Finding Leadville Bonus Content: A Token of Love

A Family photo from 2006

Quite late into July, just a few weeks before race day, my mother sent me a small medal of Mother Teresa — the Catholic nun and saint revered for her service to the poor and dying in Calcutta.

The medal had a lineage.

Years earlier, a client of mine — a woman in her early 70s with wisps of silver hair and a face carved by decades of stories — had pressed it into my hands after a coaching session. She had received it while on a spiritual trip to India, where she visited the Missionaries of Charity and received the medal, already blessed, from a nun there.

“Your mom should have Mother Teresa’s love,” she had said, folding the envelope into my palm with gentle conviction.

So, from Mother Teresa, to my client, to my hands — and then to my mother’s. I mailed it that same afternoon from Minnesota to Western Massachusetts.

Years passed.

And then, in Colorado, the envelope reappeared. My name written in her familiar script.

When I opened it, the small metal oval tumbled into my hand. The imprint of Mother Teresa’s face caught the light. I pressed my thumb over the surface and felt a lump rise in my throat.

From one mother to another, and now, to me.

She sent it with no note, only the quiet understanding that I would know what it meant. I did.

My mother — devout, traditional, unwavering in her Catholic faith — had once held this token as her own. She knew I had stepped away from the Church. She knew I did not share her religious convictions. Still, she sent it. Not because she expected me to believe what she believed, but because she loved me. And this, for her, was love made tangible.

I pinned it to the free loop on the left shoulder strap of my hydration pack.

It rattled gently — like a whisper, like a prayer — through every mile of the Leadville 100.

In the mountain silence, in the dust, through blisters and creek crossings, with nausea curling through my gut and peace finding home within me — it was there. Swinging lightly with each step. The quiet blessing of women who came before me.

Even though I couldn’t hold Catholicism as my faith, and the medal had no literal religious significance to me, I could run with the love it represented. I could run with the strength passed down through hands that knew labor, prayer, heartbreak, and endurance. From one admired woman to another.

That small token, gifted and regifted over decades and continents, carried what mattered most: the intention to protect, to bless and honor this life. The chain of care between women, between mothers and daughters, between seekers and the sacred. A connection between women who endure.

It did not need to mean everything. But it meant enough.

“Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.

Life is beauty, admire it.

 Life is a dream, realize it.

 Life is a challenge, meet it.

 Life is a duty, complete it.

 Life is a game, play it.

 Life is a promise, fulfill it.

 Life is sorrow, overcome it.

 Life is a song, sing it.

 Life is a struggle, accept it.

 Life is a tragedy, confront it.

 Life is an adventure, dare it.

 Life is luck, make it.

 Life is too precious, do not destroy it.

 Life is life, fight for it.”

 — Mother Teresa