Finding Leadville Chapter 9: The Moment it Clicked

The author and her Chris right before her phone call in Hawaii

Relationship Status

If you took a sip of me today

you'd realize how flat I've become.

"Where's the fizz?" you'd protest,

"Where's the bubble, the spray, the play?"

You can't send me back to whence I came,

the kitchen is closed,

the busboys went home,

the fan above the stove cut quiet.

We now stand in the light

from the cracked refrigerator door,

a curtain of white breaking in

as we rummage

for something new to be.

All the world is quiet,

the mice in the back yard

have raised their whiskers,

a possum passes like a ghost.

I reach for the place

where your heart went wild,

foraging in the moonlight for clues

of whom we've become since

the shake of a pandemic,

the swirl of lockdown

a Revolution,

sweat of uncertainty

wet in our hands.

Remember?

You stayed up all night

with whiskey courage.

I lay breathless in bed.

Our town was on fire.

We did the best that we could.

We realize now

the fizz

the pop

are now gone.

We grasp for something more.

After returning to Minnesota from my intel gathering trip to Colorado and then learning of Ben's passing, I didn’t exactly know my next step. Days and then weeks slipped by. The weather dipped down to a miserable double digit below zero. The clock ticked toward midnight into late February, and I laid in a tired heap on the bed. The blankets seemed too thin, the pillow too flat, and I felt like my world was inching by too slow. 

Everything stacked, then cracked, in my mind.

During the pandemic, I was propelled into a crisis support role at my place of employment. As a holistic performance coach with a Masters in Integrative Health and Wellbeing Coaching, I was on a small team that supported mental and emotional wellbeing. I went from coaching folks toward their professional and personal goals to applying emotional tourniquets for both furloughed and remaining team members. In a world of so many unknowns and potential threats, I gave the tools I knew to my colleagues: cognitive thought shifting and meditation and breathing and everyday reminders for self-care. I created a safe place for my clients to emote. Every day was a trial of doing my best, but my best was hovering around a slim 10% of my norm. 

Many months of survival status brought us to relationship fatigue. Chris experienced panic attacks, on the alert in our Minneapolis neighborhood during protests and strife. Between my clients and keeping it together at home, I felt more like a caregiver than a partner. I was ready to run, to end it so we could both move forward and begin again. That questioning had become a regular part of our relationship. I had one foot in – and one foot out. 

I scheduled a virtual hypnosis session. Although this was my first experience with this form of therapy (outside of using a self-administered app), I was feeling more open than skeptical. I understood enough regarding neuroplasticity and regulating the nervous system to surrender to this healing modality.

The healer helped me become acquainted with the lived experiences in my body. She helped me see what I was holding onto as memory and, with her guidance, I reshaped those moments. A two-hour session rushed by like water spilling through cupped hands.

Chilled and hypnotized in the Twin Cities’ suburbs, the greatest sensation I had was an ache to feel loved. Like a newborn, I wanted to curl my fingers around it and hold onto the felt sense that I was important, that I mattered.

This wasn’t a new feeling – all my life I have felt as though others were more deserving of love, were of greater importance, were more worthy than me. It's certainly impacted my work, my creativity, and my relationships.

As the middle child, I shared everything - a bunk bed and a bedroom, my parents’ affection and every piece of clothing. My sense of individuality was clouded by the reality that many of my siblings had similar interests to me, which often seemed even grander, better, more important. Even my birthday was only mine until kindergarten when my twin sisters were born on that day. My graduation ceremonies also belonged to my Irish twin, Joe. In a world where I got good at sharing, I also was skilled at falsely believing I was less than.

Throughout my twenties, I often found myself feeling emptied and low, in search of something greater than myself to help lift me up to a sense of wholeness. Simply running through a finish line of a race or getting into a relationship wasn't enough to soothe this hurt. I needed love. I needed healing. I needed my own ongoing experience of Holy.

The hypnosis session brought much of this to the surface. She murmured instructions through the screen. Relaxed, I fully gave in.

I saw it: the challenges that little me had lived through and the imprints that they left on my body. I felt how easy it was for me to feel sorry for myself, to sit back and wait for someone to love me how I wanted to be loved. And I saw how much I passed blame and shame onto my partner, expecting him to know how to love a body that could not feel truly safe within herself.

An early memory burst forward: My father throwing a plate of food across the dining room because my sister didn’t want to eat her squash. Explosive, sudden – scary to a little kid. Dried yellow squash, sticking to the vibrant stained glass of the ceiling’s Tiffany lamp, remained for the rest of that year. The hypnotherapist guided me to feel into it; and then, create a feeling and an image that my inner child needed. A yellow glow emerged, softening the sounds of shatter and yelling, absorbing the squash and the broken plate and my father's face. A step forward toward healing.

Even amidst these angry moments, all I wanted was to spend time with my dad. At every opportunity, I woke before the sun to go fishing or hiking with him. And then later in the week without warning, his fury changed him, again. It was confusing to a kid. How could the man I loved so much, who woke me up at 4 AM to go on a day’s adventure with him, who prayed dutifully at church every week – how could that man transform so fast?

I coped, as children do. I remembered turning to the magical realms of imagination, book-reading, and playing for hours outside. My siblings and I would spend every waking moment in the back field and woods behind the farmhouse, forging trails and building forts, creating whole worlds. Summertime was spent catching tadpoles and running barefoot; winters with ice skating on the woodland ponds and trekking to the big sled hill a mile and a half away. 

There was a healing magic to the nature around our home. I am grateful to the buzz of bugs, the thick bark on trees meant for climbing, and the wet slippery moss on the creek bed that held me when things got unsettled. When I was in the woods, I felt spaciousness, free of insignificance, free of being a good girl, free from expectations to behave.

I was just able to be. 

As a child, I attempted to create my version of safety in the quiet of solitude. I’d sometimes curl up in the coat closet and listen to my dad walk from room to room. At night, I’d pull the covers over my head and get lost in books with a dimming flashlight. Mid-day, I’d go up to the treehouse and wait there, sometimes for hours, to see if anyone would come looking for me. 

All of that turning inward as a youngster left imprints on my body, heart, and mind. Imprints that simply became part of who I was over time. Imprints that I could lovingly, gradually take a good and careful look at many years later in my life. Imprints that I could love and heal, every day, any time.

I felt urgency ever since I hung up the phone in Hawaii. Not only did that phone call alert me to the frailty of life, but also the crippling obedience that we surrender to the thoughts of disbelief in ourselves: “I could never” and “I’m not the type of person who…” 

One of the last conversations Ben and I had was about the Leadville 100 trail run. I hadn’t made concrete plans, other than signing up for the race. Ben lit up like a little boy when I shared the news.

“You’re going to crush it,” he gushed. “Tell me what you decide to do, and I’ll come hang, whether to train with you or pace you on the day.” Unwavering, I-believe-in-you support. How I wish this for everyone. 

“Breathe it all out,” the hypnotist guided in a voice between a whisper and a murmur, our session coming to a close. 

As I exhaled, I was warmed by a thought: Who are you uninterrupted? I was once asked this by a mentor. She didn’t mean just by time, or commitments, or others. Who would you be if you weren’t interrupted by negative thoughts or limiting beliefs or the stories you tell yourself? I think we are meant to entertain that beautiful thought in order to expand our sense of self. In order to grow. 

Poetry gushed that evening from a now unblocked channel within me. A timeline was born. I was momentarily uninterrupted, the freshness of emotional reset rich and vital. Winter wind wailed outside the front stoop and my dog curled dutifully at my feet. Something rattled loose inside me and a tiny seed, planted long ago, was beginning to spread roots and grow. 

Uninterrupted.

Then, called to action.

Talking with Chris, we established an opportunity for space. Every fiber in my being wanted to move out to Colorado as soon as possible and train at altitude. I wanted to not just be physically ready for Leadville, but also a retreat from the strain in Minneapolis. And more than a want, I needed a way to get to know myself -- and my kind of holy -- better.

I had to do it on my own. I had to run.

Chris, supportive as ever, encouraged me. Even though it meant we would be apart for five months, he was willing to let me go, hopeful that our relationship could benefit in the long-term. Looking back, I clearly see that this was a beautiful expression of love for me.

I created a Facebook post asking if I knew anyone in Summit County Colorado where I could move to that summer to train. Friends rallied and information exchanged. Days later I was on the phone with a homeowner in Alma, a statutory town in the High Country with a population of barely 300. She had a room and an office space to rent at a reasonable price at 11,000 feet altitude by Hoosier's Pass. It came with three roommates, a parking space, and thin air to sleep in.

And I could move in on April 1st.

Unlearning

(one of the poems written post-hypnosis)

The deepest wound

I carry

is the one

titled:

"You aren't important."

I’m trying

to hold her

(little me)

in ways

that say,

"I love you"

and

"you matter here" 

but

unlearned words

take so long

to make

a memory.

I keep

trying,

building

a sanctuary

unknown to me.

I look in the mirror

I squeeze myself tight

I stay at it

again and again:

'I love you.'

and

'You matter here. '

I keep at it,

unlearning

the unnecessary

lessons

of unimportance. 

The author and her Chris on the other side of 2020, looking ahead into the unknown