The Encouraging Blogger Award

I was so honored to be nominated for the Encouraging Blogger Award by Headphonesthoughts.  Every week, Deborah posts a “Thought of the Week” that always inspires me to do my best.  If you want to be encouraged, Headphonesthoughts is one of the best places to start.  The Encouraging Blogger Award was created by Lisa Mitchell of Fluxing Well with the ‘purpose to recognize bloggers who bring encouragement’ with their blogs.

The Rules

The Encouraging Blogger Award was created to recognize any blogger who encourages others with his or her posts. Bloggers may encourage others to travel, try new things, have a positive mindset, or overcome adversity, for example. An encouraging blog may encourage other bloggers or give business tips. Many blogs are encouraging and we don’t even realize it. Bloggers nominate fellow bloggers for this award, and nominees write a post answering a few questions. After that, the nominee nominates other bloggers.

• When and why did you start blogging?

I started blogging on MySpace about 15 years ago, when I was a traveling consultant spending 75% of the year on the road.  It was a way to pass the time.  My current iteration started when I decided to run the six major marathons in 10 years, hence “6 in 10.”

• What is your blog about?

My blog started as a running blog to keep me accountable on my marathon training, but has morphed into surviving a global pandemic while coping with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder.  Writing became my therapy, my connection to the outside world.  I believe the power of our own uniqueness, and I’m trying to use my blog to encourage others to embrace theirs.  There is too much of a demand for conformity, especially in a country founded on freedom and choice.

• What is one piece of advice you would give to encourage new bloggers?

Find your own voice, what makes you exceptional.  It will make you stand out in the endless myriad of blogs.

• Which is your favorite time-saving blogging tip or scheduling tool?

Use your Notes feature on your phone to jot down ideas if you aren’t in a position to write.  I’ve always got a half-dozen or so ideas floating through my mind, so I always have something to write about.

• What are your future goals for your blog?

It’s not a blog goal, per se, but to restructure my life so I have more time to create.  I’m just juggling too many things right now to post the amount of content I have amassing in my head.  It would also be nice to grow in readership and see my posts make the world a better place.

I nominate…

Tangela Williams-Spann

The Winter of My Discontent

Unwanted Life

Ruthiee Loves Glamour

Lose Weight With Ang

 

My Thank You Letter to my Body

 After reading Lose Weight with Ang’s beautiful thank you note to her body, I felt compelled to write one of my own.  It has been a rough year, and my body has taken a back seat to my mind, a theme that needs to change as my 50^th birthday looms in the near future.  I hope you appreciate, and I hope you are inspired to write a thank you note to your body!

Enjoy!

PR Performance! October, 2018

Dear body,

Thank you for being so strong and healthy. 

It didn’t start that way.  The danger of the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck made my birth scary for a first-time mother and landed me in the high-risk nursery for the first week of my life.  That week was the last time I spent the night in the hospital, thanks to your strength and health.

I would need that strength and health of body, because my mind was often too broken to properly take care of you.  A mind that refused to eat at an age when food was needed to grow.  A mind driven to submit to hour after hour of training in order to excel in running and figure skating, despite having no natural talent or gifts.  A mind that insists on endless showers and hand washings.  A mind needing to be beaten into submission as the outside world triggered it into chaos.

You have been my rock, my pillar.  No matter what damage I inflicted upon you, you kept getting up, kept living, kept surviving.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year and a half since you put on a show, negative splitting the last five miles of the New York Marathon and finishing under five hours.  I was a lean, mean, running machine, and the future loomed bright.  There were so many things I could do for you to make you even stronger, even faster, even more beautiful.

But my mind was still healing from another breakdown, one that ended my job and my relationship that year.  Marathon training had to be put on hold as I struggled to stay ahead of the bills.

Again, you rose to the occasion, allowing me to take on several physically intensive jobs that required being in top shape.  As a global pandemic of an unknown virus shut down the world, your immune system kept me from succumbing to disease, allowing me to shuffle and adapt as furloughs loomed.

It was a glance in the mirror on a warm July afternoon that I noticed the damage I had inflicted upon you.  My face, always a source of pride, looked crooked.  My angled jaw was now rounded and chubby.  I looked at my body, the lithe sinew that traveled across the five boroughs of New York City, atrophied into a fluffy marshmallow.

My mind broke again, fearing everything from a possible stroke to a horrible disease.  It was in this fear that I realized how much I had taken your strength and health for granted, how many times I had skipped the basic checkups and maintenance, the things I had done to hurt you instead of care for you.  Inside of a world that could not return to normal and hours of isolation, my mind went into a tailspin, sliding down a spiral of self-pity and self-abuse instead of giving you the love and caring you deserved.

By the time I finally made it to the dentist and the doctor, I learned that once again, you had risen to the occasion.  No cavities, no major health issues, and no serious illnesses.  You gave me the gift of being able to heal my mental illnesses without having to battle physical ones as well.  I cannot thank you enough for that.

It is why I end this letter with a promise.  I promise to care for you, to treat you with love, to do everything in my power to nourish the strength and health you have given me all these years so that we can have many, many more years to come.

With Love,

Erin

 

Gratitude for Thanksgiving Day

Inspired by a Facebook post of a friend who lost her husband of 38 years, here is what I am grateful for this Thanksgiving holiday: 

• The right diagnosis for why my brain works the way it does, so I can figure out how to make my life work for me, rather than struggle trying to make me work to have a normal life.
• Strength to walk away from toxic relationships in my life, even when it was safer to stay.
• Passion for marathon running and writing, healthy addictions to deal with the challenges life throws my way.
• Friends who have reached out, supported me, and became my family, even as life got crazier and crazier. 
• Life lessons that were earned from the difficult times, as well as the personal growth that came from them.
• Discovering a voice that has been silent way too long, and the confidence to make it heard.
• Peace in my soul that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, replacing the empty longing that comes from fantasies.
• Hope that fuels the pursuit of my dreams, and dreams that are worth pursuing.
• Looking in a mirror and loving the woman I see in it.

In the face of so much wrong and bad and difficult and challenging in our worlds, we still can find so many things that are good.  Stop and think about your life.  What is on your gratitude list this year?