When I signed up to run the Chicago Marathon, I did it on a whim, in the dark while laying in bed. I chose to opt in the lottery and took my chances, since I heard somewhere it’s around 40% of lottery entries get accepted. I figured, “if I get in, I get in, but if I don’t, it’s okay.” Looking back on it, I’m not sure how serious or even committed I was. Even though it’s been a bucket list goal for as long as I could remember, 26.2 miles is daunting and scary.. and I would literally have it to do. I just knew I wanted to run a marathon at some point in my life. And if I got in, I knew it was going to be hard. I knew there would be long runs, early mornings, sore legs, and days when I would question why I decided to do this in the first place. Well, December 2025 came around and outta nowhere, I saw a notification pop up that my credit card was successfully charged for the Bank of America Chicago Marathon. I gasped! I actually got in! Holy shit. Now it was time to start training, immediately. What I wasn't prepared for was how mentally and emotionally exhausting this experience would become. I don't think I fully understood how much of myself I would have to give to training, especially during a year that would take so much out of me.
You see, in December, my daughter’s father was just placed in hospice care and my dad was still with me. So I didn’t even know what that kind of grief felt like, like the kind you feel when a parent dies.
This year has been one of the hardest years of my life and it’s only October. In January, my daughter's dad passed away from brain cancer, and just three months later, on April 24, I lost my own dad to lung cancer. I flew to Finland to be with him in his last days. Two significant losses in such a short period of time, and I don't think I've even begun to fully process everything that has happened. The grief has been intense, overwhelming, and at times completely unpredictable. There are days when I feel like I'm doing okay, and then something so small can bring everything right back to the surface. Sometimes it's a memory, a song, or just the realization that someone I love is no longer here.
What has been especially difficult is that life doesn't stop when someone dies. I still have responsibilities, a family, a marriage, a private practice, clients, and all the everyday things that need my attention. I'm still showing up for the people around me while trying to make sense of my own emotions. I'm also watching my daughter navigate the loss of her father, which has been heartbreaking in ways I don't think I can fully put into words. As a parent, you want to protect your children from pain, and there is something incredibly helpless about knowing you can't fix something this significant for them. All you can really do is love them, support them, and allow them to grieve in their own way, while you're also grieving in a completely different way.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I've been training for a marathon and the half marathon I also completed back in June.
I started running because I wanted to challenge myself and be healthy for my children. My mantra I kept saying was that “I want to have a healthy heart and lungs” “I want to show Isabella we can do hard things.” I wanted to see what I was physically capable of accomplishing, and somewhere along the way, running became something I genuinely enjoyed. But training for a marathon is a completely different experience. I don't think people talk enough about how mentally difficult it can be, especially when you're already emotionally exhausted.
There have been long runs where I've spent hours alone with my thoughts, and sometimes that has been the hardest part. Where I am genuinely looking for this mystical runner’s high, they keep talking about, but all I have is this heavy grief and my mind that won’t quiet down. When you're running for two, three, or four hours, your mind has a lot of time to wander. I've found myself thinking about my dad, our relationship in the last 3 years, about things I wish I could tell him, about memories I hadn't thought about in years, and about how much life has changed. I've thought about my daughter and everything she's experienced this year. I've questioned things, replayed conversations, and found myself overwhelmed by emotions I didn't even realize were sitting there.
I've cried during runs. I've gotten angry. I've felt sad, frustrated, and completely exhausted. There have been moments when I genuinely wanted to stop running, not necessarily because my body couldn't keep going, but because mentally I just didn't have anything left to give. It's a strange feeling when something you chose to do for yourself becomes another thing that requires so much from you.
I think one of the hardest things about grief is how exhausting it can be, even when you appear to be functioning just fine. You can go to work, have conversations, laugh with your family, and continue doing everything you're supposed to do, while internally feeling like you're carrying an enormous amount of sadness. I've experienced moments of happiness and excitement throughout this year, and I'm grateful for those moments, but that doesn't mean the grief has gotten any easier. Sometimes I think the hardest part is learning to accept that both can exist together.
As a therapist, I understand grief. I understand that it isn't linear, that emotions can come in waves, and that there isn't a timeline for when someone should start feeling better. I've sat with people through some of the most painful experiences of their lives, and I've talked countless times about the importance of allowing ourselves to feel difficult emotions rather than avoiding them. But understanding something professionally and actually living through it are two very different experiences.
There are days when I don't want to practice coping skills. I don't want to find meaning in what happened, and I certainly don't want to hear about how strong I am. Sometimes I just want my dad back. I want my daughter to have her dad back. I want to have a conversation with someone I can no longer call. I want this year to have been different.
And I think that's okay to admit. At least that is also what I am learning through my own therapy sessions. Even therapists need a place to decompress and process how we feel.
I've also struggled with the expectation that difficult experiences are supposed to make us stronger. I know people mean well when they say things like that, but sometimes I don't want to be stronger. Sometimes I'm tired of having to navigate hard things. I don't think every painful experience needs to become a lesson or an opportunity for growth. Sometimes things are just incredibly painful, and we have to figure out how to live with that.
Marathon training has brought a lot of these feelings to the surface. When I'm physically exhausted, I notice how much harder it becomes to manage everything emotionally. The negative thoughts get louder, the self-doubt creeps in, and there have been plenty of moments when I've questioned whether I could actually finish this marathon. For a few weeks, I even convinced myself that I would intentionally oversleep or just not show up. Some runs have been amazing, and I've felt incredibly proud of what my body is capable of doing. Other runs have been absolutely miserable, failed, and I've spent most of the time questioning my life choices.
But I kept showing up. Not perfectly, and certainly not always with a positive attitude. There were days I didn't want to run, days I cut things short, and days when I had to remind myself that I was already doing the best I could with everything going on in my life.
Something I've realized throughout this process is that running hasn't necessarily made my grief easier. It hasn't taken away the sadness or made me feel more in control of everything that's happened. If anything, there have been moments when it's made me feel everything more intensely. But it's also given me time to be alone with myself, something I don't always make space for in my everyday life.
As I think about the marathon and everything it took to get there, I feel a mixture of emotions. I'm proud of myself, but I'm also sad. I'm excited about what I've accomplished, but I can't help thinking about the people who aren't here to share it with me. I wish I could tell my dad about this experience. I wish he could see what I've been working toward. I wish so many things were different.
I don't want to romanticize this experience or pretend that running a marathon somehow makes everything I've gone through worth it. It doesn't. I would trade a thousand finish lines for more time with the people I've lost.
But I am proud of myself for doing something that once felt impossible, especially during a year when so much of my life has felt incredibly heavy. I'm proud of the commitment I've made to myself, even on the days when I struggled to follow through. And I'm proud that I've allowed myself to experience moments of joy and accomplishment without feeling like I have to stop grieving in order to do so.
And then came marathon day. Like holy shit, we are here and I’m about to do the damn thing…. or at least try. But I was going to get that marathon done one way or another.
After months of training, worrying, preparing, and wondering how I would handle 26.2 miles, I finally found myself at the starting line of the Chicago Marathon on October 11th, the same day as my son’s 5th birthday. And what surprised me most was how different the actual race felt compared to the months leading up to it.
Mentally, I felt good. Really good, actually. A little too calm if you were ask me again about it. I didn't experience the mental blocks or negative thoughts that had made some of my training runs so difficult. I was excited, I was positive, and I genuinely wanted to take in everything happening around me.
Of course, my body had other plans. Like for real?!!
Around mile 9, my knees started cramping, and whatever pacing strategy I had carefully planned pretty much went out the window. I had spent months thinking about my pace, my finish time, and how I wanted the race to go. But once the cramps started, I had to accept that the day wasn't going to go exactly how I had imagined.
And surprisingly, I was okay with that.
I didn't want to spend the rest of the marathon frustrated about my pace or disappointed that things weren't going according to plan. I had worked too hard to get there, and I wanted to enjoy the experience. I wanted to take in the crowds, the energy of Chicago, and the fact that I was actually running my first marathon (a world series marathon!!).
The physical discomfort was real, but mentally, I stayed positive. I wasn't fighting with myself the way I had during some of those long training runs. I wasn't questioning whether I belonged there or whether I could do it. My goal shifted from following a specific pace to simply enjoying the day and getting to that finish line. By mile 17, I told my wife, “I feel good, I only have 9 miles left.” Then before I knew it, I had 6 miles left and I knew I was almost done.
Looking back, I find that interesting. The training had been one of the hardest things I've ever done mentally, yet on the day I actually ran 26.2 miles, I felt mentally prepared. My body struggled, but my mind didn't.
I don't think that means all the grief and emotional exhaustion disappeared. It certainly didn't. I still miss my dad. I still think about everything my daughter has gone through, and I still have days (sometimes every day) when the weight of this year feels like too much. Running a marathon didn't change any of that.
But for those hours on October 11th, I allowed myself to enjoy something I had worked incredibly hard for. I didn't need the day to be perfect, and I didn't need to prove anything through my finishing time. I just wanted to be present for an experience I once wasn't sure I could accomplish.
I'm incredibly proud that I finished my first marathon. Not because everything went according to plan… because that plan went out the window at mile, but because I made it there. I committed to something that required months of dedication during one of the most emotionally difficult periods of my life. And I did it, I literally put myself first and did the damn thing.
I've been thinking a lot about how much can happen in a year. How quickly life can change, how grief can become part of your everyday existence, and how you can still find yourself experiencing moments of happiness in the middle of so much sadness.
I don't want to say this marathon healed me, because it definitely didn't. I don't want to turn the losses I've experienced into some beautiful story about resilience, either. Because this is not it. I would much rather have my dad here, and I would give anything for my daughter not to have experienced the loss of hers. But running has allowed me to have find something to look forward to, a new challenge where I can see the progression of improvement and be proud.
I can also acknowledge that this year has been incredibly painful while also being proud of something I accomplished. I don't have some profound lesson or beautiful conclusion about grief. I still have really hard days. I still miss my dad, and I still struggle with how much has changed in such a short amount of time. I'm still figuring out what life looks like with these losses.
What I do know is that I'm proud of how far I've come, both as a runner and as a person trying to navigate a really difficult year. And while crossing that finish line didn’t change any of the things I wish I could change.
I think I'm allowed to be proud of that, too. Oh, and I registered for the 2027 Chicago Marathon, so I guess I can call myself a runner now. 😊