Month: January 2026

  • The Club Reunion

    By mail, this weekend, I received the Autumn 2025 Newsletter from the 50 States Marathon Club—Volume 24, Issue 3. I flipped to page four and found the column announcing Club Marathon Reunions. There it was: the first reunion of 2026, scheduled for February 1st in Jacksonville, Florida, at the Donna Finish Breast Cancer Marathon.

    I couldn’t attend last year’s end-of-year reunion, where my 50 States Trophy would have been presented. At the time, I was in the middle of biopsies and diagnostic medical appointments, travel, especially to Columbus, Ohio, was simply not possible. My focus then was not celebration.

    Reunions are where finisher trophies are awarded and teammates who have completed the 50 States journey gather, some for the first time, others having walked this road more than once. They are moments of recognition, of closure, of standing together.

    And now, here was a reunion close to home, anchored in a cause that lives at the very center of my story now. I didn’t hesitate. I emailed the crew and told them I would be there. I have also registered for the 5K. I will receive my 50 States Marathon award there, surrounded by people who understand exactly what it took to earn it.

    I’m looking forward to seeing teammates who may have wondered where I went, and why I disappeared from social media when the 50 States Journey ended. The truth is, I never stopped running – I am just now running a different race.

  • 2026

    I always looked forward to the New Year. It felt like a clean reset, a chance to begin again, to set fresh goals, to believe in infinite possibility.
    Now it’s 2026, and I can’t say it feels the same. I’m grateful to be here, truly, but the familiar spark is muted. The enthusiasm doesn’t arrive as easily.

    Cancer treatment has a way of taking ownership of time. Planning feels fragile, provisional, almost borrowed. Yet when I sit with that thought, I realize nothing has really changed since years passed. I have always only had the present moment.

    What feels different now is awareness. The sense that moments are numbered, that the once-infinite horizon has narrowed into something more finite, more defined. Yet, that too, is perception. The limit was always there…I just didn’t notice it. There were never more than moments. There have only ever been moments.

    I don’t know why bitterness visits me right now. I know others would long for the prognosis I’ve been given. I know this is a gift, and that gifts are not meant to be squandered. None of us should squander them.

    Yet still, it is hard. It is hard to live with pain, with uncertainty, with the constant effort to fill a void. Gratitude and bleakness can exist in the same breath…..and lately, they do.