From Waging Non-Violence: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/running-on-empathy/
Frida Berrigan
April 20, 2013
I started running after a bad break-up. With more than a decade of relationship over, there was a lot of uncertainty and questions. How to heal? How to hold on to friendships forged in our couplehood now that I was single? Who was I apart from this person? What next? What is my life about? Where would I live? What would I do? How could I turn anger and hurt into new possibility, direction and meaning? Incessant, pressing, urgent questions….
Step by step, breath by breath, mile by mile, the answers came. Or was it that what came was the space for these questions to hang? At first, reaching the end of my block seemed like a major accomplishment. Soon it was the edge of Red Hook, Brooklyn, where I was living. Then I ventured further — Prospect Park to the Manhattan Bridge and then over and then back, and then Central Park. I did not listen to music. I listened to my breath. I counted to 20 over and over and over again. I counted dogs and trees and parked cars. I prayed, and I asked my questions.
I trained for the Hartford half marathon in October 2009. I have a vivid memory of crossing mile nine in that race and thinking, “I have never run this far before in my life. I am here. I am doing this.” Crossing the finish line a while later, I broke down in tears. I was so proud of myself and so surprised. I was ready for my new life. I was done grieving what was gone and ready for what was next. The empty spaces had filled in with answers, and with new questions.
Running led me to the New York Catholic Worker and to the end of my job as a Senior Program Associate of the Arms and Security Initiative — a project of the New America Foundation. Running led me out of Brooklyn, out of old bad habits, into a new sense of mission and purpose and commitment to service and resistance. But, perhaps best of all, running led me into love.
My husband Patrick and I fell in love running. We restarted the War Resisters League Track Club. In the 1970s and 1980s, peace activist runners entered the Marine Marathon, the Army Ten Miler and other military sponsored runs wearing peace t-shirts and carrying banners (when they could). Bill Ofenlach, who ran the Army Ten Miler with the club in 1988 (and probably did pretty well), told me, “Long runs teach patience and are good preparation for a long vigil, physically and mentally. It is also a welcome relief from interminable meetings.”
Continue reading at: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/running-on-empathy/
