Feelings on Running Almost a Year Later

Inhale. Exhale. Focus on the beat. Adjust pace to the beat. Inhale. Exhale.

It's been almost a year since I ran my first mile.  It took 16 minutes but that didn't matter. I was so proud.  So accomplished.  So elated.  In fact, I'd take the measure of that moment and put it in the top 10 most proud moments of my life.

And now, almost a year later, I'm chained to a running schedule.  I remember when I did my first 5k on the treadmill.  It took me something like 41 minutes or so, but again I just was so proud and couldn't believe I finished.  I did what any rational person shouldn't do upon finishing such a feat while being riddled with endorphins and took to social media declaring I decided to run the OKC Memorial Half Marathon.  I'm glad I did this because HELLO accountability.  And hello goal.  I knew I'd need a goal that would require pushing myself especially once the weightloss process was concluded (or stale) and I needed to keep pushing for fitness and health and weight maintenance.

So bit by bit I've trained.  In the summer I pushed myself with my distance.  I got comfortable running 3 miles and then when fall rolled around I started adding in some long run days and doing some distance. 4 miles. 5 miles. 6 miles.  I felt incredible.  Before Thanksgiving I set a record and ran 8 miles and then before Christmas I ran 10.  It felt awesome.  Then I spent the winter months attempting one long run every week but taking the rest of the week to cross train.  It was too cold or not light enough in my available hours to hit the pavement and run.  I fell in love with weight lifting and HIIT work outs and even doing intervals on the treadmill.  But I really, really started hating my running.  I hated that my only run day was long run day and I felt full of anxiety in the 12 hours before the run knowing I was setting out to do daunting work - 8 miles, 9 miles, 10 miles… inhale. exhale. inhale. exhale. It's all mental. Don't stop.  But this is SO MUCH.

I started talking to runners about how I felt.  Runners like my father-in-law who'd done one half marathon himself (and not necessarily runners like my sister-in-law who does Iron Man and Ultra training).  Everyone I talked to said because I was at 10 I'd do fine!  Not to stress and not to let myself burn out.  Because I was burning out.  I was hating run.  So I took a few weeks off and just focused on diet.

Then I realized I was 6 weeks to the race.  Six weeks to this goal I had set for myself in regards to what I wanted to accomplish.  And I wanted to do it well and I wanted to do it right and more than speed or anything else I wanted to feel comfortable.  So, two weeks ago I woke up and Googled training schedules and settled into a plan.  I ran 7 miles that day and spent my first week ever focused only on running and not just running for the sake of release or exercise but running x amount of miles on certain days with certain intention and no wavering.  By my last run of the week (4 miles) before my big run I just really felt like I was hating running again.  I felt chained to the schedule and set out that evening for my run just wondering how it would feel to be done with this and not have all these miles to reach before race day.

This last weekend I ran 9 miles with  my sister-in-law.  It was our first time to run together and when my distance pace is more like 11 minute miles and she can run 16 miles at an 8 and a half mile pace you feel a little nervous going into it.  But the run turned out really great.  I didn't have to stop in all 9 miles to walk and my pace was 10:35 which was made sweeter by the fact my pace in mile 8 was 10:02 and in mile 9 was 9:49.  It was a good run.  And sometimes it takes a good run to make you remember why you love running.  Why you do this.

So while I do still feel overwhelmed with all the miles left to run... and how in the world can I get 5 miles in today and take an hour for myself for running 2 different days this week PLUS another hour and a half on Saturday, I know I can do it.  It helps to have a supportive husband and kids who think I'm so cool for running.  It helps knowing I am fulfilling a goal.  A BIG goal.  To know I'm pushing myself to do something most people don't.

But honestly, I won't race again (with the exception of one day hopefully running in a run disney half or full marathon).  I am looking forward to this race and finishing but the distance has been hard on my body and the schedule has taken a lot of pleasure out of the running and I don't want to burn out.  After this race I look forward to knowing I can go run 4 days a week for 2-4 miles no problem and still run 5-6 on days I have more time (like Saturday) and not have pain the next day.  It feels good to know I have this and after the race I can run what I want.  And I will keep running.  But the days of starting a Saturday attempting to run 8+ miles will be behind me (you know, unless there's like cake planned for the day or something ;).) for now.

I love stretching myself and fulfilling goals, but I also love knowing myself.  And I know myself now well enough to know that I do love running but I also love weight lifting and cross training and moving forward from this race I look forward to approaching life in a well-rounded way.  And I look forward to dieting a bit again.  With all this training I don't have energy to detox.  My body is adjusted to what kinds of foods I'm eating so if I were to cut carbs or sugar it would take my body at least a month to pull from fat stores instead of energy stores during the detox period and I've seen my pace really suffer from that.  So in May it'll be nice to still work out but also be able to focus on diet again and hopefully shake these last 10-15lbs.

I know it's been awhile since I've updated and that this update is really all about running and my feelings, but now you know!  This is where I am, this is life.

Shake up your salads: A 450 Calorie DELICIOUS Option!

Just swinging by this long abandoned blog to share one of my favorite salad recipes of late with you fine people still reading!

This salad is full of flavor, juicy, packed with protein, healthy, delicious and under 450 calories!  Win, win, win, win, win!

ingredients:

3-4 cups chopper romaine lettuce

1 serving turkey (I use Hormel natural) OR 1/4 to 1/2 cup shredded chicken, whatever you have!

1/4 cup blueberries

1/3 cup chopped strawberries

1/2 chopped apple

1/4 cup chopped pecan

1/4 cup feta

2 Tbs raspberry vinegarette (I love Sprouts brand dressings!)

It's really simple to assemble.  Chop up your meat, fruits, and nuts.  Toss it all onto lettuce.  Drizzle with dressing and ENJOY!

Salads are so wonderful and such a good go to meal for a dieter or someone working to maintain their weight and health, but they can get SO BORING! I  hope this recipe helps you spice up your salad life.

For more on what I eat, follow me on Instagram (@mynestinginstincts).  I'm taking a break from social media for lent, but there's some old ideas and new ones coming soon.  In the meantime, I'll try to show more love to the 'ole blog here. 

It's been awhile...

Wow, it's been awhile, huh? I'm a terrible blogger these days!  I HAVE become a better Instagrammer though! And I've been posting a lot on @mynestinginstincts about what I'm eating and my workouts, etc there.

But here's a little update on life since I last wrote.  I DID run the 5k on Thanksgiving with my sister!  It was a great experience and I'm so proud I did it still!  I have my bib from the race hanging in my kitchen by my sink so I can see it when I'm doing dishes (which is every 5 seconds, basically) and I love the remind in the place I once ate to cope that I can do anything and be anything and that I've achieved so much!

I also signed up for a half marathon.  It's at the end of April.  I'm REALLY excited.  Training looks like me doing my own thing.  Running a few days a week 2-4 miles and having 1 longer run every weekend (7+ miles).  I ran 10.53 miles this weekend for 2 hours which is both a distance and duration record.  It felt AWESOME!  Except I couldn't move after.  So I took an ice bath.  OMG.  Those things are TERRRRRRIBLE!

Our family's Christmas was wonderful!  BUTTT I kind of took December off of dieting.  I decided I'd just enjoy the holiday and continue to work out.  I did work out a lot and pretty hard and then I ate all those calories burned plus some.  I gained from 160 to 165 the weeks leading up to Christmas and then 165-175 the weeks of Christmas and New Years.  OHHH MY!  I have no regrets and it was good to see I do not yet have the self control I need to resist eating way too much (like these salted caramel chocolate chip cookies).

So January 1st I started Paleo and I did it 12 days.  I'm back down to 168 and am trying to lose 3 more pounds before we go to Disney World, but again, I had the same problems with Paleo… lack of energy!  I focused on eating a lot more veggies and more carb foods like bananas or sweet potatoes but in those long runs I was in the negative calorically by 800+ calories and it was HARD to press on.  I actually paced 11:24 on that 10.5 mile run and then had some pasta Josh made Sunday night and Monday morning I ran 3.5 miles in 35 minutes at a 10:04 pace.  It just makes ALL the difference to eat carbs.  So I'm counting calories on My Fitness Pal, I'm working out hard, and I'm making smart choices.  Yesterday I had bread for a sandwich but ate clean all day.  My snacks were very healthy, my dinner was healthy, my breakfast was healthy… and the day I had pasta for dinner I had eaten very lightly and healthfully in anticipation of that meal.  THAT'S how it's done, I just need to learn to do it!  Tracking helps!

So that's a little update on where I am!  I'm also really loving weight lifting.  I've been doing it about a month on my upper body and have noticed a lot of change.  I also just really enjoy the feeling of focusing on a muscle and feeling what it's capable of.  Very awesome.  My weekly workouts now include a lot of running, intervals for speed (and fat blasting!), a few T25 sessions, an ab day (or 2) and lots of weight lifting.

Hope y'all are doing well!

This isn't technically my first 5k...

I went for a very, very cold run on Saturday morning.  The wind chill made it 25* outside.  I knew I needed to do a practice run in preparation for my first 5k on Thanksgiving because the forecasted low is 24*.  Oy!  So I bundled up and hit the pavement and it went really well despite my muscles feeling tight the whole time.

On my run I thought about a simple truth.  This 5k?  It's not really, truly my first.

In the spring of 2009 right after Josh and I bought our first house (photo below of how big I was then… and how horrible our blue walls looked) my Mom was a runner.  She was the one hitting the pavement and loving the runner life while I was laying around and enjoying a life of eating all of the food and gaining weight rapidly (not really enjoying, let's be clear).  She had signed up for a 5k and asked my sister who was 11 at the time to join her in the run along with one of her little friends.  My Mom wanted to do her best in the run and not stay with the girls which I understood and Josh and I agreed to walk the 5k and follow my sister and her friend to make sure they'd be ok.  I assumed lots of people would be walking...

I assumed wrong.  NO ONE was walking.  Everyone was running.  Even my sister and her friend.  Josh and I started out with a little jog, but after just a few minutes and me drifting to the back of the pack I was out of breath and spent.  I walked, but slowly and tried to keep going.  The girls were SO FAR ahead of us we couldn't see them.  Josh decided to jog ahead to catch up with them while I just continued to walk.  I hadn't even made it to the first mile marker before I saw runners coming back.  COMING BACK.  I was mortified and felt horrible and so ashamed of not only how overweight I was but also how out of shape I was.  I couldn't even walk a mile in how long it took someone to run 3!  I couldn't keep up with my 11 year old sister!  I was so ashamed.  I turned around and walked back and my Mom, sister, and husband all passed me.  I still ended up walking through the finish line at the back of the pack and felt humiliated to even be a part of it all.

So, naturally, I helped myself to a bag of Chex Mix at the race and insisted we stop at McDonalds for a biscuit on the way home.  At that time I was about 215lbs.  Josh and I had gotten married LESS than a year before and on that day I was 185lbs.  I thought about all of this while eating my feelings and just feeling awful about where I was.

So that's the truth going into this 5k Thursday.  It is not technically my first.  My first ended with me eventually in tears, eating my feelings and throwing away the bib and the race shirt in a dramatic episode that came from a deeper place than just being annoyed with myself.  I swore I'd never run or do a 5k again.

Thursday I'm not only doing another 5k, I'm doing it with my sister.  Our Mom can't run anymore, but we can and we both enjoy it.  I'm so happy to be running along side her for my first 5k as the new Ashley who CAN do a 5k and who CAN reach her goal weight and who CAN CAN CAN CAN CAN do things.  I can't wait.  The other 5k is who I was.  It's history.  It's the epitome of failure.  It took 4 years to get to the place where I can "try again," but I'm here and I'm ready.  I'm not who I was.

What I want to tell Her

This is what I want to tell her.  [The her who is me, then.]

I know your heart because it's my heart.  I know that you are full of personality and confident socially.  I know you do well meeting new people and that you are not shy.  I know that you are funny and smart and capable of carrying a good conversation.  I know you want friends and community because you're a new Mom and you're lonely (and so is every other Mom, just so you know) and that if you really tried to get out there (and you did) and just be yourself, people would like you!  They'd enjoy a conversation with you.

….But you don't want to go out.  You don't want to socialize.  You can and you will because you have to.  It's polite to talk because with the Mom next to you at the Chick Fil A playground, but you are shy (even though you're not) because you've lost your confidence.  All you see in you is how you are 250lbs.  Sure you have two babies on your hip (literally, both practically BABIES since they're so close in age), but you know you just KNOW deep down that you're still being judged.  Your a bad person because you're fat.  You're a bad Mother because you're fat.  You were cruel to them in utero because you wanted to eat ice cream and jalepeno chips to your heart's content.  So you clam up and you isolate yourself and you're lonely and so you turn to that good old friend.  Food.

I know you're not happy with your inability to be active.  I know it embarrasses you when you come out from a walk on the treadmill for only 20 minutes at a 2.5 pace with no incline caked in sweat.  I know you don't want your husband (who's worked out as long as you've known him) watch you work out because you're jiggly and awkward and it's embarrassing.  It shouldn't be because he chose you, he loves you, but it is.  You think you HATE running.  You've tried it before and clam up and get so angry.  You hate being sweaty because your face turns bright red and kids in Elementary school (when you were kind of chubby) asked "ARE YOU DYING!?" because your wee bit of Irish blood is routed in the veins of your face and lights up when you work out.  So you don't.  You hate sweat, you hate your red face, you hate it all.  You HATE working out.

…But it will become your lifeline.  When you stop turning to food when you feel sad or lonely or depressed or bored, you will start turning to fitness.  One day when you are strong in your resolve in dieting you will decide to try to jog awhile on the treadmill.  And you'll jog more and more and more until you are BEAT RED and sweaty but you just ran your first full mile! Sure it took you 16 minutes, but you did and you are PROUD.  You run out to tell your husband who celebrates with you.  There's no more shame in being seen by him on the treadmill or doing burpees or lunges or planks or squats because this is FUN and the sweat feels good and your body is changing. And a good run?  A good run clears your head and turns around your attitude more than the numb, mindless eating that came with a binge ever did.  You love working out.  YOU ARE A RUNNER.  (You ran 8.5 miles just today!) And you run in public where everyone can see!  There's no more shame or embarrassment least of all over a little (LOT) of sweat and a red face.

I know you think you're pretty.  You have nice hair and a pretty face.  But you don't really think you're attractive.  You are intimidated by all the other women.  It shouldn't matter.  It should matter who you are on the inside not the outside, but you don't always feel pretty on the inside either.  You feel like a liar when you go on a binge and hide the secret shame of what you've eaten deep in the trash can and don't speak a word and then are "surprised" when you gain weight that week because "I just don't know what happened!"  You feel trapped in a war with yourself you can't win.  You have a problem.  A psychological problem.  You need help.  You know this and your husband knows this and your excuses don't matter anymore because even though "it's expensive" or "it's time away from the kids and my family" the reality is you are not healthy.  Mentally or physically.  You're under the false pretense that every other woman has it together.  Especially the skinny ones.  You never assume they lost copious amounts of weight and have their own battles.  You just want to be them, but you can't.  And you feel like you'll never get there.  You feel HOPELESS.

…You made it!  You got there!  You're 10lbs away from losing 100lbs.  You are confident in your appearance.  You are more than just a pretty hair and a nice face.  You enjoy shopping for clothes!  You love shopping and all the girly things you hated before because you worked hard to get here!

…And you feel good on the inside.  That's what's most important.  You don't feel like a liar.  You feel raw and honest and it hurts sometimes to say things like, "I can't run for 3 days because I'm in a bad head space and I know I'll have a break down emotionally that will probably lead to me eating all of the things," but the thing is that's ok!  You have succeeded so much just in that you know yourself.  You know your triggers.  You are HONEST with yourself and others.  You don't binge and when you do (because you will always struggle with this mental problem of needing food to cope) you don't hide and you bounce right back.  You've found other ways (healthy ways!) to deal with grief or depression or loneliness or boredom and you are not at war with yourself 95% of the time.  It took a lot of work.  It takes work almost every day and sometimes it requires you to leave your kids and family for an hour and a half so you can run or to let the kids play by themselves so you can clean every surface but you are BETTER FOR THEM.  You are a GOOD Mom.  You are a GOOD wife.  Because you take care of yourself.  That matters.  It matters a lot.

So to the Ashley who I know from Christmas 2011 post-baby and just getting started.  The Ashley overwhelmed at the daunting 100lbs she has to lose.  I know it seems daunting.  I know you know it'll take a while.  I know you're embarrassed to walk and you hate to sweat and you'll NEVER be a runner, but don't give up.  Keep going.  You are going to make it and you are going to love who you become.

And to the Ashley who I know from Christmas 2012.  Don't lose heart because you "only" lost 30lbs this year (and are starting to gain it back because you feel down).  Those 30lbs are very important.  They're you're start.  You worked hard to kiss those 30lbs away and learn important lessons about yourself.  Don't give up just because weight isn't coming off as quickly as you'd like.  It takes time to reach our goals and you WILL.  I know you will.  In just a few short months you'll make a decision to leave Weight Watchers and see a Nutrionist and it will change everything.  You'll become a runner.  I know you don't believe me, but it happens.  YOU ARE STRONGER THAN YOU THINK.

And Ashley of now, Christmas 2013.  Don't give up.  Don't give in.  You're so close.  SO CLOSE.  You know so much and you've come so far and you will make it.  You can taste it.  You're a runner and you're almost to a point of learning to MAINTAIN weight for the first time maybe ever instead of being someone trying to lose weight.  Don't go backwards.  Maintain and maintain well and keep challenging yourself and enjoying the physical outlet of exercise.  Keep being honest and raw and open even if it feels awkward and less pivotal now that you're not 250lbs confessing how you binge eat (because Lord knows and you know you can still put food away now like you did back then).

And to YOU.  To you, whoever you are reading this post.  Wether you're beginning or in your middle or almost to the end of whatever goal… don't give up.  Don't think you can't.  Don't underestimate yourself.  Don't limit yourself.  Be honest with yourself.  Keep trying.  Keep pushing.  Keep working.  Take setbacks in stride and then pick up and start again.  Find friends or family to hold you accountable.  Journal privately your thoughts and feelings in regards to your relationship with food and try to figure out why you aren't who you want to be and how you got there.  That work -- the mental work -- it matters as much as all the eating and activity, I promise.  You can do this.  It may take 6 months or a year or two years or three years, and that may seem daunting; I understand that!  But you can do it.  You really can.  Just start.

Paleo: Week 2 - An Update on my Relationship with Binge Eating

Honestly, week 2 was fine.  Until Saturday.  Saturday is the marker for a continued "un-doing" for me if you will, so I suppose I should start this there!

I had spent all week looking forward to my Saturday run and that morning I decided to revamp my playlist.  I love Fun's first album and "The Gambler" is a favorite song.  It's not a good running song, but it holds heavy sentiment and I thought that'd be motivating while I ran.  EH, wrong.  The song came on shuffle in mile 2 and I got so emotional and misty and frustrating by ALL MY FEELINGS I had to stop and walk.  I never walk in my distance runs so I knew this was going to make things rough and unless I walked a lot more I wasn't going to hit my goal of 8 miles.

Listening to that song reminded me of Josh's aFib episode in February and it took me straight back to all those feelings I felt that night I found him unresponsive on the bathroom floor and didn't know if I'd be a widow come morning.  It was so terrifying and I felt it all over again in this run. I tried to push through the feelings and use them to motivate me.  After all, in hindsight I truly believe this scare with his health is what turned my own life around and pushed me to work harder to lose weight and get active, so I wanted desperately to channel that thinking.  But I couldn't.  I ran feeling fearful and feeling the heaviness of the situation and then I had to stop after 2 laps and at 5.6 miles because I just was spent physically and emotionally.  And then I was frustrated I didn't do my 8.

And honestly?  Honestly that bad run has left me crippled.  I cannot get motivated to work out this week since that run and I know that is why.  I know deep down I'm afraid a solid run or being pushed physically doing T25 is time I could become overly emotional and reflective again and I could walk away from the work out feeling discouraged or defeated instead of empowered.


But why does that matter?  Shouldn't I embrace emotion?  Shouldn't I embrace the avalanche of feelings, work through them, and push on?  The problem is I've worked through these feelings.  There's no more work to be done.  The remembering now is just remembering the fear and how it all felt.  It's reliving the emotions.

The truth is I don't struggle with binge eating very much right now.  I still had my days or moments between mid June and the beginning of November when I was maintaining weight and just doing my own thing, but it wasn't like before and if I did binge, I'd find control the next day (or days) and I'd "recover" calorically from the heavy load the day before.

When my diet is extremely rigid I don't binge at all.  I can't.  In this process of losing weight this year I've learned an important thing… I binge eat to cope with what I cannot control: feelings and emotional reactions to situations outside of my control.  When I am on a strict diet, I am in control.  When I feel myself slipping or I feel temptation, I've learned it helps to go clean something because that is controlling my environment.  And speaking of controlled environment, I've learned I'm not as easily triggered to binge when my environment is within my control and predictable: a schedule, a clean(ish) house, a menu, a plan… When things are "play it by ear" or the house is in chaos I struggle more.  It's all mental.

The problem with feeling so emotional on a run is that the emotion cannot be controlled.  I cannot stop feeling this way no matter how hard I try.  And that makes me feel really terrible.  And while it didn't make me want to binge Saturday, I worry about falling apart a different day.  What if I run during nap time tomorrow, for example, and the emotions are still raw and out of control and I lose my mind and go crazy and undo all the work I've put in this month?

The thing about any psychological disorder, binge eating or otherwise, is that once you've learned all your triggers it's easy to become fearful of going anywhere close to the gun when you know it's loaded.  Most days now it's empty and locked away in a drawer, but after Saturday… it's loaded, baby, and I feel that.  And the CONTROLLING part of me hate how it's dictating my life right now, but the victorious part of me is saying, "wait, just wait… wait until your mind tells you you're ready."

And I think that's what I'm taking away from this week.  The key to a healthy lifestyle is diet and exercise.  And that's often the key to weightloss too.  BUT weightloss can still be achieved by a change in your diet OR a change in your activity.  So going into this week I know I'm being less active and while that bothers me and I do miss working out, I know I can make right decisions in my eating and still feel great and have success next week.  I think it's easy to get caught up in how you HAVE to exercise to lose weight.  You don't.  I didn't really for the first year of my dieting and I lost SLOWLY but I did still lose.  If you struggle like I struggle and you are hitting the gym or the pavement and you just feel awful mentally or emotionally and psychologically after your work out my (non-expert) advice is to just stop.  Maybe just like your muscles need days to rest your brain needs time to rest because IF you are like me, every day is more choice after choice in a mental-type battle than it is anything else when it comes to diet.

So having said all that, I'll share the official result.  I was down 0lbs.  This ate me more than it probably should have Sunday morning.  I obsessed about it literally all morning.  I felt bad for my husband because we'd talk about other things awhile and then I'd start talking about my weight again like a crazy obsessed person.  So after giving it a lot of thought I decided to stop Paleo and switch to the slow-carb diet which is basically like Paleo but you don't get to eat fruit or nuts but you DO eat beans.  Yay, sweet beans!  I missed them!  You also get a full cheat day with the diet which I took Sunday before getting started since I'd been strict Paleo to that point.  It's not that I didn't like Paleo, but I wasn't in it for the lifestyle and it wasn't helping me lose anymore.  I probably would have lost this next week, but I needed something new.  I also needed beans back and although I am MISSING fruit a whole lot I feel like the carbs and mass amount of protein I'm getting from the beans is helping me a lot with energy levels.  I'm anxious to see if it improves the quality of my NEXT workout.

So there it is.  All my feelings is a giant-sized post.  It helps me to come here (or more often to a journal and type it all out because I work through it in ways I can't when I talk to people or just sit and think.  I also like to believe I'm somehow helping someone else out there who struggles with emotional eating or binge eating or the need to control or anything like what I mentioned.  There's definitely a need for privacy in the Internet, but there's also a need for those of us who like to share how we lost 90lbs to be honest and real and open to the people around us who are just starting or maybe right where we are but struggling with all the same things.  Talking helps.

Thanks for listening.

5 Minute Friday: Tree

Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker today for her 5-minute writing exercise (focused writing on one word for 5 minutes, no edits or concern for proper punctuation necessary, just honest raw, writing).  The theme this week is tree:

When we were dating we often found ourselves ending our time together at a local lake.  We'd finish up doing the fun things or the errands or being silly or having great conversations and then we'd stroll about the lake until we stopped strolling and parked ourselves under our tree.

It was under that tree we had our first snuggle.  I sat leaned into him and we shared our hopes and dreams.  We talked about family and life goals and what we wanted to feel about how we'd lived life when we were 80.

And then, after 9 months of dating and talking and sharing and living and being so swept up in the so-in-love-you-can-barely-breathe magic, he took me back to our tree and got down on one knee and asked me to live out our dreams with him forever.

Of course I said yes.  And I kissed him there under our tree.

We came back every now and then when we'd walk the lake early in our marriage, but then we moved to a new city.  We hardly go back now.  It's been years since we've seen that tree.

Although that is somewhat sad in certain ways… the not seeing something that was once so important… we now have more.  We have a living tree.  It's routed in us and in this marriage.  The roots twist and link and grow from our lives spent together these last 6 years.  From the fights and the stand offs and hurt feelings and the pain of loss or hurt and the best moments and the worst moments and the beauty in creating new life together and the compromise and the falling deeper in to love because you are unfolding the depths of the others soul and having a lot of fun in the through thick and through thin…

And the new tree has spouted and branches they are forming.  This son.  That son.  Our home.  Our life.  Our pain.  Our joy.  Our failures.  Our success.  Our family.  We are one at the roots of that tree (we are the seed) and coming from us isn't something so stoic and tangible like the tree by the lake we sat under that first time, but it is real and has soul and life and it is ours.