I started running again last week. These blue sneakers helped, because I’m a big fan of putting them on every morning. Unfortunately, they aren’t enough to keep me from remembering every single day how much of a nonrunner I am. About twenty whole steps into it, I start asking myself when I can stop.

That’s when I make this mental shift and force myself to stop thinking about the end. Inside, I have to sit back into my discomfort and unwillingness, choose to feel it and keep feeling it, and embrace the NOW. There is only my feet, there is only my breath, there is only this cold air. There is just this step. There is now.

This was pretty much my approach to natural child birth. too. It worked for the first three, but not so much for the last one. I suppose it didn’t work then because I simply could not let myself go into the pain. I couldn’t come to terms with it, and all I wanted was for it to be over. Perhaps the pitocin had a little to do with that.

This is true for all of life, of course. The only way through is to feel it. If you fight your pain and refuse to ride it to the other side, you’ll end up stuck. If you numb it and refuse to feel it, you’re stuck too. Either way, your pain has mastered you.

If you’re lucky in that situation, you’ll end up with an OB jamming your knees up to your chest, yelling, “You CAN do this.” But not all of us are lucky enough to have someone who knows us well enough to act as a midwife for our pain and help us birth what must be birthed. And it takes a lot of life experience before we can effectively act as a midwife for ourselves.

There are so many things I don’t want to face right now. So many things I don’t want to do or figure out. I hate that phrase “lean in,” maybe because I’m the kind of grumpy person who hates jargon and trendy ideas. I don’t think I can so much lean into these things as I have to let them lean into me. Instead of running away or procrastinating or pretending they’re not knocking on my door, I have to usher them in, give them a seat at the table, and listen to them. I have to let them have their way in their heart and mind. When they lean into me hard enough and long enough, something new will probably be born.