The Marathon I Never Ran

How one song pulled me back to an unfinished dream—and a new beginning.

A couple of weeks ago, on the drive home from work, "Good Feeling" came on the radio. My running song. My finish-line anthem. In an instant, I was back in 2012: dragging myself across the half marathon finish line, lungs on fire, legs barely moving, but heart wide open.

I had lost over a hundred pounds that year. I had taken up running, of all things. I was never fast nor was I ever athletic. But I told everyone I was going to run a half marathon, and so I did. One of the last to finish, but I finished. And in the stubborn glow of that moment, I set my next dream: a full marathon.

But then life reshaped itself around me. Children. A full-time job. The kind of exhaustion no training plan prepares you for. Running slipped quietly out of my life. The shoes gathered dust, and that finish line I imagined drifted farther and farther away.

And then came the bigger changes. Divorce. Selling the house I had curated into a home. A new job. A season of survival where I lost myself completely, piece by piece, just trying to keep moving.

But the song reminded me. The pulse of that beat carried me straight back to the woman who believed she could do impossible things. The one who wasn’t afraid to set outrageous goals and crawl across the line if that’s what it took.

I never ran that marathon. I never became the athlete I once pictured. But it’s never too late to begin again.

My life looks nothing like it did 13 years ago, and neither do I. But maybe that’s the point. Some songs remind you who you used to be. Some dreams wait quietly for you to find them again. And some stories aren’t finished yet. There’s still time to keep writing.

Sometimes all it takes is a spark. A single reminder, one fleeting moment, to remember who you used to be — and to believe in who you might still become.

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Seven-Minute Superheroes (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir on the Blink-and-You'll-Miss-It Days of Childhood

Setting: July 4, 2025 — Town hall parking lot, where the longest wait led to the shortest race

On the Fourth of July, the kids ran a superhero one-miler. We’d signed them up weeks ahead, ordered matching shirts, and circled the date on the calendar.

That morning we piled into the car with my parents and headed to the race. Families filled the parking lot, red, white, and blue everywhere. There was a check-in tent, a line for goody bags — sunglasses, a blow-up beach ball, little patriotic trinkets that made the boys feel official. We didn’t know the route, so we wandered the lot, trying to guess which way they’d run.

Finally, they were called to the start. They stretched with the crowd, side by side with a few costumed superheroes, bouncing on their toes, impatient for the whistle.

And then — go time.

They looped around the lot, past a few buildings, close enough we could almost see them the whole way. And then they were back again, crossing the finish line before we’d even finished cheering.

It was advertised as a mile, but it wasn’t even close — a quarter mile? Half a mile? We’ll never know. All that planning, anticipation, and spectacle, for a sprint that ended almost as soon as it began.

Seven minutes. That’s all it took — from the starting whistle to the finish line, from anticipation to memory.

And that’s childhood in a nutshell: the days feel long, but the years race past in a blur. One day they’re bouncing at the starting line, the next they’re racing ahead — and all I can do is love the in-between, holding tight to these blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments as they run toward whatever comes next.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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Financial Fridays: Subscribed and Canceled

💸 Financial Fridays: Subscriptions

Subscriptions are one of those sneaky budget categories. They start small, feel harmless, and before you know it, you’re paying hundreds of dollars a year for services you barely use. I’ve worked hard to trim mine down over the years, and at this point, my list is surprisingly short. Here’s what I’m still holding onto — and what I’ve let go.

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✅ What I Keep

Netflix – $19.43/month
Old faithful. I’ve had it for years and keep hanging on past every price hike. It houses my comfort show (Grey’s Anatomy) along with plenty of random documentary series I enjoy perusing.

Philo – $28/month
Philo is a TV streaming service with 70+ channels, unlimited DVR, and no contracts. It doesn’t include the big networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX), but it has all my guilty-pleasure channels like ID and TLC — and most importantly, Hallmark for my Christmas movies. I don’t use the live option at all, just the on-demand and recording features, which make it worth every penny.

Walmart Plus – $98/year (sometimes $49 on promo)
I’ve had it on and off for about three years, but it’s a keeper now. Groceries delivered (no braving crowded stores), free shipping with no order minimum, and even free home returns. There are extra perks too — discounted gas at certain stations and a Paramount Plus subscription. It’s one of the few subs that actually saves me time and money.

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❌ What I Let Go

Amazon Music Unlimited – $20/month (family plan)
I subscribed for years but finally cut it when the price hit $20. I do miss it, especially now that I have Apple CarPlay, and I might re-subscribe someday. For now, I’m coasting on a free SiriusXM trial and will reassess when that ends.

Kindle Unlimited – $11.99/month
I’ve done a couple of free trials and enjoyed it, especially for indie and small-press titles. But it usually doesn’t include bestsellers or many traditionally published books, and that makes it feel lacking. I even keep a Goodreads shelf of titles I’d read if I re-subscribe, but as a heavy library user, I can’t justify paying for books when “free” is my favorite option. I’ll probably dip back in for a month at a time when my shelf gets too tempting.

Amazon Prime – $139/year
I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with Prime. The shipping is convenient, and there’s some good streaming content, but Walmart Plus suits me better right now. I miss the two-day shipping sometimes, but hitting the $35 free shipping threshold and waiting a couple days works fine. I’ll probably circle back someday, but for now, the cost outweighs the benefits.

Clothing Subscriptions (ex: Nadine West)
This was the most fun mail of all time — outfits and accessories delivered monthly — but it just got too expensive. It was more of a “treat yourself” service than a necessity, and I couldn’t justify it long-term.

Other subs I’ve had in the past: MoviePass, Facetune, Effortlessly Healthy meal delivery service, Shudder.

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💭 Reflection

Right now, I’m sitting at three active subscriptions: Netflix, Philo, and Walmart Plus. Together, they run me about $50/month (or less, with Walmart Plus at a promo rate). Not bad, considering how much value they actually bring to my day-to-day life.

Cutting the others has saved me well over $500 a year. More importantly, it’s forced me to be intentional: only keeping what I truly use and love, and letting go of the “just in case” or “maybe someday” subs that were quietly draining my budget.

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Restoring the Archives (New Chapters)

On piecing a life back together, one recovered page at a time. 🖋️

When I started restoring my old blog posts, I thought it would be a simple project — copy, paste, clean up some formatting. Get things back in order. I didn’t expect it to feel like grief.

But that’s what it’s been. Grief — disguised as nostalgia, tucked between old sentences and half-forgotten stories.

Every post is a time capsule. A snapshot of who I used to be, what my life used to look like, and the people who used to be in it. I’ve reread pages I wrote when I was falling in love. When I was planning a wedding. When I was building a home, starting a family, imagining a future I thought I’d grow old inside of.

That life doesn’t exist anymore.

Some of those people don’t either — not really, not in my world.

And so I’ve been reading my own words with a lump in my throat. Crying at memories I didn’t expect to hit so hard. Laughing at old versions of myself I forgot existed. Grieving the woman who wrote those posts… and the life she was writing her way into.

I miss her sometimes.

I miss how simple her dreams were. I miss how certain she was. I miss the way she loved, and the way she believed things would last forever.

It’s strange to read the archives of your own life and realize how much of it is no longer true. It’s like visiting a house you used to live in. You still know the layout, but the furniture’s all gone. You still recognize the rooms, but the people who made them feel like home aren’t there anymore.

But here’s what I’m holding on to:

I still have the words.

Even if the life has changed, the words are mine. They mattered then, and they still matter now — not because they predicted the future, but because they captured a moment. A feeling. A version of me that existed, and lived, and loved, and wrote it all down.

I’m rebuilding this blog. Slowly. Painfully. Tenderly.

And in doing so, I think I’m also rebuilding myself.

This post is part of my New Chapters series — reflections on rebuilding, resilience, and writing new parts of my story.

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The $62 Tooth (One Minute Memoir)

A Memoir of Grocery Store Temptations, Tooth Fairy Economics, and a Brazilian Barbecue Victory

Setting: August 4, 2025 — Aldi checkout line, where teeth cost more than groceries

In our family, molars don’t fall out — they make an exit with financial consequences.

Caleb lost a tooth today. A molar, to be exact. And as usual, I didn’t have any cash. The Tooth Fairy is many things, but prepared is not one of them. So off I went to Aldi, the nearest cash-back-friendly establishment, with the sole intention of buying something small and grabbing a fiver.

But I never go into grocery stores anymore. I usually do delivery, which means I haven’t been physically inside a snack aisle in months. So I went a little… feral.

This looks good! That looks good! Do we need these new fancy cookies? No. Did I get them anyway? Absolutely. I even grabbed two new varieties of potato chips for the family to taste-test — Brazilian barbecue and Korean barbecue, for science. (Brazil won, 3–2, in a tightly contested match.)

Anyway, I finally made it to checkout with a cart full of (mostly) junk, feeling like a raccoon who had just raided a gas station. I asked for $5 in cash back. The cashier said the minimum was $20.

So I got twenty.

I spent forty-two.

And that, dear reader, is how my child’s tooth ended up costing me $62.

Worth it. For the tooth, the chips, and five minutes of believing in magic.

This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.

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The Joy I Almost Missed

Finding life again in small, imperfect moments

The boys and I went to a fall festival last weekend. It wasn’t anything extravagant — just booths, face paint, cookies, and kids darting around with sticky fingers — but for me, it meant everything. For awhile, I avoided things like this. I was afraid to do them alone, afraid of being the only adult without a partner at my side. So I made excuses. I told myself it was easier to stay in.

The last year has been hard. I stopped living. I turned down plans. I stayed inside, convinced that surviving was the best I could do. Wake up, go through the motions, collapse, repeat. I blamed my circumstances, my mental health, the shitty cards I’d been dealt.

And as the months went on, I let my world shrink smaller and smaller.

But something shifted. Slowly, and then all at once, I started saying yes. Yes to friends. Yes to the boys’ activities. Yes to the messy, unpredictable business of living.

That’s how we ended up at the festival — just me and the boys. We bought cookies and sno cones, dropping fifty dollars in under thirty minutes. Holden got his face painted. He spilled half his sno cone in my new car, blue syrup sliding down the cup holder, and I (almost) didn’t even care. We were there, in the noise and the crowd, and for the first time in a long while, I felt like I was living.

Because here’s the truth: life doesn’t wait for you to be perfect. It doesn’t care if you’re healed, polished, or ready. It only asks that you show up.

And showing up is what I’m finally doing. For the boys, yes — but also for myself. For the version of me who hid away, believing survival was the best she could hope for. For the version who let her world shrink smaller and smaller until there was barely anything left.

I owe it to her to live again. To claim joy where it finds me — even if it’s sticky and loud and gone too fast. To laugh in the car with blue syrup dripping into the cup holder. To say yes to the people who love me. To keep saying yes, even when it feels easier to hide.

Because this isn’t about festivals or sno cones or even the fifty dollars that vanished in half an hour. It’s about what comes after survival. It’s about remembering that life is still out there, waiting to be lived.

And I’m done waiting. Done saying no. Done hiding in fear.

My world is opening again, and this time, I’m not shrinking. I’m showing up for all of it — the sticky fingers, the spilled sno cones, the joy I almost missed.

I will keep showing up. I will keep saying yes. I will keep living — because I finally remembered how.

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