Breathing deep as we run and reclaiming hope by offering it

Let’s talk about it … Life can seem hard, even impossible at times.

Oct 09, 2025

What makes you forget your own struggles?

When I was 9, I ran a 5-mile road race on the north side of Columbus, Ohio. I was in great shape then, but the course was hilly and rough. It was a hot day, and I was in a bad mood.

“The real meditation is how you live your life.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn

I can remember the feeling in my bones. In my young mind, it felt like the world was against me. I couldn’t back out. The registration fee had been paid. I was in my spandex, pumping my arms, surrounded by other runners.

And while I didn’t even think about the larger problems of the world, a time when real-world problems existed as poignantly as they do today, I did have a real form of stress. I was anxious and tired, in a bad mood, on a hill, and ready to quit.

Then I heard a voice from behind and looked back to see a woman sighing.

“I can’t do this,” she said. She was holding her side.

This woman was either twenty-eight or sixty-eight. All adults were merely old then, and I had no estimate of how old. What I noticed as a child was that this “old” woman appeared to be in pain, and something in me shifted when I saw her.

I said, “We’re almost to the top.”

She glanced at my neon, animal-print running pants (side note: they were pink, had paws, epitomizing my fashion tastes at the time) and smiled.

“No, I don’t think I can finish. I’m going to walk,” she said.

“Don’t!” I yelled at her. I moved my curly red hair away from my face as I slowed my pace, and I fell in line with her. “You can do this. I believe in you.”

What’s funny is that her dialogue was exactly what I’d been thinking, but the moment she said it, my entire thought process had changed.

I began to teach her a breath practice I’d learned from my cross-country coach. “Just breathe like this: two inhales, then one long exhale to give yourself more oxygen,” I told her. I showed her how to do it, and we breathed together.

I hadn’t remembered that technique for myself, but I remembered it for her.

From there, she asked me about school and how often I ran. I found out this was her first race, and she was doing it to get back in shape after feeling down and out for a long time.

We both finished the race together, and at the end, we hugged.

I bring up this story because we can create a circle of self-pity and hopelessness when we think about the weight of pains and an unjust world. Especially when we think it’s only us.

But we can also forget our fears and burdens by remembering what we might offer someone else. And in doing so, we find the internal freedom to keep going.

Cognitive behavioral therapy may include considering what you would tell a friend or loved one. But there is also something spiritual or more intangible about what it means to truly listen to another person deeply. Listening (and asking) clarifies the blocks in our own lives, creative and otherwise, without that having to be the aim.

Yes, it can seem that we are on the uphill right now. Maybe we’re almost there, maybe not. Either way, here we are. Together. Remembering that gives me strength.

If you’re trying, you give me strength. Knowing that others are trying. Maybe not always succeeding, but trying. It’s all I need.