The last half marathon I ran was on April 1, 2017. It was a double loop around Notre Dame’s campus called the Holy Half — runners had to complete the same 6.5 mile path twice, zigging and zagging through the dorms, past the cathedral, around a lake and in and out of parking lots. I still remember thinking during the run how it should have called the Holy Shit Half because the signs letting you know how many miles you have left to run only applied to the second loop. At mile six, when I was already having to trick myself to keep running, the race markers claimed I had just over a mile to go.

“Holy shit,” I thought, “I’m not even halfway there.”

Before the race, I had encountered my first experiences with bursitis in my right hip that would cause a burning sensation when I started running and then ache after the run. I didn’t know it was bursitis at the time, and, as I am prone to do with difficult situations, I just pushed through ignoring it as best I could. It was a few months after the race that the pain got more intense and spread to my left hip as well. The miles I was running throughout the week had already started to dwindle, but at that point I stopped running all together, relying on long walks to keep in shape and sane. We were less than a year out from the 2016 election and I was still struggling to make sense of a world that felt as if it had been turned upside down.

Finally, when I couldn’t even walk without my hips pleading with me to stop, I met with a physical therapist that a friend recommended, claiming he was a miracle worker. During my appointment, he conducted a brief examination, asking me how long the pain had been going on and when it was at its most severe. When I told him it had been more than six months since my right hip had first started hurting, he looked at me quizzically.

“That’s a long time to be in pain.” He then asked me to sit down opposite him. “Have a seat, tell me what’s been going on.”

I’ve been going to therapy since I was 18. My friends will tell you I am more than happy to cut the small talk and get into the shit of the matter at a moment’s notice, sometimes to their utmost discomfort. But I was thrown by his question. I was here because I wanted to start running again and was for sure I would end up with X-rays and physical therapy exercises with elastic bands and possibly a talk about how I probably wouldn’t be able to run without pain ever again.

I knew he was on the right path as soon as I tried to answer but started crying instead.

Here’s what had been going on. The election had opened up a deep well of grief, anger, and sadness that I didn’t even know had been laying in wait. “Wallowing in my joy,” is how I felt most of the time before November, 2016. I had been sober almost a decade by then. Our kids were thriving. More than 20 years in, my husband and I still enjoyed each other enough to find time for dinners with just the two of us. And I loved my job. Dear lord, how I loved my job.

All my life, all I had wanted to be was a writer. Four years prior, I made a drastic career shift, leaving a full-time marketing role to join an online business publication aimed at the marketing industry. Instead of being a marketer, I was writing about and for marketers. I was getting paid a full-time salary to write. I loved the work. I loved the team I was part of. We all worked remotely, but during the times when the team was together at a conference, I felt as if I had somehow slipped past an entry point I wasn’t supposed to cross — that I had gained access to a group I didn’t have the talent, skill or experience to be part of. Sure, imposter syndrome, but also a telling sign of how amazing I thought everyone else was.

Shortly after the election, the head of the editorial team, someone I respected and admired and who always made me feel a little cooler just because I got to say I worked for him, announced he would be leaving the company shortly into 2017. I remember us all being on a conference call when the announcement was made and one of my colleagues sending me a direct message, “Fuck 2016!”

It wasn’t too much longer after he left that the person I reported to directly decided it was time for him to do something new as well. My already broken heart split open even more. During one of my boss’ last conference calls, everyone was saying their goodbyes, sharing how much they enjoyed working with him. It was coming toward the end of the call and I had been on mute the whole time, not sure how to say, “I wish you the best,” when what I really wanted to ask was, “Why does everything feel like it’s changing for the worse?!”

I knew if I didn’t unmute my line soon, and, at least, offer up a moment of gratitude for getting to work with him, I’d be the only person who didn’t say anything. I broke into the conversation and barely got out his name before my voice cracked and I had to say, “It’s been a pleasure to work with you” in between sobs.

Crying on a conference call that includes the entire company staff is its very own form of professional mortification. If you really want to bring it home, let your voice unexpectedly crack mid-sentence. Within seconds, I began receiving private slack messages asking if I was okay.

It was during that sit-down with the physical therapist, when he asked me to tell him what had been going on, that I figured out the beginnings of my bursitis had coincided with both of these men leaving the company where I worked. With is pen and his clipboard, the therapist wrote down the months when I remembered the pain starting, first in my right hip and then in my left. He was making a timeline, asking me if I remembered anything else happening during this time — these months that led me to stop running.

What had happened was I had lost work managers I respected and admired. But they weren’t just work managers. They were people — and I’ll be the first to admit, men — who had valued my work. My writing. The one thing I have known all my life that I was supposed to be doing. In the book “Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness,” Louise Hay claims hip pain is about not being able to move forward. My inability to accept what was happening career-wise, and make my own moves forward had brought me to a literal, painful standstill in a physical therapist’s office.

It took me three more years to move forward in my career. Sometime during the early months of 2020, I had come out of my office to refill my coffee cup and caught a few minutes of an Ellen Show rerun. She was doing a bit where she was asking questions of audience members who had confessed they hated their jobs. I don’t remember what the person she was interviewing did for a living, but I remember her asking how long they had worked there.

“Two years,” the woman said.

“Wow,” said Ellen, “That’s a long time to do something you hate.”

I immediately remembered the therapist’s words, “That’s a long time to be in pain.” Something about that moment crystalized my next steps. Even though I had spent the previous year searching for a new role to no avail, and had nothing lined up but the possibility of freelance work, it was time to move on.

I’m still not running regularly, but I keep a regular walking routine with different goals from month to month. My goal for June was to walk five miles every day. Twenty-six days in and I’ve covered 130 miles. Some of my five-mile stretches have included mile-long runs, but I’m no where near a 13.2 race. I am moving forward. I’m trying to learn how not to remain stuck, pushing though pain while trying to ignore it. I know this never works anyway. Eventually, whatever it is you’re avoiding finds its way to the surface, either by catastrophe or gradual, persistent despair that fully consumes you.

Or bursitis.