Category Archives: Mental Health

Broken Femur, Broken Heart

The other week I started writing about the feelings that came with my most recent stress fracture. As with any injury, my mind replayed all the reasons, all the decisions, everything that I could have, would have, should have done. I tried to stay off the merry-go-round of self-flagellation, with limited success. 

It’s a big injury – the most limiting I’ve ever had. Because of where it is on the femur (the lesser trochanter), I have a risk of displacement, so pretty much all forms of movement and/or cross-training are off the table. As devastating as it was, especially after the healthiest block of training I’ve ever had, it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. 

“It’s ok. I’ll be ok,” I repeated to myself. 

But I didn’t anticipate that the crack in the femur wouldn’t be the only way in which I was broken. Soon after, my relationship ended, not of my choice. 

Broken femur, meet broken heart. 

Talking about break-ups publicly is fraught with peril, and let’s be honest – it’s probably best *not* to. But he and I live pretty public lives with social media – it’s a hazard of his job and I’ve always been an open book (to a fault, some might say). 

Note: “writing about a relationship is hard because it involves two people,” as I told my friend Waylon (Captain Obvious here!). Please know this post and its contents are with the consent of both parties. I’ve purposely sat it on it for a bit while time has started to soften the raw edges, and I’m purposely locking comments and not sharing or emailing out this one. Just letting it exist in the world. 

We both wanted it to work – we both were convinced that we had met *our* person. We both tried hard because of how right it was. We did all the right things in terms of open communication, going to therapy, regularly checking-in. And it was a beautiful two years of my life and no one did anything “wrong” and at the same time, it takes both parties to want to be in the relationship. 

There’s no anger, there’s no resentment: there’s nothing but love and respect and heartbreaking sadness that something so beautiful didn’t work out. That the life that we pictured and planned together won’t end up being that way. We both feel deeply, and we both are hurting. As we sat on the couch for hours crying and hugging, reliving old memories, and thanking each other for the gifts and lessons we brought into each other’s lives, it struck me: I’ve been told break-ups could be beautiful like this, but I never believed it until now. It doesn’t make the pain any less though. In some ways, it makes it harder.

As I laid on my couch the other day sobbing my eyes out, I thought about how the pain of an injury pales in comparison to a broken heart. You know that *visceral* pain that just grabs your insides and squeezes them so tight that you can’t breathe? You’d give anything to make it stop? As many times as my heart has broken, that pain never gets easier. I’d rather break every bone in my body all at once, 10x over: while femurs take a long time to heal, hearts never really do.

In that moment, all I wanted to do was to go for a run to clear my mind, to ease the pain, to see the beauty and the good in the world. But I can’t do that. Hell, I can’t even walk across the room on my own two feet. 

Stripped of any coping mechanism, all I can do is sit, and FEEL. Really, really feel. 

My brain naturally goes towards wanting to find silver linings: “well maybe the pain of this breakup will distract you from the pain of being injured?? Better to get them all out at once!” or “I guess since you can’t run or move maybe you’ll process this better since you can’t distract??”

But my thoughts are paper tigers. 

And then my brain goes to the fact that I turn 40 next month, that we both thought we were in this for life, and once again, this whole “relationship” thing didn’t work out. Why does everyone else around me seem to be able to hold down relationships long-term, and my heart just breaks over and over? My brain whispers, “there is a common denominator here and there is something wrong with YOU. That’s why you can’t figure it out. You are too much. You have too many issues. You are hopelessly broken.”

It’s the same merry-go-round of self-flagellation that happens for me with injury.

I’m tired of that ride. I know I love big and feel big and while I’ve worked so hard on myself over the years, at some point I have to accept that’s how I move through the world. At some point, I’m going to have to appreciate it and love it and stop apologizing for it. Because the feeling of loving and being loved is far worth the agony of heartbreak. 

I spent years closing my heart off and avoiding feelings through my eating disorder, and I know better now. I know that you can’t avoid grief – the only way to get through it is to move through it. And despite how utterly painful and all-encompassing it is right now, I would absolutely do everything over again in an instant. I’d run that 100 miler and ride my bike across Iowa without fear. I’d jump into love and dreams and love hard with no regrets.

Because the joy of running ultras and what it brings to my life is worth the grief of injuries like this.

Because being in love and that feeling and everything that comes with it is worth the grief of heartbreak like this. 

You don’t expect for them to collide at the same time, and it’s going to take a long time to sort through this giant pit of grief. I lost what I love to do, and I lost who I love. But I can rebuild. I always do. 

“It’s ok,” I still whisper, “I’ll be ok.” 

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Running and Competing While in Eating Disorder Recovery

In a journal entry from December 2018, I asked myself: “Can I be an athlete AND be in recovery from an eating disorder?”

The rest of the page was blank. I didn’t have an answer. And not having the answer to that was one of the reasons I checked myself back into an eating disorder treatment facility a few months later. While I didn’t know if my relationship with running and competing was disordered or enabling my eating disorder, I knew I needed to figure that out. Because the one thing I knew was that I loved running, and that my eating disorder was keeping me from it due to the string of endless injuries.

I’m now a year and a half removed from treatment. I’m running and competing. But I still ask myself that question regularly. And the answer is the most lawyerly kind of answer ever: “it depends.”

It depends on the person, it depends on the manifestation of the eating disorder, it depends on the kind of movement. Hell, it even depends on the day and the headspace you wake up in.

I don’t proclaim to have this figured out. Of all of the nuances in eating disorder recovery, I believe that navigating the relationship with running (or, the sport of your choosing) is by far the trickiest and most complex. So how have I been doing it thus far and what have I learned? 

Note: this is my experience of n=1. I’m not a healthcare provider, dietician, psychologist, etc. As they say in AA, “take what you need and leave the rest”: your situation may be entirely different. Please work with your treatment providers on what is healthy for YOU. 

Content warning: Discussion of eating disorder thoughts, body size and changes, and general food discussion. No numbers or weights.

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Reflections on a Year in Recovery

It’s been a year since I was discharged from Opal Food and Body after entering intensive eating disorder treatment for my third and hopefully last time. A year since I hit publish on a blog where I opened up about the silent battle I’d been waging for 20 years. A year since I felt like I got a new lease on life. A year since I finally felt like I could be me – ALL of me. 

And what a year it’s been.

I wish I could say it’s been all filled with sunshine and puppies and unicorns farting rainbows. At some points, it has been. At other points, it’s been, hands down, some of the hardest times and moments in my life. 

But as I reflect back on this anniversary, I embrace both how far I’ve come and how far I have yet to go.  So let’s start with the tougher stuff that I didn’t expect.

Content Warning: Discussions of eating disorder thoughts, anxiety and depression. No weights, numbers, or specific eating disorder behaviors discussed.

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Navigating Eating Disorder Recovery During a Global Pandemic

As I chatted with a friend on FaceTime the other week, I made the joke: “I dunno…maybe the silver lining of this pandemic is it will cure me of my eating disorder?!?”

While it was a joke (there’s no such thing as being “cured” of an eating disorder), for a few weeks, I had noticed that my eating disorder thoughts had subsided. Likely, the thoughts probably subsided because my old OCD habits and rituals had flared something awful, and I found panic around COVID-19 to be all-consuming. I was so caught up in my fears about catching a virus, that the fears about foods seemed to melt away. 

Clearly, it’s not that easy (as much as I wanted it to be). As I’ve settled into a new normal, and the OCD and fears around COVID-19 have quieted, guess what is still hanging in there? Yeah, the eating disorder.

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The State of Things: Fear, Anxiety, and Balancing Mental and Physical Health

When I was 6 years old, if I couldn’t get to sleep by 7:30pm, I would start crying hysterically. I was convinced I was going to die if I couldn’t fall asleep by then. 

When I was 7 years old, I was positive our house was going to burn down and I was on the second floor. I forced my parents to buy me an escape ladder and even refused to sleep in my room out of fear. 

When I was 8 years old, I learned about a thing called HIV/AIDS. I spent several months unable to play with any other kids on the playground for fear of touching a cut of theirs. I started to wash my hands several hundred times a day until they cracked and bleed. I was petrified of other people.

When I was 10 years old, I became intensely afraid of becoming pregnant (let’s ignore the fact I didn’t start my period until I was 14). I read an article in YM Magazine about a girl who got pregnant from a toilet seat, and I refused to use public bathrooms for years. I wouldn’t let my dad use the bathroom I used in our house. I couldn’t leave the house some days because I refused to sit on chairs in public for fear that there could be sperm on the chair that could somehow impregnate me. I was paralyzed, and I couldn’t go anywhere.

(Yup, I shit you not. That one really happened…ask my poor father).

Shortly thereafter, I was diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I went to therapy. They put me on meds. Things slowly got better as I started to face my fears and dispel the fear of the unknown.

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