The Brightest Lights; freedom

I've been grieving a bit. I know considering the date, my civic duty should be to talk about how the grief is still heavy from the events of more than a decade ago. I still care and I still feel it, but my pain at current is for the pieces of myself I have let be buried under the explosion of my life. The person I am is trying to escape the rubble. She's been clawing and scrapping to be set free and I've been suffocating her. I've been trying to be pragmatic for longer than I can even try to point a finger at. The problem, for me anyway, with pragmatism is that I don't feel real feelings when I'm sensibly picking out classes for a career I don't really want anything to do with. Or deciding to stay home from a spontaneous road trip in favor of saving gas money. Or not going on a mission trip because that money could be mortgage money.

I used to love music. Almost more than anything else. I used to measure my life by songs. And sometimes, in the most inappropriate moments, melodic words want to bubble out of my throat.

I never used to feel more alive than when my pants were dirty with paint and there was charcoal and clay underneath my finger nails.

The only thing I've ever really done consistently is write. I have a bin full of journals that I used to work through my life with. I crave words. They are the currency that my soul thrives on. It's all that I want from anyone, more than anything. It is my love language.

I don't even care anymore how I got to a place where I'm not doing these things. I just want to change. Right now. I am no longer the woman who does things she doesn't want to do or acts like someone she's not.

I am a writer. I am an artist. I am a lover of music. I am alive.

Training for Color Me Rad 5k... and Stuff about Bethany Hamilton

I have decided to take part in the Color Me Rad 5k with my Aunt Gina. I have never run anything before in my life and I'm a little nervous but I think it's a good way to begin training for my marathon. We have both downloaded the Couch to 5k app and started training on Saturday, 6/15/13. Our plan is to pick a city along the east coast that we want to run this race in, and get ourselves prepared in time. I'm very excited to be participating in something like this, because my health conditions have previously held me back from doing anything physical or fun for a very long time. I, however, am quite over letting my situation dictate what I can and can't do. I recently had an opportunity to hear Bethany Hamilton speak and she was so inspiring. If you don't know who she is, it is SO worth the ten minutes to google her. Essentially, she was a 13 year old surfer girl from Kaui, that got her arm taken off by a shark, just as she was on the cusp of getting sponsored for professional surfing. She went on to not only get back in the water & re-learn to surf on regular competitive boards, but she realized her dream of becoming a professional surfer. She is someone I look up to and someone who reminds me to push through, have faith, keep going, work hard and come out the other side. So, even though a 5k is just a little baby run, it's going to be huge for me and I can't wait to see where else it will lead.

What kinds of activities have you participated in that took a lot of dedication & training? How did you feel afterwards? Leave your answers in the comments below!