Choose your own Adventure.

Winter is a difficult month for me. If I were a bear, I'd be hibernating like a boss, sleeping in and through the day, living off my own fat stores.

But I'm not one of those lucky hibernating mammals. Just like you, I am oh, so human. And right now, I find myself mired in what has become an annual struggle - my health is mediocre, my motivation levels are low, and sometimes, forward progress seems more than a few steps a head of me, backsliding on an icy sidewalk.

On Thursday night, I attended a panel presentation by five women - strong women leading the way in various aspects of the outdoor industry. A theme emerged: know your truths, and live your adventure. Georgina Miranda, the CEO and Founder of SheVentures, spoke about her truths and it was all I could do to keep from crying because nobody ever has it easy, but some people push through their barriers and radiate this immense confidence and self-assurance that I wish I could harness. I left the event with a new hat and a profound sense of discomfort in my own fear of pursuing true adventure.

Adventure means different things to different people. For me, it means taking a chance on a situation or circumstance without knowing what might happen. For the past few years, I have been adventure-averse. I am certainly not complacent in my life, but I have let fear of the unknown dictate my existence.

Now, finally, I have Zero interest in continuing to live this way. I am still fighting my fear of change, of taking chances, but I am not living my truth, which might be the worst way to live. My Truth - embracing the unknown; pushing myself to my physical limits; finding joy in the small beauties surrounding everything. Caring for myself. Spending as much time as possible out of doors. Loving more than I knew I could! And running; always running. (this is sort of, kind of, technically still a running blog, right?)

In this heart of winter darkness, I am committing to a change. I am choosing adventure - choosing to keep moving forward. If you want to help me, I am looking for inspiration and maybe a training buddy or two. I'm going to build up my physical strength and my endurance. I want to be able to literally haul myself over a 5-ft tall fence, which I couldn't do last summer (Spartan Race = humbled). I want to run a 15-mile trail race in June and spend the rest of the summer enjoying the high-alpine trails I've never explored.

For some reason, I'm still here, still kicking and screaming my way through this life. The past few years haven't been wasted, but they haven't been particularly fulfilling, either. With everything going on in our world, now, why not take this opportunity to define some dreams and then go after them?


End of page. To choose a life lived fully, turn to page 95. {shuffles through to page 95...}

Three-mile run and a Giant turkey sandwich

Bald eagle on the trail.
Hard to see, but (s)he's there!

Three weeks ago, I ran one mile for the first time in an embarrassingly long time. It was short, and it was slow, but it happened. I went for a run. Over the past three weeks, I have run a few more times - still slowly, still not very far.

I first started running in highschool, when I was 15 or 16. I have never been fast, but I do consider myself a Runner. Running has been many things to me over the years: the enabler of my eating disorder in highschool; a way to lose weight and forget about my broken heart in college; proof of the resiliency of my body after cancer; and recently, a faster way to explore the trails and wild areas of my beloved Colorado. Also, and most importantly, it has always been my primary method of decompression. I turn to running in times of stress and distress, and it is perhaps the only thing I still rely on for my own health and happiness, as various other strategies and coping mechanisms have come and gone again.

I have had a number of running-breaks over the years, most notably during that whole cancer thing. But I slowly jogged my way back to health, and even went and limped through a marathon two years after finishing two years of cancer treatment. Somehow, I hobbled through another marathon, a year and a half later. So the last marathon I ran was in April, 2012. I have run a few more trail races since then, of which I am most proud of finishing the 2014 Imogene Pass Run.

In 2014, though, the strangest thing happened - I got a corporate desk job. I launched into a career with one of the biggest companies in Denver, blindly assuming that this is what I really wanted, what I was meant to do! Never mind that I left Boston, DC and Chicago to get away from high-stress, high-pressure companies and the individuals who value work as the end instead of as the means to an end. I have been at this job for almost three years, and I have begun to draw a few correlations between that job and my overall health and happiness. Let's just say that I believe my job has had a direct, negative impact on virtually every aspect of my Health.

But this post is about running. I'll save the story of the sad, stressed and sick Caroline for another day. Today, I ran straight through for 30 minutes. Well, to say I "ran" is incredibly generous. I felt like I was shuffling along a dirt trail, barely more than jogging. And yet, I was surrounded by prairie dogs, prairie hawks and a glorious bald eagle, and there were no other humans on the trail. For the past three weeks, I have had to come to terms with the fact that I am truly and unavoidably starting over. All of my Healths - mental, emotional, physical, etc. - have slowly been destroyed over the past three years. Perhaps not least of all, I have barely run in over a year. Finally, sadly, I have reached my rock bottom. The good news is that I didn't end up in the hospital, but I think I would have, soon.

I am changing my life. I am putting myself first. Among many other things, this means that I am running again. Slowly, and for only a few miles at a time, I am running again. I refuse to give up on myself and the "being-aliveness" that I love so dearly, and I will continue to put one foot in front of the other and remember to stop and take a picture of the nesting bald eagle because how often do you see that on a run??

Stay tuned because I have a whole lot more to share as I head down this particular life-trail. I am so scared, but I am so excited because, finally, I am going to acknowledge and prioritize the one person I can never escape - myself.

This is the most Me I can be.

Sunday afternoon musings - hopped up on chai and sunshine

What have I been doing these past five months? Clearly, I haven't been writing. I was working and hiking and running and backpacking and wedding-ing (my brothers'), and generally doing lots of things that were not writing. I have also been trying to heal. As I alluded to in my last post, my body was in sorry shape, earlier this year. I went to Italy in January, and on my return, everything seemed to spiral out of control for me, health-wise. I started losing weight because I had chronic diarrhea and extreme fatigue. I was falling asleep at my desk at work and Lord knows I couldn't run. By May, I had met with a naturopath and was trying to not eat grains and not eat sugar and slowly get back into exercise and gradually get over my fatigue.

The thing is, my health seems to operate as one of those Whack-a-Mole games. You can only whack one mole at a time, and as soon as you do, there's another mole waiting to be whacked, and another and another and you inevitably miss one or two and then the game is over and you may or may not have hit enough moles to get a few tickets spat out at you that can be redeemed for something Made in China. But I digress. My gut is healing (*Knock Wood!!). It no longer starts bubbling after every single thing I eat. I have gained five or six pounds, so I'm about back to a normal weight. But the moles: my hemoglobin count is falling.

Yesterday, I went for a pretty stout hike, and the mountain nearly broke me. My generation has embraced the notion of collecting experiences versus things, and we share everything cool with everybody who follows us on social media. Don't get me wrong - I do it too. But yesterday, it occurred to me that if I posted the selfie I took after finally making it to the saddle between the mountains, as the sun was setting and the mountains and the plains were both glowing, if I shared that moment with my social media world, it would be wrong. It would be a pretty picture of me almost on top of a mountain seemingly celebrating four miles and 2,500 feet of vert! Totally badass! And yet, that was one of the most brutal hikes I've ever forced myself through. I did it, but only because I would have felt even worse if I had turned back. But for four miles and 2,500 feet, I couldn't breathe; I felt like I could barely move.

I've come a long way since the end of May, but all the sneaky moles that pop up keep reminding me that I am sailing uncharted waters. None of how I feel is normal, and I haven't yet found any sort of precedent for these sicknesses. But it is all I can do to just keep pushing onwards and upwards. Even if I have to take a break to let my heart rate chill out every few minutes; even if I have to remind myself to drink water and stay fueled. I am not ready to turn around or just quit because if I have learned one thing from my years here, the view from up high is Always worth it.

Here's to another five months of living!!

A long time coming

I have halfheartedly sat down to write an update on here a number of times over the past few months. Something always comes up to keep me from finishing more than a paragraph. I'm braindead after work; The Voice is back on; the sheer bulk of thoughts and experiences I want to share is overwhelming. How on earth will I condense everything into one post when there's so much I need to get out onto the Internet? But for the sake of my sanity and hopefully to help someone else out there, I am committing to starting to write again. I realize that not every post needs to reveal some epic, thought-provoking "Come to Jesus" moment, though I am certainly working through plenty of those. In writing for a public forum though, I think the most important part is to stay focused and stay true to your purpose. For a long time, I had an easily defined purpose - to share my cancer journey. My cancer journey is no longer the focal point of my life (thank goodness), but my experiences as a survivor, I think, constitute a decent reason to keep writing publicly.

Here's my plan, and here's why: I'm going to keep writing, and I am going to keep writing about my survival. I hereby dedicate my blog to writing about running and hiking and living as much of my life outdoors as I can, despite the fact that my body is close to the edge of wrecked. We have all survived something, and the most thrilling part about it is that we continue to survive and get to enjoy this phenomenal world in which we live!

Cancer destroyed my body's secondary immune system. My blood can no longer produce a specific type of b-cells, immunoglobulins. Various doctors and specialists ranging from immunologists to gastroenterologists to the naturopath I'm currently seeing have all tested my blood extensively to determine the extent of my deficiency. They all agree: I don't make any immuoglobulins. Diagnosis? Hypogammaglobulinemia. Gezundheit. This, they agree on, once each has run the exact same test and seen the exact same results. After which point, their agreement ends. It's pretty amazing and strangely universal in Western medicine - medical tunnel vision. "I specialize in this one thing and so will treat the symptoms you are experiencing for this one thing." So, the immunologist monitors the immunoglobulin replacement therapy I receive at home, monthly. And the GI guy monitors the steroids he prescribed for "nonspecific inflammation" of the intestinal system. And my new naturopath is at least looking at my entire system and trying to figure out why my liver enzymes are elevated while my blood glucose levels are totally normal and my cortisol levels are off the charts and in the meantime, I just desperately want to stop pooping everything out of me that I put into me. More than that, I want to run a full trail marathon in Moab in November, and I'm genuinely not sure my body can pull it off. 

With all of that on my mind, I'm going to write for other people to read about it! In case you've ever wondered what it's like to dive into the GAPS diet and try to consume little to few carbohydrates while training for a summer's worth of backpacking with a potential trail marathon cherry on top, this is the spot for you! There's no way I'll be able to write daily, but I commit to a bit more regularity. How's that for just vague enough?

This will be exciting. Hopefully, it will be cathartic. Even more hopefully, at the end of this grand experiment, my gut will have healed more and my True Health will be back and here to stay. Thanks in advance for your support and for your patronage!!