Taught Me?

Running has taught me about healing. When I first started running after my father died in 2012, I didn't imagine I would be training to run my first marathon on Mother's Day, 2018. He died when I was away. I travelled frequently to visit him and care for him while he was in his last year of life, and when I left for Bali he knew and I knew that we would not see each other again.

It was tough coming back for the funeral. Our family didn't know how to do anything. It was very small, and he appeared to have made no friends during his retirement to a small provincial town. It was sad. Me and my sisters and mother had a tough time. There were arguments. Birthdays came right after his death and cremation. One of the days we were hanging around wondering what to do, my sister invited me for a run. I put on an old pair of her leggings and a pair of old sneakers, and we ran for about a half an hour. I was pooped by the end, especially as it ended with a hill and stairs. 

I was hooked!

Even though I didn't know it yet. By 2013, I was running on an old indoor track. Not outside, not during the winter (Yes, actually, there are some days that it's just plain stupid to run outside). That year was full of changes. My mother got sick. She travelled the world saying goodbye to friends and family.

She followed my father in March of 2014... my sister and I ran a couple of times while we were ushering her out of this life into the next. We did an awful job. Death isn't pretty in our family. She had the highest pain tolerance of anyone I've ever met, and I have seen a lot of people in pain (I figure I've assisted around 600 people give birth, and generally that's a pretty painful process). She broke her leg years ago playing pirates with the kids, in the vineyard. She jumped off a rock and "Ahoy!" a compound fracture. She breathed through it. Just like she breathed her way out of this life and into who-knows-where.

I decided I wanted to race. Racing doesn't have to mean that you're out there to actually race like a greyhound, unless you're an elite runner. For me, I'm racing against myself, and I want to get a decent time for my age and gender. I trained, kind of. I ran a few times a week, mostly on the flat suburban streets around my house. The longest I ran before the race was 13 k. That year, I also opened a cafe, where my mother's spirit might come and have tea or coffee and where she would have loved to hang out, if she'd been able.
I kept running.

Running has taught me about honesty.  I've been in labor for a ridiculous number of hours, all told, with five children and insanely long labors. I think I may have ischial spines that are shaped like Mobius strips, or something. Babies can't navigate through them. I've breastfed for years and years. I've hoed fields and picked tobacco, and raised boys. I've stayed with birthing women for hours and hours and days and days, while they navigated their own special journey through childbirth.

All that to say, I know about strength, endurance, and stamina.
But I also know, now, that our bodies are full of surprises. There are real flaws, like weirdly shaped bones or weak joints, or bodies with diseases or genetic conditions. There are the secret flaws that we don't know about until, suddenly, we do. I was sure for very many years that my difficult labors were caused by mistreatment. I built a whole career on that belief. Now I'm not so sure: running has provided me with information about my body that I didn't know before, and it has also taught me that it's ok. Our weaknesses, our flaws, our crooked limbs and joints: these are all part of ourselves that we have to cherish and love if we want to keep them running smoothly.

Running has taught me about persistence.

I started my Marathon project with a 26 week training plan. I picked such a long one because I wanted to give myself lots of time to train, and I wanted to have extra leeway if something came up, like the little glitch I had way back in December. Since then, I've been doing a long run every Sunday. On Wednesday, Thursday, Friday I run at least 5 k. I try to run fast for my short runs.

In the past month, everything has changed. December and early January were cold; record-breaking cold. I continued to run outside.

I was very fortunate - we went to Lisbon for a week and I ran there. People, this is runner's paradise! Hills, temperate climate, long running tracks next to the water, courteous pedestrians, other runners, and drivers. Heaven! The hills slowed me down a little, but the flat long runs were amazing.

Then back home. There's a common saying amongst runners "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear." There are so many bullshit macho sayings out there. There is absolutely such a thing as bad weather, and Montreal has it all. There's no way it is safe to run on two inches of ice covered by two inches of snow. I can and have run in very cold conditions, and snow, rain, ultra hot and dry. I trail run at 875 meters, with a dog who cannonballs into me or completely on my own in the hills. But I won't risk falling and breaking a bone due to hubris. So, I've done my fair share of treadmill running this winter.

Treadmill running is tough because it can get boring. Not only for your mind, but also for your feet. What can I say? If you have to run on a treadmill, try to challenge yourself with intervals, good music, checking your form, watching your breathing. There's fine tuning you can do on the treadmill that you can't do so well when you're running outdoors, so be content with those benefits and don't feel too bad you're not outside.

I do run outside whenever I can though. Last week for my long run, I was super grumpy because the weather was looking really bad. There was an indoor track but I didn't feel like going. I packed up and headed for the gym - and discovered the weather was great and the icy sidewalks had become slush. Yay! I ran a good 13.4 k!

Now? I'm back on track, but grumpy as hell and feeling very anxious. Can I run a marathon? I look like Mrs. Tiggywinkle, small and slightly pudgy around the waist (5 kids). My hair is grey and my face goes red like a beetroot when I run. I sweat.

Running has taught me not to care about these little things. It has taught me to look at the bigger picture. It has taught me to be positive, to stick to a schedule, to never complain, to laugh at myself, to love life. 

The Curse of the Black Crow

I had a student a few years ago who was attending births with me, and every one of the first six births she attended ended in a c-section. The sixth time, she ran out of the room and down the hall, convinced she had somehow caused the natural birth to go sideways into the operating room.

A friend of mine was standing in the hall, a family physician with a heart of gold, and she caught my student and looked her in the eye, and told her "You do not have the curse of the black crow!" and proceeded to explain how difficult it is for a care provider to accept that their patient's journey is sometimes not what anyone has planned, and that most of the time it is not the provider's fault.

I was taking care of my sister, who was in the hospital after a difficult surgery and several setbacks which were scary for her and worrying for us. She finally made it out of the grey place and we were sitting talking to the surgeon, who apologized to my sister for the fact that things had been more difficult than expected. When my sister reassured her that she had no feelings of blame, and further that the surgeon wasn't responsible, she replied, "Oh no, but I AM responsible. The buck stops here".

But it doesn't. The attendant has a huge responsibility, indeed, to care for her patient. She needs to do everything she can to facilitate healing, or in the case of childbirth, to carefully observe nature at its task. But if she has given her 100%, she has to know that there is always that element of mystery involved. The buck does not stop with us. We do not know why one woman will have a three hour painless labor, and another one will struggle and strain for two days. Yes, we can read blogs galore about how the happy, accepting woman who is comfortable with her body and open to experience will have a quick and easy birth, and the resentful and complicated one is more likely to have a c-section. But these easy generalizations are not true.

No, we don't know why some women have easier births, or why some surgeries end in easy healing and some don't, or why some treatments work on some people and not on others.

When you really believe that the buck stops with the surgeon, then you are closing a door to the mysteries of healing and the mysteries of life.

Birth Companions Doula Course: One, Two, Three

Level One of our Birth Companions Doula Course spring 2012 session was a wonderful success! The students are already attending births, either with partners or with mentor doulas. They are now part of Montreal Birth Companions, and it has been a busy and productive summer.

Level Two will be starting on September 9, 2012, at Studio Vie. It will run for eight weeks, with three hour classes every Sunday. In Level Two, we will explore the challenges that can occur during pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period, and discover the ways a doula can facilitate healing. This level is open to anyone who has completed a doula training.


Level Three will be comprised of a select group who will travel together to Cuba, to explore in depth an aspect of maternity care and will tour the facilities at a Cuban hospital and meet the midwives.


Level One will be starting in the fall of 2012, as soon as we have full registration. We have registrants already, so please register as soon as you can. See below for registration details.

Hoping to see you all in the fall!!

Italy, July 2012?

The studio

We are very excited to present a storytelling and healing workshop with myself, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Barbara Mainguy and friends that will take place in Umbria, Italy July 2012. It will be a unique retreat in a special place right in the center of the "green heart of Italy". We are inviting anyone who is interested in story, the healing power of narrative, writing, birth, or just plain relaxing and staring at the view.

Please go to Storytelling and Healing for more details.

Witch Doctors?

I had to go to the hospital yesterday with my son for a small but annoying problem. While I was sitting waiting I thought about the hocus-pocus of medicine and about why we need ritual and ceremony during a healing experience.

We went to the Emergency Ward and my son was poked and prodded for an hour or so until the nurse said we had to go to the clinic in the next town. We drove down and, after doing some paperwork, we sat in a small, hot waiting room for three hours until we were admitted to see the doctor. The waiting room was uncomfortable, the chairs were hard, the other patients were anxious. Once we got into the room, the doctor was wearing a green outfit, and a young woman assisting him was wearing white. Strange-looking instruments were produced. When the young woman hit my son on the head with the metal basin, nobody laughed. Only when the doctor's cell phone started singing a White Stripes song from his pocket did my son finally crack. The doctor asked "Why do you laugh"?

The last time I went was for a series of tests a few months ago (all good!). That time, the mystique was much more serious. I had an ultrasound first. I went to the clinic, paid my money, and sat for a while in the obligatory waiting room. My name was called and I was led into a small cubicle where I had to remove all my clothes and put on a little paper gown. I was allowed to bring my purse into the examination room, where a technician smeared me with a cold blue substance and then pushed a magic wand onto my abdomen. This went on for about twenty minutes until she handed me a small tissue, told me I could leave, and left the room. I ineffectually wiped some of the blue gel off and then stickily tried to find my room. My bladder was bursting as I had not been allowed to pee since the morning. I found my room, my clothes, and the bathroom and left the clinic.

A week later I was in a similar room but this was a co-ed changing room in a public hospital. The gowns were cloth but didn't fit around the back. I was tilted on a hard table and a heavy object was placed over my pelvis. Everyone left the room. A few minutes later they came back in and said I could leave.

A few weeks later I went to my doctor and she said everything was okay. Yea! The blue goo, the isolation room, the magic wand, and the heavy object cured me!

Not so far from reality, really. Maybe all I needed was some ritual, some magic, someone knowing more than I about the mystery of my own body. Perhaps I just needed someone to say "Everything is fine - your body works". Maybe I needed to feel vulnerable in a paper gown so that I could fully comprehend how scared I was of something being really wrong.

We can't know in the end what heals and what doesn't - and why some cures work for some people and not for others. Or who will not be cured in the end, and who will walk away. For this reason, it is important to have an open mind, to accept the rituals, no matter how annoying they may seem. And to remember to do no harm.

Loss and Innocence

Last week I got a computer virus. I don't know how it got in - who knows - but it masqueraded as my security system for my laptop. It disabled my firewall, my updates, and my anti-virus protection, and it tried to persuade me to go to its site and pay for new software. It mimicked the Microsoft site very well, and the only way I recognized it was because of a small spelling mistake. I was the frizzy-haired girl with crooked teeth who excelled at spelling bees. You can guess how popular that made me!
I digress.
The other thing that happened - the thing I can hardly think about, let alone talk about or analyze - is that I heard about a good friend whose son's favorite teacher was arrested for pedophile acts.
He went in, disabled the firewall, and the virus protection, and took advantage of his student's innocence to fulfill his twisted needs. The children that were better educated about boundaries resisted his approaches, but all of them were propositioned: this blog is not about how we need to teach our children (we do). It's about how trust can be horrifically betrayed.
The most important thing I have been told about this type of situation is that when it happens, no matter how much the parent would like to believe that the child will forget about it, it is very important that it is dealt with immediately, by talking, understanding, affirming the damage done, and learning about prevention.

The same goes for a traumatic birth experience. When a woman has trusted her doctor, and listened to his or her assurances that she or he is supportive of natural birth, and then gets to the hospital in labor and realizes that she made the wrong choice, and then pays dearly for that choice, it is important for her to have a place to go where she can heal, where she can talk honestly about what happened. It may not be right away, and usually isn't, because she is, after all, a new mother and usually she is experiencing a baby-moon phase. But it will come up, and it is often the doula or midwife who is present for her next pregnancy and birth experience who will be the person she can trust to be non-judgmental and will help her to get to a place of forgiveness and love. Where we can get the healing done.