I started trail running four years ago. I’m not a fast or particularly strong runner. And I don’t have dreams of winning races. I run races for the experience, for the camaraderie of the trail, and for self exploration.

For the third year in a row, I am registered to run the 5 Peaks trail running series, the Millarville Half Marathon, and Leg 2 of Sinister 7 (a shorter distance and less elevation than I have run at S7 in the previous years, but I’ll write about Leg 6 some other time).

I have previously struggled to maintain consistency with my training. But this year, dammit, I was going to be consistent! I was going to train well and be stronger and faster than I have been in the previous years. That was my plan anyway.

On January 1 Blaze colicked and needed an emergency surgery to save his life. Blaze is my horse. He has been my partner, my friend, my family, for just over 10 years. Losing him would have been absolutely devastating. Colic is one of the leading causes of death in horses. There are several types and severities, but his turned out to be pretty severe, a strangulation of the small intestine, which would have been fatal without the surgery. He went under general anesthetic and needed to have 5 feet of his small intestine removed. Due to the nature of his surgery, he was at high risk for developing numerous post operative complications, and the first 72 hours to 2 weeks after were the most critical time.

My training stopped.

I only left his side to come home, “sleep” and shower those first few days. I was terrified that if I left him, he would develop a fever, or kick his incision open, or worse. So, from the time his doctors started morning rounds, to the time they shut the lights off at night, I was there with him. Fear, anxiety, sadness, overwhelm and feeling helpless and completely exhausted peaked after about four days, and I broke down in a puddle of tears in the hallway outside of his stall. His intern finally had to convince me that he was ok and that they were taking care of him and that I needed to go home to take care of myself. I knew this. But it was difficult to do.

Blaze spent 2 months in the hospital, and I was there with him almost every day. He had a slow transition back to his normal routine once he got home, but he was doing well, and after a few weeks, we were able to start riding again. Knowing he was ok made it a little easier to focus on other things, so I started training again too, and was alternating between riding and running. We were out for a ride and got ourselves into a sticky situation on the trail and I ended up losing my balance and falling off him, and he stepped on my leg in the chaos. Thankfully nothing was broken, but it was quite painful with lots of swelling and bruising and road rash, and for a few days afterwards I felt like I had been hit by a truck.

My training stopped again.

Yesterday, after a month of healing time with no running and very little movement otherwise, I finally got out for a run. It was a slow and sloppy 3 kilometers, but it felt so good to be out on the trail again. A few hours later I noticed that the pain I had been feeling in my neck and shoulders for the last few months had eased, and the tension headache I had off and on for weeks that the multiple advil I consumed didn’t touch, was gone. But I felt really emotional for some reason, crying on a few occasions throughout the rest of the day.

The last few months have been particularly difficult to navigate, and it’s been hard to resist the urge to curl up into a ball of avoidance, of all things-painful and joyful. But the time I spent on the trail yesterday-the 24 minutes of moving time, of putting one foot in front of the other-was enough to shift the energy in my body so I could release it. That run wasn’t about training. It was about allowing myself the space to let go.

We all deal with difficult situations. And we all process them differently. But no matter what the circumstances are, I know for certain that we can’t possibly show up fully to take care of our loved ones if we don’t first take care of ourselves. Tension has to go somewhere. And it is much better out than in. As my friend Ally says, “give it to the trees, they can handle it”.

Movement really is medicine. So whatever difficulty you are dealing with, get out and move. And if you can do it on a quiet trail-even better!