I got up…I had to get up, my inner drill sergeant informed me.

Staring at my reflection in the mirror while I brushed my teeth, I felt my shoulders tense. I was frustrated — irritated that I had to whip myself back into early-wake-up shape and annoyed that mounting responsibilities suddenly demanded more from me again.

The sudden influx of more to do pressed against my mind all at once. Tasks clambered at the back of my brain like a dog desperate to get out the door. I didn’t yet have a full grasp on all of them, but I knew they were important, likely difficult, and many.

Just the thought of them made me grouchy.

And that’s when I remembered…wait a minute — who is in charge here? And what do they expect of me?

I am one person. Literally just one person.

Yes, a very capable person, but still, just a single person.

Can you relate — trying to keep up with the imaginary superhuman your mind has created to tackle the collective responsibilities on your plate?

I found myself pondering that word recently — responsibility. At its root, it’s the ability to respond. Maybe responsibility isn’t about carrying everything. Maybe it’s simply about choosing how we respond to what’s in front of us.

Because we are always responding, aren’t we? The real choice lies in how we do it. And that choice makes all the difference in the world, especially to the person living inside your own head, which I could argue is the most important person in the room.

This drill sergeant of mine likes to take over in the face of big challenges. And I admit, they’ve been very effective.

And yet, I’m learning there is another voice available to me. One that is quieter, steadier, and far more powerful.

When I shoulder everything, as my drill sergeant insists I should, I dive into action-action-action. When I’m in action, I can’t ask for help or look at the resources around me because explaining things slows me down and there are important things to accomplish!

But when I pause the drill sergeant’s narrative, someone calmer and clearer comes to the surface. I stop trying to carry everything at once and accept that I am one single person who cannot manage it all alone.

Then, I can focus on the next right task.

Sometimes that task includes asking for help. Sometimes it includes resting. Sometimes it includes taking action. But when I focus only on the next right thing, whether done alone or with the help of my village, I’m often surprised by the immense strides accomplished by the end of the day.

You don’t have to do everything, Ashley. You only have to do the next right thing. I heard my inner voice say while brushing my teeth.

And at that moment, my day changed.

It became brighter and more manageable. Dare I say I even had fun? There was suddenly less to do because I only had one thing to do — the next right thing.

People ask how it was for me to run across America. They think about the entire thing and can’t imagine taking on such a challenge.

But I never ran across America all at once.

On day one, I wasn’t thinking about New York. I was thinking about running across the Golden Gate Bridge with friends breathing in the fresh ocean air.

That was manageable.

And the next day, I did the next mile. And then the next one after that.

When my inner drill sergeant takes over, it demands that I stare at all the miles collectively because look how many there are!

But when I pause and remember that I am one person — calm, clear, confident — I run one mile at a time.

I clicked the cap back onto my toothpaste and tucked the tube into the drawer. I turned the water warm and washed the sleep from my face. I pulled on my clothes and prepared to head to the gym.

And the day unfolded, as it always does, with or without added pressure, one task at a time.

And I did not feel overwhelmed.

I felt accomplished.

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I know, barf. Stick with me though—I’ve got something real here.

If you had told me six weeks ago that I’d be doing this, I would’ve punched you in the face and told you that you can’t put frosting on a turd.

Affirmations, in my opinion, do not work when life feels like a shit buffet. That’s what the kids these days are calling “toxic positivity,” right?

Six weeks ago, I wasn’t whispering anything to myself except, “What are you even doing?” and it wasn’t because I didn’t know the rules.

What you focus on expands. Yes, I know.
You are what you think about. Yes, I know.
You get to choose your thoughts. Yes, I KNOW.

When you wake up questioning the point of everything…the endless work, the long hours, the laundry that never ends, the stacking bills—and is that a new noise coming from the car?—whispering “I am a champion” feels like a joke.

So instead, I said the truth.

I am exhausted and I am drowning. Physically, emotionally, logistically drowning.

And when you’re drowning, you don’t pretend you can swim. You look for a life-ring and rest or wait it out until you spot dry land.

You rest.

You wait it out.

Here’s the thing. After my book launched, people kept asking, “What’s next?”

And with my pride inflated to the size of a hot air balloon (because I had the answer!), I wrote about taking time to rest before moving on to the next thing.

Eye roll.

Did I really think a few days off would refill a battery that had been draining for over 12 months through the hire of my first successive Executive Director and edit, design, and launch of my book? Not to mention all the planning and people-ing…

I was proud of myself for taking a few days, when what I really needed was a few months.

Space to not hyper-focus on work, growth, and productivity.
Permission to skip my alarm.
To take my time at the gym.
Read a fiction book that had absolutely nothing to do with productive outcomes.

And instead of doing all that, I took a few days off, then hopped right back to it.

I worked until I broke.

I began to wake up, morning after morning, to find there was no forward drive—just the sinking feeling that the rest of my life would be one long, looming to-do list unless I quit everything and moved to a cabin in the woods. (And yes, of course my family would have to come with me. Even if that wasn’t their dream.)

As it turns out, quitting my job and moving off the grid isn’t actually what I want or need.

I just needed to rest. Like, really rest.

So I did.

I slept.
I moved my body without rushing to the next thing.
I drank peppermint tea with honey curled up on the couch with a book—book, after book, after book.
I did the bare minimum. (My skin just crawled typing that…gasp. The horror.)

And I don’t know if it’s the shift into spring, or the fact that I finally took my foot off the gas for eight weeks, but something shifted.

My thoughts feel bright.
When people ask me how I am, I actually want to tell them.
I feel that steady confidence returning: I can do this.

This being…goals I can actually imagine working toward.

This morning, I whispered affirmations in the mirror.

And because I rested, they feel true.

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The messy middle is a precarious place to be. It takes time and patience, both of which feel in short supply. And sharing the messy middle publicly? Well, that’s either very brave or very stupid.

What if I’m too harsh?

What if I’m wrong?

What if I can’t see what I can’t see because it’s a blind spot?

What if I mean well but make unintentional mistakes.

There’s a fine line between being vastly misunderstood and being given the benefit of the doubt.

Lately, I find myself staring out the window, thinking through thoughts in my head, wondering about the way things are and where we go from here. Mostly, I’ve been carrying a heaviness—one that makes it difficult to feel stable. The constant noise, the uncertainty, the outrage—it pulls at my focus and leaves me feeling both activated and exhausted at the same time. My heart breaks.

The last time my heart broke like this, I quit my job, ran across the country, and created a movement. So, you know, I’m trying not to do that for the sake of my family and the things I love.

Still, I run. During recent miles, I kept mulling over my feelings of anger and frustration. So much feels outside of my control. And that’s when I remembered that my mom lived with a body that didn’t function properly. Each morning she woke up, and much was outside of her control. If it was a good MS day, she’d be able to accomplish more and feel less pain. If it was a bad MS day, the most she could do was lie on the couch and pray for a better day tomorrow. Through it all, she remained hopeful. She never got an answer for why her body malfunctioned and moved beyond her control, and yet she showed up each day.

She didn’t need an answer to choose her actions.

Now, I realize that I never understood the depth of her strength—to find joy among the pain. I am learning it more each day.

I find this skill especially important because the messy middle can take a really, really long time to figure out.

When much feels out of my control, it’s that much more important to focus on what I can control. When I feel unmoored, I focus on what I’ve learned from the messiness of the past:

Exercise. In whatever form suits you, from running-to dancing-to walking-to stretching, exercise is an absolute must. If you don’t exercise, start now. If you do exercise, don’t sacrifice the time you create for it for anything else. It’s a sacred space that you deserve. In itself, exercise resists negativity.

Meditate. I took up meditation in 2021 to calm my nervous system, and the rewards have been far beyond what I could have imagined. It’s my daily check-in with God and the collective conscience, and beyond the long list of scientific benefits I receive by meditating for at least 13 minutes each day, I get a consistent, resonating feeling that it’s all going to be okay. No matter what shit is happening, I feel the undercurrent of that truth.

Journal. Brain dump. Get your thoughts out. See what bubbles up. See what you’re able to let go of. It’s worth the five minutes it takes to sit and do this.

Pray. God exists. I don’t understand why things happen the way they do, but I do understand that I have the power to change my thoughts and actions—and those things are amplified when I pray, am grateful for the good that exists, and ask clearly for what I need. It doesn’t mean I always get it, especially not immediately, but it definitely can’t hurt, and at a minimum, it helps me stay centered on gratitude and what it is exactly that I want.

Finally, give yourself some time and space—to feel, to grieve, to learn, to grow. If you don’t take care of yourself, you’ll be raising the white flag long before the real work even begins.

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Personal writings detailing Ashley’s journey writing a book about running across America for her mom, MS advocacy, and wrestling with self-worth.

“Wrestling with self-worth.”

Ouch.

Thanks, AI.

And then my conscience chimed in:
Is it incorrect, though?

Well… damn.

Buy Ashley's Book, The Long Run Home

What started as a mildly insulting summary quickly turned into a mirror I didn’t ask for. Truth has a way of stinging before it clarifies. That doesn’t make it wrong. It makes it real—and worth considering.

So I looked up the definition of self-worth.

Self-worth, according to the internet, is the internal belief that you are inherently valuable and deserving of love and respect—regardless of achievements, failures, productivity, income, or external validation. It’s different from self-esteem, which rises and falls with success and approval. Self-worth is meant to be steady. Inherent. Internal. Unconditional.

Cool, cool, cool.

When I look at it, and myself, this has been an adulthood struggle for me—and I’ll happily blame capitalism for at least part of that.

We live in a culture that ties value to output. To what you produce, accomplish, monetize, scale, optimize. There’s even a name for it—internalized capitalism—and once you see it, you can’t unsee it. We’re groomed early to believe that worth is measured, rest is earned, and busyness is proof of value—all things that feel in conflict with the hours, days, and years I spend rearing my children (of which there is technically output, but we don’t get paid to do).

So when I read prompts about “decoupling self-worth from output,” I nod along… and then immediately hit a wall.

Because I have a job, and a family.
And I want to keep working, and also spend time with them and do things I enjoy. And I can’t help but feel behind unless I set my alarm to early AF o’clock.

So yes, my self-worth is not supposed to come from my work.
But my work is still necessary to live in this system.

And then, as of late, I can’t help but notice my mind spirals a little further, because my job—meaningful as it is—can feel painfully small compared to the big problems. It doesn’t dismantle systems. It doesn’t fix structural injustice. It doesn’t single-handedly rewrite the rules of a culture that exhausts people and calls it ambition.

Last week, someone gave me this advice:

“Read history. This place has always been a shit-hole. So pick some things you like to do and do that. Pick some people you like to be around and be around them.”

Crude. Maybe oddly comforting. And also slightly irritating, because dammit, I do want to fix it all—not in a god-complex way, but in a why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along-and-let-eachother-live kind of way.

It reminded me of something my pastor once told me years ago, when I was deep in thought about life stages and productivity. I was fixated on how children arrive when adults are often at peak productivity—when time and energy are scarce—and then much later, when there’s more time, there’s often less energy and the inability to reproduce. It felt inefficient and obviously backwards.

His response? He just smiled and said, “Try not to think about it too much.”

As in: there is no solution here. So don’t burn yourself alive trying to find one.

I live in a capitalist culture.

I live in a place where my work helps people—but doesn’t fix problems for everyone.

Would I change it if I could? Yes. But for now, I focus on a necessary foundation of wellness that comes before existential despair.

Before I spiral, I do these things every day:

• Exercise early each day

• Meditate before the sun rises

• Journal before checking notifications

• Pray often

Not to save the world, but to save myself.
Not to absolve myself of responsibility, but to stay grounded enough to keep showing up.

Maybe the best I can hope for is that these practices help me feel a little more stable. A little more worthy of the joy I find. A little more present in my work. A little more capable of softening the edges of life for the people I am capable of helping.

If the darkness feels big—and it often does—then maybe the best I can do each day is simply spread light where I can. Not everywhere, immediately. Not on a mass scale. Just here.

And maybe that’s not wrestling with self-worth.
Maybe it’s just learning how to live in this place my friend likes to call a shit-hole.

Buy Ashley's Book, The Long Run Home

Listen, I know you know this if you’ve been following me for a while. If you haven’t—welcome, hello. I wrote a book about running across America for my mom and multiple sclerosis that you can find here.

But back to the point: I literally wrote a book. Which, by the way, is so fucking cool in a way that I am absolutely not humble or ashamed about. I find this remarkable because, for the longest time, I made an effort to be humble—dare I say meek—about my accomplishments. I didn’t always know how to react when someone found out that I had run across America, built America’s Longest Relay Run, and raised millions of dollars for MS—and they were standing there, right in front of me, floored. I’d get nervous. I could feel my cheeks flush, thinking, I wonder what they’ll expect me to do now—am I supposed to sound trumpets somehow? Or could I just talk about my weird bathroom misadventures like every other runner.

What I’ve found is that saying “thank you” squashes any unnecessary humbleness or social anxiety that would bubble up. I learned this from Montel Williams, actually, when he gently scolded me like a child years back at a news station in Denver.

“Don’t do that, Ashley,” he said, stopping abruptly in the hallway as we walked back to the green room after being interviewed on stage. “I just gave you a compliment, and it’s insulting to me—and to the fact that I want to give you a compliment—to deflect it like that. All you have to do is say thank you.”

He was right. No one had ever called me out like that before. Deflecting a compliment doesn’t make you look humble. It sends the gift back to the sender, unreceived. I’ve learned over the years to say thank you and to be proud of my achievements. It helps me know what I am worth. I worked for it, after all.

So when I say that I wrote a book, I am in awe—deeply grateful and proud that The Long Run Home is in print, in real life, in my hands and in the hands of readers. I open it up and smell its pages. When I read it—as I do often, flipping the spine open to any odd page—I cry.

I wrote this—this story that captures some of the most important chapters of my life and, from the messages and reviews I receive daily, it is a story that resonates far beyond my own experience. It also deeply honors what my family went through—especially my father, the unsung hero of it all.

Publishing The Long Run Home was an eight-year journey. Holding it in my hands now, I read its pages and laugh and cry all over again. I’m touched by the messages from those of you who are laughing and crying right alongside me. Despite my early affection for hyper-independence, sharing this with you has been an honor of a lifetime and is the whole point. All along, we were meant to do this together.

If you’ve read the book and feel inclined, your words—shared with me, in an online review, and within your community—help carry this story forward in ways I could never do alone.

Thank you so much for being here — and thank you for being my family.

This is the mantra that keeps me grounded in the present. It arrives unprompted from my mind—This is your life—and causes me to take note of what I’m doing, because the thing I’m doing at that very moment is my life, made up of the thousand tiny decisions I make each day.

This is your life—at the gym, warming up to lift, workout, or run. In these moments, I feel proud that I make time for my health and fitness when there are so many other responsibilities pulling at me. At times, the mantra makes me feel anxious—that I don’t have more time to workout if the day doesn’t allow it. And still, there’s space to make more room for it ahead, if I choose to create it.

This is your life—right now, at this moment, while I type this in draft form. My inner critic is loud: no one wants to read this. And this, too, is my life—overcoming that voice and deciding to write it anyway. Who cares if no one wants to hear this? Literally, no one cares, except that inner critic, who is quite the little asshole if I do say so myself. The act of writing it is the point, I have to remind myself.

It comes to me while scrolling social media, when in the moment I know deep down there are better things to be doing with my time. Those are the moments I am both aware and stuck—aware that I should stop scrolling and choose to do something else, while also living with the feeling of just wanting to space out for a little while. When I’m not careful, a little while turns into a long while.

How much of my life will I spend consuming the hot takes of other people’s opinions?

It comes to me while I’m organizing the closet, doing dishes for the thousandth time, packing up the car to go snowboarding. Activities with the kids are the moments I love most when the mantra comes to me—when I feel deep down that the time we steal together truly is my life.

I say that now, writing in a blissfully quiet (and clean) house while they’re all at school for the day. The clock ticks toward 4 p.m., when they’ll rush in with their noise and emotions and ssstttuuuffffff, and I’ll have to remind myself (sometimes through gritted teeth) that a cluttered mudroom really isn’t that big of a deal.

This is your life.
This is your life.
This is your life.

The prompt draws me to the question: Am I being, right now, who I want to be in the future?
If I want to be a writer, then I must write now.
If I want 15 minutes to walk between meetings on long workdays, then I must put it in my calendar—and also get up from my desk to do it.
If I want to make time to eat, workout, and connect, then I must do those things now.

There is no future place I can reach where I’ll finally feel like I’ve earned the space for the things that really matter. I already have the ability to create it—and so do you. No one is coming to give us more time.

It’s already here.

This is your life.

A friend asked the question from the front row at my book launch event, right as we were wrapping up the program and closing Q&A. Her words hung in the air like a challenge. What would come after publishing a book—an accomplishment many dream of but few ever reach?

It wasn’t the first time I’d been asked something like that. After I finished my solo 3,288-mile run across America, people wondered the same thing: What now? “You’ve achieved something monumental at only twenty-five years old,” an older gentleman told me. “What could you possibly do next that measures up?”

Big achievements tend to stand like mountains along the trajectory of life—massive mounds of uphill effort leading to an apex. And once you get to the top, you look around and may wonder: Now what?

I’m reminded of a scene from my book, when I was running up Loveland Pass in Colorado—the tallest point in the entire event:

My lungs ached. My muscles throbbed. My whole body pleaded with me to stop.

I refused.

Running a switchback, I looked out at a stretch of stunning mountain peaks that went on for miles, far beyond what I could see. The raw beauty of the range at this height was powerful; it stilled me in my place.

What a dazzling place, this earth, I heard from within.

I marveled at the truth. I could not disagree.

Nearing a peak doesn’t show you the end of the journey—it reveals all the other peaks still waiting. From that height, “What’s next?” isn’t just logical; it’s inevitable.

But as my book launch approached, what I focused on most wasn’t the next mountain. It was the fundamentals—the practices that carried me to this summit in the first place.

I stocked our kitchen with groceries and prepared fresh food. I learned that lesson the hard way the day I launched my author website and then got sucked into a vortex of social media messages and congratulations. Hours passed before I realized I hadn’t eaten or even paused for a moment. The headache was bad and my stomach grumbled audibly — it took hours to rectify and valuable time away from my family.

I cleared my work calendar for the day after the launch event. I didn’t want to pack my schedule or talk about the book nonstop. Instead, I wanted to wake up without an alarm, exercise, meditate, and sit by the fireplace reading a fictional book with peppermint tea in hand. I wanted to stare out the window and watch nature be nature.

I reminded myself—intentionally—that I am more than this book and more than my work at MS Run the US. That may sound obvious, but I’ve also seen and experienced how easy it is to believe that we must keep incessantly moving, doing, and creating without pausing or all will be lost.

These practices held me as the unavoidable let-down approached. Because it would come, of course, and the severity and duration depended on my ability to detach from the thing I had achieved and focus on the mundane, every day tasks I trained myself to feel good about.

And I did—weathering the storm like a cute little summer sprinkle. (Oh, dear ego. You think this one thing defines me? Come at me, bro!)

So what’s next?

Honestly… quite a lot. That’s why my alarm is still set for 5:35 a.m. It’s why my workouts and quiet morning rituals remain the anchors of my day. It’s why I celebrate in ways people sometimes find unusual—extra workouts, quiet moments with books and birds, quick naps under cozy blankets. These habits are what steady me across both peaks and valleys. They’re the bedrock I return to as I begin climbing towards what’s next.

I could tell you what projects I’m lining up, but instead I want to leave you with this:

Build a foundation you can stand on no matter what rises up in front of you. Because what I should have said to my friend that night was this:

What’s next is a workout and a nap—so I can begin again, rested, ready, and blazing with my LFG energy, fire emojis included.

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I find it incredible that it took me eight years to publish this book. Eight. Years. Four years writing, two years creating and pitching the proposal, and another two years giving it to God. Okay, God, this is your story, I prayed. I’ve done all I can. I’ll wait until you show me the door. I’ve learned I often have to come to the end of myself before God moves—lest my sneaky ego try to take credit for the work.

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And yet, those eight years went by in a blink. Which feels comical when I think about how many times I was frustrated with the process and wished it would just move the fuck along.

But now, looking back, it’s so clear that this is the right time. And I’m truly glad it didn’t come sooner.

Eight years ago I didn’t have the full breadth of friendships that filled the room at my book launch event on Monday night. Thinking about the love they poured over me during launch week still makes me teary. Years from now, it won’t be the media interviews I remember—it will be the long drives they made to be there that night and the way my local friends decorated my lawn and driveway launch morning with words of love, encouragement, and praise.

I opened the garage door, ready to head to the gym, and burst into tears at the chalk messages covering the concrete.

“I can’t take credit,” Aaron said. “Your friends woke up at 4am to do this.”

My friends—with kids and jobs and families and lives that move as fast as mine—pulled themselves from bed in the dark to decorate my house before dawn. I am still stunned. What can I even say about that?

Many of them joined me again on Monday afternoon to set up the venue for the celebration. As we carried boxes from my car and built balloon towers, I held back tears of gratitude—because time is the most precious resource, and they chose to spend theirs helping me get the space ready. Them being there overwhelmed me in a very touching way.

While I bounced from promotion opportunities in New York City to local TV interviews and radio broadcasts, I kept thinking about the people holding it all together at MS Run the US. Christian Jensen, our new Executive Director, and long-time staff members Carrie Berg and Haley Halverson have kept the work steady and growing through every challenge since they joined me in 2021. Their diligence makes it possible for me to step away from my desk and share our story with the world—something that simply wasn’t possible eight years ago. And I’m grateful all over again for the timing.

I want to say I’m lucky, but I also know these relationships are a circle. I give too—and an important part of giving is being willing to receive, a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way. There is much in the receiving. It doesn’t make you weak; it makes you loved. And when you have love to return in the ways that are uniquely yours, nothing is owed.

The Long Run Home is out in the world, and I’ve never been more prepared for this moment or the miles that lie ahead. I feel deep gratitude in my heart and a fire in my bones that burns brighter with each passing day. The miles continue—and I am not running them alone.

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• Why did I follow my gut to run across America when the idea came to me?

• Why did I never give up on MS Run the US through years of challenges and adversity?

• Why did I believe I should start writing a book with a toddler and baby in tow?

Looking back on the last sixteen years—on what’s come from a single yes, and my willingness to begin and not stop—I am profoundly grateful. More than anything, I want to pass that courage on.

I’ve been eager to write to you. I wrote to you so many times in my head while running. But y’all—I AM PUBLISHING A BOOK (Eeeek!)—and that has kept my days packed with time-sensitive tasks to stay on track for launch. These are things I love: editing (oh, so much editing!), cover design, interior layout, typesetting, and gathering endorsements so good I cry each time I read them. And still, I want to dish out all the details—so, LFG.

Celebrity Foreword – the juicy details!

You heard it here first – Robin Arzón: Queen of Peloton, 2x NYT best selling author, and a powerhouse woman in business has written the foreword to my memoir, The Long Run Home!

WHAT?! Fuck yeah! Now gather round the fire for the tale:

Robin and I crossed paths in 2012 when she applied to run on the inaugural MS Run the US Relay team in honor of her mother living with MS. At the time, I was pulling the event together with duct tape and barbed wire, and she—along with fifteen other adventurous teammates—was the hope and prayer holding the whole damn thing together.

Robin met me on the road for her segment in Utah’s Mormon country where she showed up to the motorhome in booty shorts and a leather jacket. She brought eleven pairs of shoes – both fashion and running – and played curated beats from her speakers each morning. Then I’d drive her in a worn and sturdy Toyota Camry to an obscure gravel road among the Wasatch mountain range, drop her off, and point east. It was gritty and real – littered with suffering, joy and so much growth that we could both taste it.

Afterward, Robin became one of the most recognized figures in the fitness and wellness industry as Peloton’s Vice President of Fitness Programming and Head Instructor. Known for one of her many mantras, “If it’s not a Hell yes, it’s a no,” I am deeply honored that endorsing my book was a Hell yes for her—and that she chose to use her time and voice to support it.

Publishing Date

Write it down: November 13th—the day the world finally gets my book! A date eight years in the making.

Eight. Years.

It’s easy to track because I started writing when Sierra was six months old. A tweet caught my eye, promoting a free webinar about writing a book in 30 days, and I dropped my name in the registration box. Afterwards, I had just enough fuel to begin so I set my alarm for 3:45 a.m. with the label: Write Like a Motherfucker. Spoiler alert: my book wasn’t written in 30 days. But by then I was already on my way.

That’s the thing about beginning – if you plan to finish what you start, simply keep going until it’s finished, no matter how long it takes.

Motherfuckers write at 3:45 a.m.—because that’s when it fits into the family schedule. They write in the gaps of their lives because they love to write and have a story to tell. They write for years—writing, editing, pitching, and praying—with patience learned the uncomfortable way, because that’s what it takes. I came to understand and appreciate that greatness isn’t a race.

A lot has happened in eight years. And I can say with full confidence that this book carries eight years of growth, learning, commitment, and assurance within its pages—and I am so proud of the finished product.

Pre-order + Purchasing

For now, it’s a bit of hurry-up-and-wait as the purchasing details get finalized. But I cannot wait to share the pre-order and book website page with you in just a few weeks.

Thank you for walking this long-ass road with me. If we’ve got to walk anyway, we may as well walk toward something exceptional, right? I can’t wait for you to read the story of my run across America—and see what it sparks in you to begin.

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We had given it valid attempts, and after two mildly hurt-filled spills—that he recalled as severely memorable—he refused to get back on a bike. I couldn’t blame him. The thought of falling from my bike at speed and gashing road burns along my arms and body had crossed my mind many times. The only difference between AJ and me was that I had taught myself to ignore these images.

I didn’t want to force him, but the girls and I are bike riders. The activity fills our warm days as we trek around our rec trail community—to school, to parks, to ice cream shops, and to friends. I was making it work with AJ towed in a Burkie, but he was nearing 60 lbs in weight, and pulling him—especially uphill—was getting ridiculous.

I was hopeful when purchasing the tag-along, but the thought of balancing on a bike terrified him. When I showed him the setup, he sobbed. I coaxed him onto the frame while gazing at his tear-streaked face.

“I promise you we won’t fall,” I said. “I promise you I won’t let you fall.”

I had never biked with a tag-along before. I prayed I wasn’t lying to him.

Now, slowly and steadily riding down the path with him at my back, I heard him repeating the mantra I asked him to say if he felt scared: You can do it, AJ. His voice, whispered and shaking, clung to the words like a life vest on stormy waters.

We were on our way to the library, less than a mile from our house—a reasonable goal. We’d bike there and back, with an option to stop half way at Ms. Emily’s house to ride the zip line if we needed it.

We needed it.

Later, we coasted into our driveway and AJ hopped off the bike. We had visited Ms. Emily’s zip line and the library and made it back home without any spills. Still, he was shaken.

“Mama, I don’t want to do that again.”

I dropped to one knee and took him in my arms. “Hey, bud, that was a lot of hard work, and you did so well! Let’s eat some food and see how you feel after sleeping tonight. I think your brain needs some rest.”

Of the things I’ve learned from managing MS Run the US—and the plethora of challenging experiences that happen when a person pushes themselves to their physical and mental limits—it’s this: there’s not much that can’t be managed after a heaping plate of french fries, a shower, and sleep.

The next day after work I saw his bike with training wheels out in the driveway. He had been practicing on his own, Aaron told me—and that’s when I knew we’d made it to the other side of his fear.

Overcoming fear doesn’t have to be complicated—here are a few steps that helped us:

1. Lower the bar for your first few attempts. Take your overall goal and break it down. If you want to bike to the park, which might be a four-mile round trip, start smaller. Choose a closer destination and work up to your goal. We wanted to bike to the park, and to get there we started with a closer destination—and even that took longer than I thought.

2. Use words to your advantage. Action moves us through fear, and positive reinforcement helps. We can do things that scare us, and picking a mantra to repeat when the doubting voice gets too loud only accelerates our success.

3. Replenish, rest, and recover. Our brains need time to reset. Often, the urge to quit shows up when our nervous system is stretched too far and overstimulated. Quitting when you’re exhausted and shaken is easy. I encourage you to wait. Give yourself what you need and revisit it once you’re in a better spot.

Now, AJ begs me to go biking and skips happily to the frame while he buckles on his helmet. He sings from behind me and hollers, “See yaaaaa!” to his sisters when we pass them on the left. He calls himself my “motor motor” while he pumps the pedals and laughs for us to go faster. I can tell he’s proud of himself and is also having a blast.

I feel proud, too.

And each time we bike, I’m reminded that fear shrinks with action, process, and rest. When we create boundaries, consistently take small steps, and create space for recovery, we often find strengths we never knew we had—inside stories we once thought weren’t for us.

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Wind is needed, certainly. But I can’t control the wind—I can only harness it when it comes, and wait patiently when it doesn’t. I’ve had to revise my by-whens more than I’d like to count—like when I told myself I’d have a solid book proposal and a literary agent within six months of writing. (That was in 2017.)

Still, I’ve hit significant by-whens that mattered—ones that changed everything. And today, I am deeply excited (and overwhelmed) to share another. Before I reveal the big announcement though, I’m taking you back to my run across America in 2010 to one of my favorite moments in San Francisco. This is an excerpt from Chapter 4: The Date Is Set of my memoir — the morning a family gifted a car to my non-profit just days before I began my crossing, and ultimately, the launch of something much bigger than me.

Chapter 4: The Date Is Set [excerpt]

Sitting in Skye’s Toyota—which was now my charity’s Toyota—I ran my hands across the top of the smooth leather steering wheel.

They knew we needed a support vehicle because I had asked them where to buy an inexpensive moped, which had been my cheap solution for getting to and from the route each day from the camper.

Sitting in the Camry now, I realized how silly that plan had been—me, loading up my running gear, food, and supplies into a moped basket. Nate, driving down the highway with me teetering on the back, heading to and from the route every day for six months after running a full marathon—through rain, snow, and whatever else we’d face until we reached New York.

Really?

I chuckled at myself, shaking my head.

Even in my lumbering, I felt conviction. Here I was—recently introduced to this family by a man I’d never met—sitting in a car they’d intended for a charity the entire year I trained for this event. Then I arrived at their home, having created a charity that needed a car.

How else could I explain these remarkable coincidences except to believe that it was all meant to be? It reminded me of the RV parked out front, which had appeared just forty-six days before I was scheduled to leave for the start of the run.

“We don’t have a motorhome,” Nate had argued. “We’re supposed to leave next month! We need to discuss pushing the date back.”

But I wouldn’t. I held the line.

“If we change the date now, that means we never believed it was there for us in the first place. You know what I’m talking about,” I said. “You gave me the book.”

The book was The Secret, one of his favorites that he’d handed it to me shortly after we started dating. It put words to something I’d already learned from my parents—that intention is a tangible force.

Like when my mother’s abilities fluctuated from fluid, to manageable, to crippling and back again due to her MS. The good days would link together until they were suddenly swallowed by the immobility of the disease.

During those times, she’d lie on the couch for days, only getting up for trips to the bathroom. My parents bought no wheel chair for help; installed no guardrails for balance.

Instead, my father would wrestle the deadweight of her body onto a cobalt blue office chair with wheels. She’d wobble around — ever present, yet as cooperative as a hundred pound bag of pudding — and he’d push her from the living room, through the kitchen, to the bathroom.

There, he’d hoist her to the toilet, wait, then lift her back to the chair, and onto the couch. Over and over, until her strength returned.

This bathroom routine happened often during a relapse on account of the disease’s effects on her nervous system, making it hard for her to sense urgency—it was an accident waiting to happen if she waited too long.

During the daytime, she wore underwear to preserve her dignity. At night, she wore adult diapers on account of all the laundry.

From the outside, this looked like madness. Why not just get a wheelchair?

“Ashley,” my Father explained. “What you allow continues. If we put her in a wheelchair, we may never get her out.”

They weren’t above these things. Just, they’d wait it out until the very last possible moment, when all other options, like an office chair that didn’t represent the unbearable weight of disability, were no longer feasible. And they’d make it feasible much longer than most.

Truly, it was work…A lot. Of. Work.

And MS could be cruelly unpredictable—sometimes symptoms faded, sometimes they didn’t, and one could hardly know which it would be. Still, their intention remained. It was a clearing for mobility to return and they’d hold space for it as long as they could manage.

And now I had a guy who believed in that kind of thinking, too.

“This day holds just as much promise as the ones before it. You know this, Nate,” I encouraged as we spoke about my event timeline. “It’ll happen.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s just—we’re running out of time. Eight weeks out and we don’t have a motorhome or the money to do it yet. It makes me anxious. What are we going to do?”

“We can’t think about what we don’t have. We have to focus on what we know,” I said, grabbing his shoulders. “We proceed, expecting it to appear. Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“The date is set. March 16th, we leave Wisconsin. March 22nd, I run across the Golden Gate Bridge towards New York. Right?”

He stood tall. “Right.”

And, with everything we dreamed we needed in hand, that’s exactly what happened.

To this day, that story still pushes me to focus on what’s possible over what the world and my inner critic tells me is realistic. Because it was never about the car, or the date, or the run. It’s about what happens when you commit to an idea no matter the circumstances—when you move forward, even before the road is paved. And when the road doesn’t look like what you expected, you find a way.

When you believe in something you feel to be true, rather than what you see.

And now, years after I first sat down to write the story of that journey, I finally get to share it with the world as a book!

📘 My memoir publishing date is set!

AHHHH, WHAT?!

Yes! After years of searching for the right path to publish—through frustrations, dead ends, and delays—the date is set!

The full manuscript is currently in the hands of my editor and I can’t wait to share the rest of the story with you in print.

Soon, I’ll be sharing the exact date it can be purchased and other exciting announcements (like the celebrity writing my foreword & other major details!).

🛣️ Want to be the first to hear the official announcement?

If you aren’t already, Subscribe here to my Substack to get the details before anyone else, sneak peeks of book excerpts all summer long, and other exciting giveaways.

Stay tuned.

And thank you, always, for being part of the wind in my sails.

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But what happens when those dreams stall? When your motivation fades, and your energy dips just weeks into your fitness journey, entrepreneurial pursuit, or personal growth plan?

That’s the turning point — where most dreams die. Unless you plan in advance or learn to shift focus: From the moon... to the dirt.

The dirt – that gritty, dark matter beneath you. It’s real. It’s hard. It’s the bare minimum you can require of yourself that’s needed on the days when your big goals feel galaxies away.

Because here’s the truth: the moon will feel out of reach. And unless you’ve laid down some ground — some non-negotiable, low-bar action — you won’t have anything to stand on.

I know this from experience.

For a long time, while I maintained my nonprofit in its inception years, often I wished for a way out. "Please," I’d pray, "Just send someone else to take over so I can move on." I was raising a family, paying myself a meager salary, and molding myself into a role I didn’t especially feel thrilled about. How did I go from an active wellness professional to keeping up with tax forms, accounting deadlines and never ending emails? Dear God, I just wished to be outside.

But I made one promise to myself: If runners applied for my 3,260-mile relay for MS, I’d continue to lead it — no matter how I felt.

And every year, runners applied. First, it was a few extra. Then double. Then more. We eventually had more applicants than spots for the 21 relay segments — many applying well before the deadline.

I kept showing up. Not because I felt like it, but because I had laid my ground rule and committed it to God. And eventually, it worked — not because I was constantly inspired, but because I had already identified the smallest action I could consistently take.

Now, over fifteen years later, I no longer dream of leaving my role. I’ve evolved — as a leader, as a person, as someone who’s still learning the value of consistency over perfection. I don’t depend on old rules to keep me moving forward. But I do constantly ask myself: What’s the least I can do today that aligns with who I am and my goals?

So what will it take for you to show up today? Maybe it’s not the number on the scale or inches off your waist, but rather whether or not you can tie your gym shoes. Forget the scale. Can you lace up today? Great, let’s fucking go. What will it require you to show up for your side hustle? Don’t worry about launching the store, but rather whether or not you have the supplies to simply do the work. Maybe it’s not the publishing deal, but rather a commitment to 500 words a day — period, even if they suck.

We often obsess over shining bright — chasing the sun — and forget to feel the solid dirt beneath our soles that keeps us solid all the while.

If I shoot for the moon, I can’t promise I’ll land there. But I can promise myself a hundred smaller, doable ways to make myself proud — and then actually allow myself to feel proud, no matter the outcome. What sustains me — in my nonprofit, my workouts, and my writing — isn’t raw ambition. It’s my deep commitment to the least I can do... and doing it anyway.

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And the daffodil isn’t the whole garden. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. If the garden were filled with multitudes of daffodil bulbs, it would bloom once for a couple of weeks each spring and be void of color for the rest of the warm season, leaving us with only a short period of beauty—and then disappointment thereafter.

A well-cultivated garden blooms in stages. The crocuses first, followed mid-spring by tulips and irises. Into summer, the perennials—phlox and daylilies—take the stage. Ending in autumn, the asters and chrysanthemums bring the color until the light changes, frost settles in, and all is quiet until the ground thaws once again.

This knowledge is useful to a gardener—which I was not—until Aaron and I bought a house and he engineered our landscaping in such a way that gives us bursts of color from April all the way to October. He prunes and relocates plants each year to give them more water or less, more light or less, more acidic soil or less—all tailored to each plant’s ideal growth environment.

The process is cyclical and unstoppable. We can either accept it and cultivate it, or fight it all winter long. But it happens all the same. The beauty of the garden come springtime depends on our willingness to work with what we have.

I loathe the phrase “trust the process” because it’s hardly fun to be buried beneath the snow in the messy middle of a dormant phase—when the power of what lies within is felt and waiting to burst through. The process tells me that dormancy exists and is also necessary, and I am a wisher of summer year-round. Our culture, too, encourages this in me.

At age 24, when I thought to run across America for my mom, I wished I had thought of it sooner.

When my relay team launched and I spent years obsessing over an exceptional runner experience, I wished I had taken steps quicker.

When I finally made that phone call I knew I had to make—but waited and waited hours until I couldn’t possibly put it off any longer—I wished I had called earlier.

Hiring. Sooner.
Leadership. Sooner.
Writing my book. Sooner.
Payroll. Sooner.
Launching my blog. Sooner.
Public speaking. Sooner.
Publishing my book. Sooner.

Somehow, miraculously, I arrived at a place where I’ve stopped telling myself anything should be happening sooner than it is. I choked out the weeds urging me out into the snow and wrote down Divine Timing as the number one bullet point in my personal and business strategic plan. This doesn’t absolve me of the hard work of cultivation. Rather, it shows me how to work better with what I’m given.

I learned to deeply cherish the mysterious, quiet place of a dark, frozen ground.

And that’s when the Gardener said, “It’s time.”

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The day had unfolded much as I expected it would, trying and tiring, based on the moods from earlier that morning. The kids (and myself) had felt a pull to stay home and be cozy, but Wisconsin had received a heavy snowfall on a rather bare winter and we had already invested in the gear, so…if we were going to use it, now was the time–cozy moods aside.

Off we went. And I prepared myself for the effort it would take.

Now, as the day neared its end, I looked over the top of Primrose’s helmet at the bare trees silhouetted against the blue sky. We had been here for hours, and three of the four of us on the slopes had already cried in frustration, myself included. Somewhere, the birds were nestled in hidden cozy nooks, unwilling to fly and flutter in the frigid air.

I think of the birds and other ways of nature, as I do this time of year, reflecting about the activity or lack there of. I look out my kitchen window at the winter winds whipping bare branches and wonder about the dark, quiet cave I would be sleeping in if I were a bear.

February is a time for me when the tension between work and rest knots itself into agitation – when I desire to be a spring peeper frozen under the mud, but am instead a human with a mound of responsibility (opportunity?) that only seems to grow, rather than ebb and flow like the tide. Why are we even doing life like this? I wonder on the grittiest days. And yet, I know—if I had less to manage I would be on my way to start a furniture refurbishing business in my garage, creating more all over again. After all, we all need something to do.

And that’s when the point nudges itself, clear and simple, into my mind as I sit beside Primrose on the chairlift. Even when there are tears and resistance, even when we’d all rather be in pajamas, it all builds towards something. Towards moments that feel lighter; more vibrant.

The cycles continue, and I pay attention, resting deliberately in the spaces I carve out and the ones that emerge unexpectedly. And I keep going, knowing with growing confidence that, not only does every rep count, but the reps count for more when I accept and attend to the day that’s given to me.

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There were things I couldn’t do anymore – not excuses, but legitimate reasons I was boxed in. I couldn’t wake up early and run miles from my house before dawn, as I had always loved. The kids were too young for that yet. I couldn’t cram in long hours at my desk in a focused flow, oblivious to the needs of those around me. I couldn’t schedule meetings at any hour that suited me. Again, those adorable, lovable, time-sucking kids. Admittedly I wasn’t trapped, but the window to work was finite now, narrow. Too narrow for my taste, and I was still adjusting.

Are my dreams too big? My capacity too small? I would wonder too often. It was hard to unearth a clear answer and the questions nagged at me. Each day, a mystery of what I would accomplish no matter how intentionally I curated my to-do list.

It was just over a year ago when I felt this stuck. Cemented in place behind the massive boulder of my aspirations at the base of a steep incline that was life after children. I was past the days and years of pregnancy and nursing, feeling my energy return and ready to unleash it. But nothing (nothing!) I had used in the past to create momentum was working. Instead, it had been a lot of work and little movement. Me, still fixed in the same old place sorting through paltry results in the wake of a hard push.

So in November of 2023, when my friend Robin started marketing her annual 3-for-31 challenge—3 miles of running or 30 minutes of activity every day in December—a challenge I had watched her do for a decade and one that I thought was really so irritating (like, who adds more to their plate in December?)—I signed up. Fitness I could do, and I needed a distraction.

This isn’t a plot twist in the way you might be thinking. The fitness part didn’t land me on my ass the way it might for others. But what I learned in the process of this commitment shook everything loose.

To add a 3-mile run to my day without sacrificing my workout regimen and our family schedule, which was my goal, I had to get creative—reimagine my resources. The challenge quickly forced me to think differently.

“How would you feel if I ran the road in our neighborhood before the kids woke up?” I asked Aaron. “It’s a half mile point-to-point, and with the horseshoe shape, I can get to the house within a minute or so. If the kids wake up, they just have to turn on a light and I’ll come home.”

He asked if I really wanted to run through our neighborhood back and forth like a car on a track for 3 miles. I said yes, and so did he.

The first week, I hit the miles hard, bubbling with excitement about running outside again before sunrise, even if it was December. So much so, that on the sixth day I hobbled across our bedroom floor towards my morning alarm. l’ll give myself extra recovery time and do the miles this afternoon, I told myself, turning my stiff body toward the bathroom to brush my teeth.

Afternoon turned into early evening, and with it, my anxiety rose, which is notable because I am not an anxious person. I couldn’t deny that I was bone-tired and dreading the task of even walking 3 miles. You have to do this, an inner voice commanded. It’s things like this—if you cut corners by edging out on these 3 miles—that stop you from achieving your big dreams. God is watching. God knows if you are committed or not. At that, my heart rate climbed. My chest tightened. Looking at my reflection at the bathroom sink, I felt the coolness of our granite countertop through my palms while I focused on breathing. Was I panicking?

What would you say to one of your runners? Another, more calm voice asked.

Talking to myself out loud, as if I were a runner on my own Relay team, I said to myself in the mirror: “Listen, you’ve taken on more miles this week than you have in a very long time. It’s been a solid effort, and there’s no need to destroy yourself over what’s written on the calendar. I think you went out too hard. You were excited, okay? It happens. I think the best thing for you now is to rest. Take a 30-minute bath and count it as your activity for the day. Then sleep on it and see how you feel in the morning. This one run doesn’t make or break your success. It’s all the runs you’ve already done and the ones you’ll do after this that define you.”

The sound of my voice—an action, speaking out loud—calmed the simmering anxiety and dulled the lies. I felt an ease with the truth of what was said, and with it came a tool to silence the inner critic that demands perfection or nothing at all.

That night became a turning point, where I chose something that’s not as tidy as goals marked on a calendar to be ticked off just so. It’s a path that doesn’t have such clear barriers to good or bad, success or failure. I remembered that life can be malleable–a necessary re-learning as a parent–where each day is a new chance to give the best I have right now. Some days it’s more. Some days it’s less. All days it’s messier than I’d prefer, but either way it certainly makes what I set to achieve more attainable within the ebb and flow of making time for people that I love. I’ve been surprised by the power of this shift and the confidence that’s come since.

Confidence, I’ve found, is a mighty force to move stubborn boulders. I take it where I can find it now, like in the easy win of a fitness challenge to remind myself how powerful I am.

Momentum doesn’t always come from the new thing added in an effort to level-up, though that is needed at times. Momentum can come too from the age-old thing that’s always worked, approached with a fresh perspective.

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Aaron hardly ever travels for work, except on this one day that I’d have to spend on a plane to make the trip. His work team had already planned to be in Chicago together, and I’m all about what feels fair — why should he have to dismantle his schedule for mine? To go, I’d have to line up childcare on a Monday from dawn until dusk, just after the kids started back at school - two in Elementary and our youngest at a separate Pre-school, all before anyone has fully adjusted to their schedules. Not to mention drop off and pick up at gymnastics. 

Flight costs were high, and only getting higher. And in between the time when I started scouting for childcare and when it was actually confirmed, I sat silently with myself, then bought non-refundable tickets and hoped it would all come together.

The next day I discovered that I forgot to add Sierra’s Girl Scout Bridging Ceremony to our family calendar, and with my departure on Saturday, I would now miss the Sunday event. Everyone in the troop had RSVPed. And I, a troop leader, hadn’t put it on my calendar. Tears welled in my eyes as I tried to continue note-taking during the planning meeting with my co-leaders, who also happen to be dear friends. There was a strong part of me that felt that if this trip was meant to be it would feel more fluid. The pieces would come together nicely like a puzzle destined to fit. The cost, both tangible and within, was high and only rising. “Dreams are stupid,” I said aloud, part joking, part not. And at that, my girlfriends stood from the table, scooting their chairs along the hardwood floor, and held me in a hug. 

What I meant to say is that dreams are hard, and even when they are destined they don’t always fit neatly. They have edges that hurt and their odd shape bumps up against all the things that already fill your life. You have to act, moving things around to make space for them, and in some cases, remove items altogether that no longer fit the dreamscape. Things like screen time and regular glasses of wine and unfiltered music and garbage food and a schedule that works for everyone (so long as you don’t shake things up).

I cared for myself intentionally as the days ticked by — deep breaths, empowering music and laying down to rest when I felt too exhausted to hold any more conversations with myself about the array of options and best path forward for myself and my family and my nonprofit. I thought about my mom often. She had big dreams too and always believed in herself, despite her MS and its toll on her mobility and cognitive functions. She was a singer song-writer, a poet, and even well into the progression of her disease she urged my Dad to set up a massive computer on our dining room table so she could type her words when her hands could no longer hold a pen. Then she’d ask us to email her work to Oprah. As her child, I viewed this effort as silly. Clouded by the effects of her disease and the ways it limited her, coupled with my immaturity, I saw her as weak. Lovely and loved, but weak. And I wanted nothing to do with that kind of vulnerability. 

Now I see better: the years, and her death, and the community that rises at my nonprofit, and my family and friends have hammered at the fortress I built in my youth: to be self-reliant, to limit exposure, to need no one. It falters, and I place my hands on the bricks and painfully tear them apart. It aches. The kind of ache that comes from a workout – an intentional ripping of structure for it to rebuild stronger; to become more efficient and hold greater load. 

Now I feel: I do not only need myself. Those around me can hold me as well. Their embrace doesn’t lessen my power, it re-enforces it.

And now I understand: To deeply believe in oneself even when much of what is dreamed of isn’t practical, even if others think it is silly – my mom was not weak…she is the strongest person I know. Learning this means it doesn’t matter if I meet someone in California that buys my book or not. What matters is that I believe in myself enough to go. 

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I just had to work harder, obviously – wake up earlier, shorten my workouts, tether myself to my desk at night in the dark of my basement office. I simply had to want it more, I was told...by myself, by others, by our culture. Because priorities get focus, focus creates action, and action creates results. These are the facts. I was the thing that needed to be better.

Then, in a fog of exhaustion when I couldn’t will myself to do these things, I’d pour myself a drink as incentive and try anyway. Inside, I became a tangle of anxious energy and weakness, and the results I was achieving on the outside were meager at best. I began to question if I really wanted these things. Others questioned that too.

During the day, I’d waltz between phone calls, meetings and emails to manage my nonprofit and its massive cross-country relay, while simultaneously juggling nursing sessions and nap times with a baby, which then became a toddler and a baby, and then two toddlers and a baby! It was a precarious two-step that had me yearning for the quiet moments when I got to sit in the nursery rocking chair, pinned down by the love and want of my little one, and close my parched eyes. “Could I have used those minutes for work?” my mind would wonder, knowing very well that what I had done was the most of what I was capable of. Other moms seemed to be balancing personal and professional growth beautifully. I knew this because I viewed their thriving social media profiles. “How are they doing it and managing their family?” I’d ask myself. 

I couldn’t deny the deep hole of nothing-more-to-give that lingered at my core. It was the center of a space that wedged itself between my desires and my capacity. This gap is where disappointment lives.

In reality, I was producing – just not in a way our culture values or pays for. My children and raising them are of no worth when I’m asked if I work full-time. And so the external pressure I felt to capitalize my career potential persisted. Ultimately, I had little words for those who asked why I wasn’t doing more for my nonprofit and career at the time.

I felt like I was letting my organization down. I began to believe I was the problem.

What I lacked back when I was making humans within my own body was the energy to produce at a level myself and others were accustomed to. Energy flowed abundantly, exactly to the places it needed to. But the message was clear – that wasn’t good enough. Given the commonplace of motherhood, what was amiss was the courage to call it as it was — an immense effort of the body and mind.  

I’m not saying nothing should have been expected of me, but I am saying that what I was able to do should have been trusted more. High achieving mothers should be trusted more. 

I wish I had known that it was more than okay to maintain something; that it is okay to solidify the foundation that has been laid, to evaluate current systems, and to keep a ship steady along a defined course. There is great value that can come from such efforts. 

And isn’t that growth? 

If I could go back and change the woman I was, trying to drive revenue upwards and create more without the energy or systems or a diverse group of people to help her, I wouldn’t. There’s too much that I learned in those years of wrestling.

If I could go back, that’s what I’m doing now. Reaching to a time I think about often and offering up what I know to the mother rocking her child, feeling exhausted while gazing out her window, wondering about the depth inside of her yearning to burst forth again but unsure of how that’s ever going to be possible. This one is for you: It’s okay to maintain what you have for now. Make it better as it is. Keep reaching and your energy will return again. You’ll stop nursing and you’ll sleep. Dear God, you'll sleep. You’ll refill the reserves that we’re told will never be full again, and one day, months down the road, so much longer from when you’d like it to be but exactly at the time it’s supposed to, you’ll wake up and realize that you have more to give again. 

And when that happens, use it. 

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This weekend marks the completion of another year leading runners across the U.S. and I sit firmly at the helm, both leading it all and also witnessing in awe. 

I can attribute the many accomplishments of this organization to one, singular moment when I decided to be open to an idea that dropped into my mind to run by myself across America for my mother and the MS cause. I think about that moment a lot – me on a cruise ship in Barcelona, running on a treadmill in the fitness center on the top deck of the ship while it pulled into port. In the early morning dawn, the harbor lamp-posts twinkled like cafe lights strung across the shoreline and the treadmill hummed steadily beneath my feet while my mind drifted from one thought to the next, then simply to this – to run across America for my mother. 

In an instant I knew that the idea had been waiting for me to come upon it all along. And without thinking much about the details or what would come after, I blindly stepped into an adventure that would grow to be much larger than I ever imagined at first. 

I have been called brave and fearless many times over. These are easy adjectives given the size of what’s been created. I don’t reduce the amount of work that goes into my role, but mostly I find that I am committed to imagining the best possible outcome, and that I have a willingness to see what I am made of in the process. 

Within my organization – my Relay team, our programs, among my staff – I pass these attributes along as I see fear and the unknown bubble up from time to time. Oftentimes, all that’s needed is reframing and an unwavering focus on the next right task.

What if the best outcome does happen? What if it’s better than you imagined? What if you find that you’re more capable than your inner critic gives you credit for? 

What once felt to me like an odd running event for charity has matured into so much more – a positive support group where we are collectively challenged to push ourselves into our next level of potential, all for the greater good of a cause. 

If you’re inspired by this message and want to support, you can double your donation today and help us reach a $10,000 match by tomorrow by clicking here! If you’re in or around New York this Saturday August 17th, join us for a run meet-up as our final Relay teammate, Willy Valderamma (an exceptional runner living with MS himself) brings us into New York City!

More than anything though, my desire is that you explore your edges too – that you’re open to unexpected thoughts, events and people, and willing to imagine the best possible scenario while you discover and expand what you’re made of. In the case that that feels scary, maybe because you’ve never felt or heard this before, I want you to know that I believe in you. Truly, deeply. You are a grown-ass human with many gifts and talents, no lesser than any other person like myself that’s created something grand and inspiring. I’ve seen it again and again within my organization, and I know this for certain, you are capable of finding your way.

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Hi. My name is Regan, and I’m a control freak. 🙋🏼‍♀️ Anyone else like to be the one in charge? Of life, of meetings, of grocery lists, of dinner choices, of vacation plans, of ALL THE THINGS? I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. 

I cried many times through my adolescence and into my 20s over things I wish I could control — dance tryouts, breakups, bad grades, the loss of loved ones. But nothing prepared me for the loss of control I would experience being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system, multiple sclerosis (MS), at age 26.

I wish I could recall the details of the moment, remember the exact wording the neurologist used to tell me. The feeling of the cold chair as my hands gripped it hoping for good news I knew deep down wasn’t going to come.

My emotions were bubbling over and I had to focus on keeping it together. It’s all I could do when I felt like I was losing control. Losing control of my emotions, but even more so, losing control of my body, of my future.

I knew TOO MUCH about MS. My beloved paternal grandmother suffered for years with the disease, losing mobility little-by-little. I had worked at the National MS Society for several months when I first moved to Denver. I knew what a thief it could be, and I knew that not everyone had the privilege of managing its symptoms, even with the best medication. Would the scar tissue on my brain and spine leave me impaired? Would the double vision and numbness that were my initial symptoms ever go away? Would I Iose mobility? Would I be a burden to my soon-to-be-husband? Could I still be a mom one day? How would this fit into my plans – marriage and motherhood, my career, dreams of traveling to faraway places? 

The hot tears and quiet sobs broke free the second the elevator doors closed. As the elevator carried us down, my future mother-in-law reached for me, then guided me through the lobby of the medical building to her car. She took me to Curtis Park, a green space nearby, where we sat at a picnic table and ate hearty, comforting green chile burritos together as I continued to process, to plan, and to control what I knew I couldn’t.

The weeks following the diagnosis were tough. I was faced with the unknowable, the uncomfortable, the uncontrollable. I knew once I was diagnosed that I couldn’t muster anything that would fix this. I knew in all of my human-ness, I couldn’t fight this fight alone and hold my weakness in tension with the joy that I was known for radiating. It wrecked me in a lot of ways.

But what I’ve learned through my MS journey with my control-freak tendencies is that there is an untouchable peace and inexplicable joy that can be found on the other side of surrender, even in the hard. Especially in the hard.

I could take this weakness of mine — my MS, which I knew I couldn’t control — and I could give it to God. I could tap into a strength greater than myself and allow this setback to be a springboard that launched me into living on purpose.

And living on purpose looked like being bold in the face of fear.

As someone who had never even formally run a 5K before, I know it sounds nuts to say I felt a strong pull to submit an application to run seven marathons in seven days with a nonprofit I came across online while searching for runs for MS. But in the act of surrendering, of seeking guidance and direction from a higher place, I knew that this was for me. Soon I was on a video call with the organization’s President, telling her my story and convincing her to put me on the team, promising to run a half marathon soon to show her I could handle some distance. She believed in me. And so did the other people in my circle. Weeks later, I received an invitation to the team in the mail. I was on the docket to run 178 miles in 7 days across part of Colorado in 6 months’ time. 

You would think that this challenging physical feat would bring pressure and stress to a control freak like myself. But weirdly, I felt relieved. To not have to generate my own strength. To hand the control over to God. And boy, did God go to work when I was brave enough to admit my own insufficiencies — physical, mental, and emotional. This aha moment has carried me through the years. It carried me through the miles of training and months of fundraising, during my run across Eastern Colorado, and through nearly 10 years living with MS.

“The joy of the Lord is my strength”, adapted from Nehemiah 8:10, has become my personal mantra.

I spoke it aloud to myself for 178 miles during my relay segment when I wasn’t sure I could take another step.

I’ve since used it to remind my kids that they can do hard things.

I still recite it as a meditative breath prayer when I feel anxious.

The truth is — the life I could have meticulously crafted for myself in the absence of my MS diagnosis would pale in comparison to the richness of the life I’ve built acknowledging my need for God. I’m acutely aware of the frailty of life. Of the blessing of mobility. Of the power of surrender.

Weakness acknowledged but unspoken is true weakness; weakness spoken aloud — asking for help — THAT is the truest kind of strength. Whether it’s asking God or asking a friend — or better yet, both! I found God and I found my people, and that’s what gives me the courage and strength to continue to make the most of every minute of my life, even when it feels out of control.

Would you believe that the picnic table where I sat crying into a burrito plate the day of my diagnosis was located in the VERY park where I started my MS Run the US relay segment? It’s one of the many divine coincidences that continue to remind me that this journey is for me, and that loss of control can sometimes wake you up to what matters most. It makes a lot of life more clear, and you see what amazing opportunities are there for you if you’re willing to surrender to the beautiful unpredictability of life. 

I’d love to tell you all of my control freak tendencies ended back in 2016 with my diagnosis and the aha moments that followed. But my poor husband can attest they have not — I oftentimes tell him what “we” are ordering on the way to a new restaurant, I research and choose our next binge-worthy show, and I insist on being the one to pack for our kids every time we go on vacation even when he graciously offers to help. So, maybe I haven’t fully mastered releasing control, but I’m working on it.

What I do know, is that I’ve found peace in acknowledging how much is truly out of my control. I don’t know what my future will look like – none of us do. Living with MS has given me a reason to face and accept that. And I’m now at peace with it. I know I can do hard things, because when things feel too hard, I don’t have to carry it alone. I know how to lean on a power far beyond myself and live on purpose. And that’s more than enough – it’s everything.

Guest posts are now a regular part of Meaning In The Mess by Ashley M. Schneider, in an effort to bring you stories that help you take action and turn ideas into plans! If you or someone you know has a cool story you’d like to see featured here, please submit a message to Ashley via the contact form on her site ashleymschneider.com

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“Soon,” I say, swatting them away with one hand and cradling my belly with the other. “Soon.”

The harpsichord chimes of my alarm vibrate, and in a sleepy haze I awake from a dream of pregnancy that has nothing to do with a baby. I swing my feet onto the plush carpet of my bedroom floor and know instinctively: it’s about my book.

I have been pregnant for some time now with my memoir about running across America by myself and creating MS Run the US, growing the pages and my platform as steadily as I have all three of my children. I desire nothing more than for the story to be on bound pages within the hands of readers. And yet, the pathway to get there has many options and no clear rule book to follow. 

Like my children’s birthdays, I tack on another tally to the number of years it is taking me to publish the work and wonder about how many there will be. 

Potential stalks me like a ravenous lion and I cannot seem to pull myself from the savanna into the simplicity of mediocrity that rides at my side like a safe, comfortable land cruiser, tempting me to escape the unknown of when this chase will end. What if I just stopped my toiling and got in? What if what I’ve created so far is good enough? What if I just managed what I have?

Here are my troubles – I want it all…within a reasonable amount of time…specifically three to six months from the start of the goal…without disrupting my sleep, family time, workout routine and nourishment. With a cherry on top. Please and thank you. 

At times, I feel agile and strong, making ground between myself and the lion, and this assures me that I am on the right path – that I am made for this. Other times, I am tired. Hot and parched. More interested in sleep over productivity, humans over my writing, and experiences over a mound in my bank account. These are the times that I am stuck evaluating how I spend my time and what exactly I need to do to achieve the mammoth dreams I lay upon my life – published author, charismatic keynote speaker, sturdy leader, present mother, loving partner. 

Would I be happier if one of these things were laid to rest? 

I ask myself these questions. It’s the invariable squiggle atop a dot that grips many of my days. I wrestle with everything laid before me, and among it all, I claw for peace, and satisfaction, and purpose, and joy…guilt-free joy. Am I doing this right? Would I ask these things if I was? Would I ask these things if I wasn’t?

I’m exhausted, I think to myself, loading the dishwasher at the end of another full day, wondering if I could have done one more thing while knowing full well that I couldn’t have. The day is swollen, weighing me down, prompting me to wash my face and crawl between the sheets.

Rest. The day pushes me to rest. Where my body stops, my mind does its sorting, and I dream. Here, I am restored in a space that feels anything but productive (because what am I doing except just laying there?), yet somehow it is. I am reminded that I am not all-powerful, much to my dismay. But also, that I am not alone, both spiritually and personally – a knowing that brings me to tears and forces me outside of myself. In the morning, everything is possible again. A light twinkles, ideas fall like rain, people cross my mind, connections form. Like a pendulum swinging, I am filled, enough for this day, ready to continue the chase. 

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