I Ran a Race. I Won.

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Yesterday I posted a status on my ‘Dr. Ashley Worobec Facebook Page‘ that showed a couple of pictures from my 10k race the day before.

My words were:

“These pictures sum up my weekend, and why I LOVE to run- this is happiness in its truest form. I raced in the 10k Hannukah Hustle in Hamilton on Sunday morning and I won! It wasn’t a big race, and my 43 minutes wasn’t record-breaking, but as 1st female, I even got a bike escort into the finishing chute and got to break through the finish line tape with my daughter in my arms. This first picture shows me stopping to grab her from the wagon (my 5-yr-old son wanted to stay put!) and the second picture shows the post-race bliss (and exhaustion!). Find something you love and throw yourself into it. The benefits will reach far and wide.”

And then I reconsidered, regretted, and thought-twice for a bit.  Should I have put this accomplishment out there, so bravado and look-at-me and I’m-so-great?  That’s not typically my style, not what I’m about, not who I am.  And yet, I really wanted to share this moment with my patients.  That’s the exact purpose for my Dr. Ashley page; a place where my patients can get to know me and what makes me unique in my time outside of the clinic.  It’s where I can share my opinions on topics that I think would be of interest to them- be it fitness, parenting, or healthcare.  I deliberately keep this Page separate from my personal Facebook profile, and that’s the part I’ve been reconsidering; why was I okay with posting this under my professional persona and not my personal?  Answer: because somehow, it seems less show-offy, less girls-shouldn’t-brag, less boastful, and more polite.  Somehow, I’m a degree removed.

All day, I’ve had people congratulating me on the race.  The feedback has been wonderfully huge, and Facebook tells me that almost 2500 people have viewed those pictures.  And yet, I keep downplaying my run, skirting around the compliments, trying to exercise humility after a showy post.  I’ve “aw, shucks”-ed a lot.  “It was just a small race,” I tell people, “I only won because no one fast showed up,” or “I was dying out there.”

Wanna know the truth?

I felt great.  I felt effortless.  I felt invincible.

And it was a small race and none of the super-fasts came to play, but it was still my first win in years, my first bike escort, my first finish-line tape, and the first time my kids saw their mama WIN.  An outright, unequivocal, black-and-white win that they can understand.  They’ve seen me head out into the pre-dawn cold Sunday after Sunday while they stayed in their cozy pj’s.  They’ve heard me huffing and puffing as I pushed all 80lbs of them in the double stroller on my last training run.  They’ve watched me cross off numbers on my training plan and cross off days on the calendar.  And then they saw me win.

I hope they learned that fitness is fun.  I pray they learned to seek out a passion.  I know they learned that if you work hard you get rewarded.

I recently read ‘Carry On, Warrior‘, in which the author, also a blogger, talks about how she has no shame.  She writes, “I’m shameless.  I’m almost ashamed at how little shame I have.”  I can see where she’s going with this.  As my own blog grows, I can feel my filter loosening.  My take-it-or-leave-it growing.  My this-is-me flourishing.

This is me.  I ran a race.  I won.  And I’m damn proud that my kids saw it happen.

Ashley019

Johnny Who?

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Now that my first-born is in school, I realize that I’m having a hard time adjusting to city life.  Particularly the raising-kids part.  I grew up in small-town Alberta, where everyone knew everyone, and it was very common to not only know your teacher, but to also be going to school alongside their children.  My high school graduating class was somewhere around 70 kids, and we grew up together; we knew each other’s siblings and cousins, birthdays, after-school jobs, houses, and cars.  So I find it very strange to be dropping off my five-year-old for a full day of school, not knowing the parents or even the last names of his classmates.

I know, I know….. privacy concerns surround the release of personal information.  But really, what would I do if I knew the full names or, gasp!, the phone numbers of his classmates?  Google them?  Spam them?  Creep their Facebook pages?  Likely not.  In fact, all I would do is cultivate a community for my children.  I’d store the ‘last name’ details into my brain so that as my child continues at his Elementary School for the next nine years, I might run across those names at other extra-curricular or community activities and build a support system, a network, a village-to-raise-a-child.

I’ve become increasingly embedded into the Burlington community; I’ve got a profession that allows me to work with people from all walks of life and it’s a small enough city that I find do-you-know-so-and-so connections often.  Add to that the fact that I’ve got a Burlington born-and-raised husband and a recognizable surname, and this city most definitely feels like home.  But I still know less than half the parents at morning drop-off and only a handful of last names.  I want phone numbers and emails and home addresses.  I want to be able to take my kids for a walk and say “that’s Johnny’s house.”  I want to phone parents to set up playdates and to email birthday party invitations.  I want my children to feel a sense of belonging, of support, of community; and I suppose I just need to wrap my head around a new way of doing that.

I’m a city girl by nature, but I must be a country girl at heart.

Apple-on-Books

On October 15th, Break the Silence…

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October 15th is tomorrow.  A day that marks ‘Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day’.  I’m re-posting a post from a couple of years ago because my online reach is far greater than it was then, and because of that, there’s an opportunity for greater awareness and less taboo.  Sadly, many friends have shared in this experience over the past year, so this is for them.  Here is my story:

*****

I struggled to write this post.  Really struggled.  Not just with the emotion of it all, but with the feelings of vulnerability and complete exposure that this topic brings out in me.  But that’s why it needs to be written…..to break the silence, prevent the stigma, and end the taboo surrounding miscarriage.

I had a miscarriage last year.  We lost our baby on April 6th, 2011, at 11 weeks and 6 days gestation.  One day shy of the magic ’12-weeks-pregnant’ mark where the stats on miscarriage decrease dramatically.  I was wrapped up with the excitement of another baby, and we were already envisioning life as a family-of-four.  In a cruel twist of irony, we had signed the papers for our bigger-with-an-extra-bedroom-house the weekend prior.  I had told friends and family of my pregnancy, even casually mentioned it to acquaintances, and sorted through bins of my maternity clothes.  And then it all ended.  My miscarriage was very sudden, very graphic, and very traumatic.  There was no doubt what was happening to our baby as we rushed to the ER, and as I laid on a triage bed next to my heartbroken husband, the loss overwhelmed me.

Those next few weeks are a haze of tears and despair.  My mom flew out to support us, and helped me get through the physical and emotional struggle of the first few days.  I ended up with a D&C surgery two weeks later, as I was deemed to have experienced an ‘incomplete miscarriage’.  The day following my surgery, I flew to New York City to spend the weekend with my two best friends.  And as I reflect on that difficult time in my life, I can see that’s where my heart began to heal.  Sister-like friends have that power.

That baby would’ve been due on October 27th, 2011.  I was dreading that day on the calendar, which had already been circled in a big red heart when we initially found out I was pregnant.  But as October 27th approached, I found myself blessed with another pregnancy; my beloved Casey was born on March 2nd, 2012, only 11 months after the miscarriage.  My gratitude for her is exponentially greater after feeling the hopelessness of loss.

There are three things that helped me get through this:

1. A memorial.  We carved a cross on a big tree in our favorite walking trails in remembrance of our lost baby.  That tree is a source of comfort for me, and a place we visit as a family several times a year.  My 3.5-year-old calls it our ‘special tree’.  I like to think of it as our ‘healing tree’.

2. Time.  While the grief and pain from this experience is not gone, it has lessened.  Time heals.  And my heart has healed a lot in 18 months.

3. Talking about it.  When this happened, I told the details to all of my family and friends.  I told my parents and my in-laws.  I told my sister-in-laws.  I told my girlfriends.  Talking about it helped me to process things, but it also helped to break down the stigma.  Miscarriage is still a taboo topic, and people don’t know what to say when it happens to someone they know.  It will happen to someone you know.  Up to 25% of known pregnancies result in miscarriage, 80% of those occurring in the first trimester.  Don’t say nothing.  Acknowledge the loss.  Because saying nothing only perpetuates the silence.

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Month.  On October 15th at 7pm, I will be joining many other people around the world in lighting a candle to remember the babies we’ve lost.  And I will be hugging the babies I have, thankful beyond measure.

candle