When I imagine what you have been through in your life to be standing on this start line, I imagine this must feel easy.
Run for 6 days, psh. We have been through worse.
But we did not gather as a bunch of broken and lost spirits, but as our strongest and best selves. One that says, “I may have suffered in my life but this pain I willingly undertake”. Because this pain, these steps, this work is not that. This is joy and freedom and play. This is the fruits of our labor and all the work we put into all those years we fought and fought and fought to simply exist.
I think we all imagined this was going to be one of the hardest challenges we’ve ever faced and yet, almost instantly, we realized it would be the most simple.
Left foot, right foot, breathe.
And for once, that’s all we had to do.
Not left foot, right foot, grieve. Or left foot, right foot, heal. Or left foot, right foot, fight.
We finally just got to exist here in this beautiful, hard, peaceful, joyful moment.
We got to be held by our teams in love. We got to experience and truly feel what it meant to be supported.
We got to make choices for ourselves, for our health, for the moment we lived in and be seen, acknowledged and validated.
We got to run and cry and scream and have it mean everything and nothing. Because this was so so simple, even if it was not easy.
Life is hard, we have all deeply and painfully known that, this was not.
This was joy.
I may not have recognized it before while I was experience it, but this experience was just that: joy.
Joy, joy, joy.
When the complexities, the suffering, the struggle, the trauma dissolve and all that is left is silence. Stillness. Beauty.
This is joy.
Left foot, right foot, ease.