Before we lived in South Carolina, I spent most of my days running around my Grandmother’s neighborhood, playing with the neighborhood kids in various side yards, cul-de-sacs, and in the woods behind our houses. Many afternoons were spent perched in some sturdy and leafy tree or on some big rock in the middle of the woods where we pretended to be rulers, artisans, chefs, and mamas and babies of elaborate imaginary (sometimes warring) communities.
I loved the outdoors, and I loved to be active. Biking, skating, pogo-sticking, racing the neighborhood kids— you name it, I was doing it, and I was doing it well. For a few years, my sister and I even took horseback riding lessons, and I had aspirations to follow in my aunt’s footsteps to one day compete. But our move to South Carolina when I was in sixth grade meant that we no longer lived in a neighborhood where we could roam and play outside the way we could at my Grandmother’s.
Middle school was rough, as it is for most of us, and I spent most of my time playing Sims for hours on end, practicing my clarinet (sometimes and very briefly), and watching shows on TV. I still craved to be active, though, and enjoyed YMCA soccer and volleyball seasons, and eventually summer marching band. Other kids invested in a single sport from early childhood and stuck with it moving into competitive (and hugely expensive) travel teams. I cycled through sports as they became available to me, and I didn’t feel any strong attachment to any of them. My freshman year of high school, I switched to color guard, then eventually, the demands of marching band and concert band were too great to justify, especially as I intensely disliked a new grind culture that was introduced as our band began to grow and perform well at competitions. So I quit. And I focused on creative writing, which I’d always loved, through an opportunity to attend a special intensive arts high school where I focused on writing.
For the rest of high school, my life revolved around writing, and that was my thing in the way that other kids had band or travel ball or yearbook, or some other after school extracurricular. But I was always drawn to sports and found myself dabbling in YMCA sports for as long as I could before I aged out, and my senior year, I ran half a season of track. I say half a season because I was really only there because I’d told my uncle before he passed away that I wanted to do track (and he’d laughed the kind of laugh that bubbles something inside you, so obviously, I had to keep my word and prove him wrong) and because I wasn’t there to win or even do any kind of good. I was upfront about this with my coach (who was also my math teacher because that’s just how that goes in Southern public schools), and I knew when he was screaming at everyone that if anyone fell behind the pack during our 400 sprints that everyone would have to do an extra lap, that that didn’t apply to me. I was consistently the worst one there, and this didn’t bother me. I was there to show up, keep my word, and try something new. And I did that.
I didn’t race at all that season, but I didn’t mind. In between practices, I was busy running around as a high school activist with my artsy activist friends stirring up good trouble where we could in our conservative town. And eventually, the season ended, I got a letterman from the school I constantly protested (proof that I did actually go to the school and try to be apart of the community), I graduated, and I felt proud of myself for following through on my promise to myself.
It has taken me until very recently, in 2023, to realize how important sports, the outdoors, and exploring what my body can do physically have always been to me. The lack of one specific activity always felt like I’d just “never found my thing”— that maybe sports just “weren’t really my thing”. But in looking back, I can see my curiosity and willingness to try new activities because sports were my thing.
It was quarantine summer that got me into running. Everyone was going on cute neighborhood walks after dinner with their families, but mine refused to go with me. So I went alone, over and over again. And sometimes I’d be so mad that no one would go with me that I’d decide to run until I got tired. It would take less than a minute before I was basically coughing a lung up, especially with all of the hills in our neighborhood, but it felt good. So I kept going, day after day, and every day my runs would get a little easier until I could finally run a mile without stopping. It wasn’t a fast mile, and it still wasn’t easy, but it was something I was proud of.
In the fall, when we were back to school but socially distanced, I stayed home and went to school as a commuter student. I rode my bike 3 and 1/2 miles to campus in the morning and 3 and 1/2 miles back in the afternoon. It was liberating. I loved the chilly mornings on the trail behind my dad’s house that led directly to campus. At first, it was hard, just like the running, especially working up the giant hill back to my dad’s house in the afternoon, which I’d often have to get off and walk— but then it was easier and easier, becoming the most peaceful and centering moments of my day.
I felt so proud of myself for moving my body every day, and I loved how I felt. I loved getting to say that, yes, I rode my bike as my primary form of transportation, and with the confidence I built riding to campus every day, I soon adventured further by riding into the next town over, where I’d stop to get a smoothie or into downtown where I’d get a sandwich and sit in the sun for a bit.
As I realized my body was getting stronger, I remembered running and how I felt, proving to myself that I could run a mile, something that felt so impossible before. There was a popular half marathon that many people from my college ran every Spring, and I couldn’t place it at the time, but I felt a deep urge to do it. I could still barely run a mile, but with school being mostly remote and having easy access to the trail behind my dad’s house, I decided to see just how much better running I could get.
So I ran, little by little, embracing my very slow and steady pace, and before I knew it, I was running my first 5k and 10k. I struggled with consistency in training and only worked myself up to 8 miles before full-sending into the half marathon. And it was… not bad at all.
I couldn’t believe that in less than a year of running and not taking it very seriously, I could achieve a goal that was so out of my frame of possibility. But in reading through some of my past yearly letters to self, I realized that running a half marathon had not been as out of mind as I thought it had been. For years, since I was about 16 at least, I had been writing in my end-of-year letters that a yearly goal of mine was to run a half marathon. I genuinely had no idea that every year I’d had this goal of mine— maybe every year I thought it a revolutionary one and promptly forgot about it? But there it was, in plain text, my desire to start running and to achieve that goal. And I’d done it.
After that half, I joined my school’s running club, which allowed me to sign up for local races for free and keep challenging myself with running. I still was not very fast, but I wasn’t ever running to win; I was just running to show myself that I was capable of showing up for the challenges I set for myself. I also joined the triathlon club, something I’d never thought about, mostly because I can’t swim very well (I’m talking major doggy-paddling energy) and because I’m not insane enough to want to kill myself doing three sports in a row— or so I thought. But then, there I was, racing six miles in a kayak when I’d never kayaked for real before for one leg of a tri relay, and then I was backstroking my way through the swim part of a sprint tri, bobbing my head up every now and then to see my friend Will who also couldn’t swim that good, struggling but refusing to give up, and pedaling up the tallest hill I’d ever biked praying to God that I wouldn’t kill myself on the way down when I had to clip out. And I loved it.
Just the satisfaction of accomplishing a challenge is enough to keep me going, and that’s often what I remind myself of in the moment when an activity feels really hard. But what is even more fulfilling is the preparation for that challenge— the moment when I get to sink into the acknowledgment that I am showing up for myself, keeping a promise to myself to do things that I really want to do, even when it took everything in me to get out the door or when it’s feeling really hard and uncomfortable.
In those moments, I think about little me— the girl who liked to be outdoors, to try everything. I think of the loss of the years playing outside when she couldn’t because it just wasn’t a safe environment for the way she was able to play before. And I think about the years when I just really couldn’t remember how meaningful getting outside was to me. How that happened, I don’t know, but there is proof that every year I tried to point myself in the right direction, proof that I knew sports were really meaningful and fulfilling to me.
As of today, I’ve run 595 miles since starting my running journey. In 2023 already, I’ve PRed my 5k, 10k, and half marathon, and I know I have better efforts in me. Every week, I surprise myself more and more, and I cherish the love and validation I am able to give myself through doing an activity that is really, and truly, just for me. Last weekend I ran 20 miles, my longest run, in preparation for the Belfast Marathon, which I’m running in two weeks with one of my best friends from college and her mom.1 I am ready, and I am so excited to cross off another seemingly impossible goal.
My goal for 2023, specifically, was to live more intentionally and to invest in hobbies that bring me joy. In undergrad, I lost sight of a lot of activities that brought me genuine joy while spreading myself too thin in leadership positions and chasing after projects that didn’t fulfill me. I have missed the me that read ferociously, that wrote creative and tender poems and genre-bending prose. In addition to investing deeply into running, I have given myself permission to prioritize time for leisure reading, and I’ve signed up for two local poetry workshops. I bought myself a notebook just for writing, and I’ve given myself permission to write without judgment and without thinking about the end product or who may see it in any kind of final form. I am investing in writing as something that brings me genuine joy— something just for me.
If Little Me could see me today, I think she would be proud. I think of her often and ask myself, is this what would make her happy? Is this what she would want? When the answer is yes, it is often accompanied by a fulfillment. I am reminded often that I am still that same little girl who loves the outdoors, who is creative, who likes to imagine, to play, to run around, to surprise herself, to be challenged, to dream up big futures for herself. So, I’m giving into her. And I’m doing it often.
Too often, we let our inner child starve and lead empty adult lives. But my inner child guides me. She knows things intuitively that I am easy to forget or dismiss.
So here I am, in the middle of a running journey that has been the most fulfilling part of my adult life so far and that I’d been trying to nudge myself into for way longer than I’d realized. This investment in myself has been life-saving, especially as I’ve come to hard terms with realizing the necessity (and all the beauty through the discomfort) of slowing down and rejecting a grind and achievement culture that has been so deeply programmed in me. But I see now that the validation I was seeking through running myself into the ground for achievements was really a misplaced search for validation from myself. So now I’m giving it to myself with judgment or hesitation and tenderly reminding myself that I deserve it. Reminding myself that I do not have to work for self-validation but that showing up for myself every day is an act of self-love and that I am worthy of acknowledgment and celebration, especially from myself.
Recently started going to hot yoga and it gives me the same exhilaration of doing something good for me and showing up for myself. Lovely newsletter Asha ❤️