Author: Lauren

By now, you’ve probably heard about the man with muscular dystrophy who, determined to complete a marathon, crossed the finish line 20 hours after he started. I’ve heard a lot of reactions to this: “Inspiring!” “Heroic!” “Amazing!” And do I agree that this is amazing? Of course. In fact, I think ANY ONE who commits to running a marathon is inspiring. But this guy was pretty cool because I’m all about doing stuff that people think you can’t do, defying the odds, etc. Something struck me though, listening to the radio this morning. On 101.7 The Bull, the host went on to explain the story, as a “Tell me Somethin’ Good!” story. Then, the co-host went on to do something that people may not realize they do fairly often: get “inspiration” from someone who “Can’t do something” or “Isn’t lucky enough to have legs” or “Wishes they could get up in the morning and do yoga” or “Has it worse than you do.”I believe her exact words were something like, “You know, when I get up in the morning and I don’t want to go to yoga, I think about people who CAN’T do yoga. And I do it for them! Because some people just wish they could get up and go to yoga. But they can’t. So I go.” And then the host went on “Every day is...

Editors note: I couldn’t write this blog for a long time because I knew it would be too heavy and I hadn’t yet processed my feelings about it. You’ll read about how I took a memoir class. And in that memoir class we talked about how your story doesn’t have to include every single thing you think it should, only what the reader needs. So this is the story I wanted to tell. Though it’s much bigger and filled with many more difficult emotions, I had to take that out, for now. And though I don’t want this blog to be only positivity and inspiration, sometimes it is too painful to broadcast the hard stuff, because I know that the only way I can survive is to see and share the bright side. So know that though this isn’t everything I felt, the tough stuff isn’t censored to portray a false view of my reality, it’s censored because I haven’t come to terms with that reality yet.  A couple of weeks ago, I got an email saying that a spot had opened up in an all day memoir writing class that I had joined the waiting list for. It was a little over $100 and though I’ve been trying to save up my money, I felt it was a sign that it’s time to splurge and do this for my...