I Run These Towns

I’ve been hospitalized 10 times since 2020. But I don’t see myself—and won’t ever call myself—a sick person. In early 2022, right before a surgery that turned into an unexpected multi-week hospital stay, I was running on the treadmill. My son, who was 8 at the time, told me he wanted to take a picture because I looked like “the strongest mom in town.” The photo my son took of the "strongest mom in town". I think about that moment a lot. That’s how he sees me. And it’s how I want to see myself. When I recently added up my hospitalizations, it caught me off guard. I know the past few years have been hard on my health—but I refuse to be defined by it. Influenced by it? Absolutely. Defined by it? Never. Still, when something like a bowel obstruction or abscess hits out of nowhere, I want to go into it as strong as possible. Strength helps me heal. It helps me come back—to be the mom and the person I expect myself to be. Nutrition has been a long, complicated battle for me. For 20...

We’ve all seen the memes: “New Year. New Me.”  All the positivity and fresh-start energy poured into the magical “new” person we’re supposedly going to become when the calendar flips.  And listen — as we all know, I am relentlessly positive. But I’m also realistic. And the idea that we become a brand-new person every January 1 is…kind of BS. So how was your 2025?  Did you crush it?  Did you survive it?  Either way: congratulations!  You made it to 2026. That alone deserves a moment of recognition.  To me, entering a new year doesn’t mean making resolutions you won’t keep or reinventing yourself overnight. It means refocusing . Adjusting. Re-centering. Being the best version of you that you can be — and sometimes, th at simply means making it through. I had a great year in 2025. I took on big new challenges at work. I ran more than I had in several years. We traveled a ton — I was in 20 states and the UK in those 365 days. I got to spend incredible ...