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I’ve been a runner all of my life.
I started running with my Mom when I was thirteen and discovered the sanctuary it provides. My mom started running in her early 50’s…a means of running toward the new woman she had discovered mid-life.
We would set out in the early morning hours, before sunrise. I vividly remember how the sound of our footsteps created the rhythm of our morning. We were in sync, her and me, mother and daughter. No words were exchanged but we spoke in the silent space between us with our footsteps, breathing and effort. Time was suspended and for the two of us there were no expectations. We just….were.
At age 15, I ran my first 3 miles. I was the basketball team manager and during practice one rainy, dreary winter day, I set out focused and determined. I covered three miles on the dirt track at my school.
I walked back into the gym as practice finished up. The boys noticed me…striped with dirt up the backside of my body, rivulets of water streaming from hair ends, strands of it carelessly tossed about my neck and shoulders. Dirt and grime were trapped on eyebrows, between teeth and behind my ears.
Not a single boy said a word…but their coach did.
“How far’d ya go, Molly?”
“Three miles,” I replied. He shook his head with positive disbelief.
“Amazing,” he sighed.
I felt the most beautiful I had ever felt in my whole life.
Somewhere between 13 and 30, I stopped feeling beautiful. I’m not sure why…I just did. Maybe it was a lifetime of airbrushed images on magazine covers or something I was born with…but whatever IT was I had lost it.
In 1996, I started Girls on the Run International, (www.girlsontherun.org) my effort to create a safe space for girls to never lose the “it” in their lives and for women to get “it” back. Whether it is through running, friendships or community service, thousands of girls and women are now able to reclaim the authentic side of beautiful that flows after a really good run, a conversation with a good friend or through helping others.
Recently I received a beautiful essay from one of our amazing 4th graders, Grace, and at the very end of the letter she wrote:
Girls on the Run has taught me many lessons, but the most important thing it has taught me is to have confidence in myself and to never give up.”
I am firmly convinced that running can absolutely change a person’s life. The act of running is in and of itself nothing remarkable. But what the act of running MEANS to us, is. For some of us it is all about setting goals and achieving them. For other of us, it is building and maintaining authentic friendships. For some, it is the only quiet time in the day when we can focus on ourselves, our breathing and our solitude. Others run for the physical benefits, the natural way our bodies become lean and healthy. Many, to manage the stress of a work week or the challenges of motherhood.
But for Grace, my little fourth grade friend, running means she IS good enough, strong enough, brave enough and confident enough to do anything ELSE which she sets her mind to do. The joy, these days I find in running is rediscovering, with each step I take, the brave and authentic person I was in fourth grade and zapping her into my 46 year old body.
When I started Girls on the Run my intention was to empower young girls; and yet I had no idea that one of those young girls was the me I had left behind back in fourth grade…the really cool “me” who didn’t care what people thought of her, who wore plaid with stripes, who would catch lightening bugs in summer, sing at the top of her lungs, dance anytime she felt like it and hug a total stranger…the absolutely fabulous, divine, wild and wonderful “me” I left behind when I started trying to morph into what I thought our culture wanted me to be, instead of who I really was.
Whatever inspires you to get out and move across the asphalt, whether on a bike, on a hike or on a run, you will, in the words of my little friend Grace, learn many lessons, but the most important of these would be “to have confidence in myself and to never give up” looking for the wonderful and wild…waiting just inside.
Stay Real,
Molly Barker, M.S.W.
Founder and Vision Keeper Girls on the Run International
Author of “Girls Lit from Within: A Guide to Life Outside of the Girl Box”d
www.girlsontherun.org
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