Rebecca Rogers Maher

May 28 is fast approaching and the dates of my Snowbound with a Stranger blog tour are now finalized. Follow along at home! And please support the wonderful sites below who will be kind enough to host me.

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Monday, May 28: Snowbound with a Stranger release day! You can buy the book at Carina Press here, or on Amazon here.

Tuesday, May 29: Carina Press – “Coping with Burnout”

Wednesday, May 30: Long and Short Reviews – “Five Reasons I Don’t Describe My Heroines’ Bodies”

Thursday, May 31: Author Interview at Long and Short Reviews

Friday, June 1: Love Romance Passion – “Five Reasons Why Sex Scenes Matter”

Monday, June 4: Inaugural post of my guest blog series “Coping with Burnout”

Tuesday, June 5: Author Interview at Night Owl Reviews

Wednesday, June 6: Heroes and Heartbreakers – “My Favorite Romance Trope: Five Reasons Why I Love Snowbound Stories.”

Thursday, June 7: The Book Binge – “Five Reasons Why Older Heroines Are More Interesting”

Friday, June 8: The Nerdy Nurse – “Five Ways Romance Novels Can Save Your Sanity”

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I’ll be giving away a book at every stop on the tour, so drop by and join the discussions!

Love, Rebecca

Hey Friends,

From June 4th to July 9th, I’ll be hosting a six-week guest series here on my blog about coping with burnout. My current release–Snowbound with a Stranger–features a heroine who’s a nurse. Dannie’s been going through the motions of her job–and her life–feeling overwhelmed and shut down. She’s struggling with burnout, and trying to figure out how to cope with it.

This is a common problem for caregivers and for women in general, and I’m interested in hearing about how different service providers manage it while still doing their jobs well. To that end, I’ve asked an ER nurse, a social worker, a union organizer, a teacher, a firefighter and a doula to write essays about the effects of burnout on their personal and professional lives, and about the strategies they’ve used to work through it.

Every Monday from June 4th to July 9th, I’ll post a new entry to the series from one of our talented contributors. Your comments will be most welcome, as I hope to generate a discussion about service work, burnout, and coping strategies that will be helpful to all of us who do this kind of work or who support someone who does.

Thanks for reading, and see you on Mondays starting June 4th!

Love, Rebecca

Yesterday my publisher reached out with a title suggestion for my third book, which is due out in September.

Originally, I’d called the novel Rocket Queen, after the Guns ‘N’ Roses song from Appetite for Destruction. Rocket Queen’s lyrics and the circumstances of its recording bring up a truly nauseating mix of sexual manipulation and desire. (“I can turn on anyone, just like I turned on you,” is one of the best song lines ever written, in my opinion.)

Still, the sexual energy and confusion of Rocket Queen (the song) is conveyed very deeply from a man’s point of view. I wondered what a woman’s point of view would be.

My third book is one of many possible answers to that question. The main character is Sarah, the best friend from I’ll Become the Sea. Sarah is a powerful woman—funny, smart, successful, strong, sexually experienced—and a rape survivor. Her story chronicles a devastating emotional breakdown and then, importantly, a recovery.

Sometimes the connections I make inside my head don’t translate well to other people. The thematic link in my mind between Sarah’s story and the Guns ‘N’ Roses song was far too oblique to work. So the book needed a new title.

My publisher suggested Fault Lines. I said YES.

It works on a number of levels. I would like very much to explain exactly why I think so, but I have to break that habit. Who wants an author telling them how to read something? So I’ll zip it.

Now all three books in the Recovery Trilogy are edited and either published or in the pipeline. That makes me very happy.

I’m gonna go out and enjoy the spring trees now.

Isn’t this gorgeous?

It blows my mind that someone I’ve never met would apply her talent to creating the right image for a story I made up. I know that’s a pretty basic aspect of book making, but still, it’s wonderful.

This cover beautifully captures the intimacy and connection between the hero and heroine in Snowbound with a Stranger. It’s a very arresting image, and so pretty.

Enjoy!

And click here to pre-order Snowbound with a Stranger from Amazon.

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Copyright © 2012 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited Cover Art used by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited ® and TM are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated companies, used under license.

Ever spend a bunch of time with someone, grow to like them, and then go to a restaurant and watch them be rude to the waiter? That is always a deal-breaker for me. I cannot respect a person who treats other people like they don’t matter.

I think about this a lot in my parenting. People have different priorities for their children—that  they grow to be independent, successful, well-educated, etc.—and for each parent the line is drawn in a specific place. Here is the one area where I will not compromise. I have a line, too. It’s about empathy.

The world is a very cruel place: no point denying it. People hurt, ignore and take advantage of each other. Interpersonally, that leads to trauma, abuse and fighting, and globally, it leads to war, poverty and environmental devastation.

This is the context in which I’m raising two little boys. It’s the world my boys will eventually face as men.

Perhaps because of my background in community work, I’ve always perceived parenting as more than a personal endeavor. It’s a social responsibility. Our children will inherit this nasty world we’re leaving them, and they need some tools for managing it ethically.

When my kids were babies, I was the parent who picked them up every time they cried. I nursed on demand. They slept in my bed. I schlepped all over Brooklyn with them strapped to my front in a carrier. When they got hurt, I didn’t attempt to redirect or distract them. I held them and rocked them and let them cry until they were done.

I did all these things for a reason. I wanted them to be able to feel their feelings completely in the loving presence of someone who would never turn away. I wanted to them to feel heard. I wanted them to trust that comfort and warmth were available to them. That their needs were reasonable and would be met.

I think this planted a kind of security and confidence in my children. And that was important to me, because I know that their relationship with me will form the foundation of every future relationship. I want them to know that love should feel safe.

As my kids have grown, they’ve naturally begun to take advantage of that sense of safety. They’ve acquired a perfectly ordinary and developmentally appropriate sense of entitlement. In short, like most kids, they’ve become mini-tyrants.

I get that. It’s normal. But that shit don’t fly in my house.

Because if I let them be rude to me, if I let them make a mess and never clean it up themselves, if I let them snatch toys away from other kids and hit them and never say they’re sorry, what would I be teaching them?

Again, like it or not, they are going to base their future relationships on their experience with me. I can’t let them be assholes now and get away with it, or they will feel entitled to be assholes later.

This is especially important for boys, I think. In a previous post, I talked about the social pressure many girls feel to take care of others and ignore their own needs. Boys, on the other hand—even in this day and age—are pressured to not show their feelings. At the same time, they’re given a lot more leeway in terms of insensitivity to the feelings of others. As a parent of boys, I think it’s my responsibility to balance this out.

First, I want my boys to learn the value of kindness by being treated lovingly themselves. But I also expect them to actively show kindness to other people.

In another post, I talked about behavior modification. I use it in my parenting all the time. For example, I know there are people who don’t make their kids apologize. They say that forcing kids to say they’re sorry is meaningless. That children don’t really mean it, so the apology is a lie.

I don’t agree. I think you learn to be sorry by saying you’re sorry. Every time one of my children hurts another child, I bench them and then require them to formally apologize to the kid they’ve offended. I make a big damn deal about it, too. Because it’s not okay to hit someone! It’s not okay to steal someone’s toy. If you do that, you need to stop and think about it and you need to say you’re sorry, because you have done something wrong.

I’m not naïve. I know my kids don’t mean it sometimes. Guess what? I don’t care. Many times, my children have issued a shitty, insincere apology to me or to someone else, and I’ve made them do it again, as many times as it took, until they made eye contact and solemnly acknowledged what they’d done. I don’t care if they don’t feel remorse every single time. At first, I think they rarely did. But by going through the ritual over and over, they became aware that their behavior toward others had an impact and that they were responsible for that impact.

My kids now spontaneously make amends to me and others when they’ve been unkind. I see and feel their remorse, I see them actively deciding to behave differently next time, I see them exercising self-control during future interactions, and I see them choosing to behave more kindly.

I’m just as militant about gratitude. As I’ve said before, I think you become grateful my acting grateful. My kids say thank you to EVERYONE, or they get an earful from me. We walk into a restaurant and we talk about all the people who work there, who work hard to keep it clean and to make the food and to bring it out to us, and how it’s our responsibility to show respect for their workplace, to speak quietly, to control our bodies and to say thank you for everything they do. We say thank you to the bus driver, to the crossing guard, to every person who ever hands us food or a drink or a movie ticket or a gift, and to each other. At the end of every school day, I make my four-year-old go to his teachers and say thank you for teaching him that day. (He now does this on his own, without prompting. His teacher told me it’s one of her favorite parts of the day.)

I want my children to be aware that the people around them are making an effort. I want every human being to be visible to them, to be valued, to be seen as important.

It’s a delicate balance. On one side of the scale is a steady, ongoing stream of unconditional love and support. I listen to my boys, and look at them, and hear them, and see them, so that they understand how much they matter. And on the other side of the scale I make sure they actively demonstrate an awareness of those around them, so that they understand that other people’s feelings matter too.

The way I’m doing this isn’t the only way to do it. All around me, people are parenting their kids differently than I do, and lo and behold, their children are awesome human beings. And I can’t know for sure that my parenting style will yield the results I want. I won’t know that until my kids are grown, and even then, ya never really know.

But I do know that I parent the way I do for a reason. I want my children to feel completely loved, accepted and safe. And I want them to know that they can and should give this kind of compassionate love to others.

As they get older, this is going to get harder and harder to achieve. I’m always on the lookout for what other families do to promote compassion in their kids, especially families with older children. If you’re reading this, I’d love to hear about your strategies or ideas. I’m feeling my way through this the best I can, but I sincerely welcome your input. Let me know what you’re doing well so that I can do it too!

Yesterday morning, as I dropped my son off at school, I heard a father say this to his first-grade daughter:

“Bye bye, honey. Be nice today. Make sure you take care of everybody.”

For a few seconds all I could hear was my own heart beating.

Then I joined back in the rush of parents and children, brought my other son to his classroom, and went about my day.

Later, while I was running, the dad’s parting words came back to me.

Maybe the daughter had been acting mean to the other kids in class. Maybe this was the father’s way of recasting her approach to others, of helping her treat her peers compassionately. I can’t know what their story is, and it’s not my business to judge it. But the words themselves struck a nerve.

My birthday’s in a few days, and historically, it’s been a tricky day for me. Informal polls of essentially every woman I know reveal birthday patterns similar to mine. In short, we all end up hating the day.

Why would that be? After all, it’s a day when the magic of your birth is celebrated. A day when those you love stop, even momentarily, to reflect on your impact in their lives, to feel and show gratitude for all that you are and all that you do, to express how much they care.

Except that it isn’t. Most of the time, it isn’t.

For a while we had an annual Father’s Day tradition of walking over the Brooklyn Bridge together and having dinner in Chinatown. Like many of my husband’s birthdays, this felt like a festive day. But on Mother’s Day, or my birthday, we rarely did anything so celebratory.

So occasionally I would complain about that. And then occasionally somebody would throw me a party. But then at the party, I would feel completely overwhelmed by all the attention and would pray for it to be over.

Feast or famine. That’s how it’s felt, for most of my birthdays. Not enough attention or the wrong kind of attention or too much attention. And then, every year, the guilt would strike.

I’m such an ungrateful jerk. Who do I think I am, anyway, the Queen of England? Birthdays are for children. It doesn’t matter. Shut the fuck up already and quit whining.

It would usually take me a while to recover from how stupid I felt.

I think it relates back to what that father told his daughter.

Be nice. Take care of everybody.

That is what we’re supposed to be doing, as girls and women.

My husband would have the sense to sit me down a week before his birthday and say, “Honey! This is what I want to do to celebrate.” But when he would ask me the same question for my birthday, I’d say I didn’t know. I’d say it didn’t really matter. I’d say it’s not a big deal.

And then the day would arrive, and I wouldn’t get what I wanted, and I’d feel bad.

And the reason I didn’t get what I wanted is because I didn’t ask for it. And the reason I didn’t ask for it is because I didn’t fucking know what I wanted. Because I never bothered to ask myself. Because to ask myself that question would be a selfish thing to do. Because what I was really supposed to be doing was to be nice and take care of everybody.

Maybe that’s a copout. There are many ways in which I benefited from caretaking. It’s actually quite useful to never ask yourself what you want.

Because if you don’t ask yourself, then you don’t have to find the answer. And if you don’t have to find the answer, then you don’t have to tell anybody, or deal with the possibility that they might think it’s self-centered, or greedy, or stupid. It’s safer to say, “I don’t know.”

But I set my loved ones up by doing this. I didn’t know what I wanted and I didn’t make any direct requests, but I still secretly hoped they’d guess.

If they really love me, they’ll know. They’ll know me well enough to know the exact present I want, the exact cake I want, the exact flowers I want. And if they don’t get any of that shit right, I’m going to be VERY, VERY ANGRY. But it won’t be seemly to act angry. So I’ll act very nice and gracious instead.

But I won’t make eye contact. And I won’t talk very much, and I’ll say “It’s fine” a lot, and everyone will be fully aware I’m not happy, and we’ll all feel a little miserable about it until enough days have passed and we can put it behind us until next year.

UGH!

Fuck that, dude.

I’m over it.

A few days ago I texted my friend and said, “Wanna take me out for breakfast for my birthday?”

She said yes.

I told my husband exactly what present I wanted. That was a couple of weeks ago. He might have forgotten. If so, I intend to buy it for myself.

I made plans for my birthday afternoon—family movie, burritos for lunch, and cake.

I plan on asking people to say nice things about me. Because guess what? That’s what I want! I want people to say nice things about me on my birthday. That’s not too fucking much to ask, I might add. I’m a pretty good person. I say nice things about other people all the time. And I take care of other people all the time. I do my part as a girl. But once in a while it is okay to ask to be taken care of. And to be direct about exactly what that means.

My husband and close friends tell me, over and over, how much they like it when I ask for what I want. How much of a relief it is to not have to guess. Honestly, I feel bad for putting them through all this nonsense all these years. And I feel a little dumb for taking so long to understand what is a profoundly simple concept.

But I don’t think I’m alone. I think a lot of women feel this. At least every other day it would be good if we could hear this:

“Bye bye, honey. Be nice to yourself. Let other people to take care of you.”

Hi Friends,

How’s winter treating you? Still waiting for our first massive snowfall in the Northeast. We tried to go sledding the other day, but 4 inches of snow/sleet/mud/mush really wasn’t cutting it.

Just wanted to post a quick update about what’s coming in 2012. I’m very excited to announce the release of my next book–a contemporary romance novella called Snowbound with a Stranger–from Carina Press, on May 28, 2012. Read more about that story, including an excerpt, here.

Snowbound with a Stranger is the second book in my “Recovery Trilogy.” The third and final installment is a contemporary romance novel that’s awaiting an official title and will release on September 24, 2012.

Stay tuned for new blog posts, cover art, reading dates, appearances, release information, release party details, and all sorts of other good news throughout the spring and summer.

Best wishes to all of you, and thanks for reading!

Last year my friend Lisa told me that she frequently cries during long runs. I laughed at her. I just couldn’t believe anyone would possibly have the energy to run and cry at the same time.

Boy, did I have a lot to learn.

I ran the Philadelphia marathon on Sunday and pretty much sobbed my way through the entire thing. Joyful tears. Tears from laughter. Frustrated tears. Tears of pain. I cried ‘em all.

Here’s the breakdown. Too bad I didn’t live-tweet it. You could have played a drinking game.

Mile 4

Two miles earlier I’d seen my husband Kevin and our four-year-old son, and been hugged and kissed within an inch of my life. But at mile four I still didn’t feel warmed up. I felt slow. And when I imagined running twenty-two MORE miles, I was filled with a dread so profound I felt like I was running through molasses. Then, up ahead, I saw a woman with a t-shirt that said, “180 Days Until Homecoming.” Below the writing was a picture of her with her husband, a soldier in military fatigues.

And I was feeling sorry for myself? I had just left my amazing husband and was running toward the next place I’d see him again. She was running knowing that her husband would not be at the finish line, or behind the door when she got home, and that he might not ever come home. That was the first time I cried. Out of gratitude for what I have. And in solidarity with that woman’s guts and independence.

Mile 8

In preparing for this race I had to confront the fact that I always run alone, and always run with headphones. Most official race instructions caution against the use of headphones for safety reasons, but I’ve ignored this rule even when running races. I’ve become dependent on music to propel me forward. I’ve also become so immersed in my own determination to keep moving – and often, immersed in my own pain when running – that I purposefully tune everyone around me out.

On the advice of a friend, I decided to take my headphones out for this race, at least at the start. I wanted to take in the energy and support of the crowd, and see how that felt. Our race bibs had our names written on them. With my ears clear, I could hear people calling me by name, rooting for me, cheering me on, and wishing me well. I cannot tell you how good this felt. I thanked every last one of them. I accepted every high five as I passed. I read every sign. Even so, by mile 8 I was again counting the miles ahead and despairing.

That’s when I saw this sign: “Run the mile you’re in.”

That made me cry. It was exactly what I needed to hear.

I cleared my head and ran the mile I was in.

Mile 10

Here my sister Tammy, my brother-in-law Peter and my six-year-old son waited with their eyes held open with toothpicks for probably over an hour. They needn’t have worried about missing me. I saw them from several hundred yards away and ran straight into their arms. My brother-in-law snapped this amazing photo of my baby hugging me.

Their combined support, encouragement, joy and love made me cry for a good long while. I don’t know how I got to be so lucky.

Mile 11

After I left my family, I came upon a downhill stretch. There, my left knee blew out. It felt like something gave way, and then the pain began on that side.  I saw the first port-a-potties of the race that didn’t have obscenely long lines, and since I had to pee, I decided to stop and stretch.

It was here that I learned that I’d gotten my period. Ladies, can you feel me? The line of portable toilets rang with my “Dude! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

This development might help explain all the crying.

Mile 14

I really should have stopped at Mile 13. That had been the plan, in fact. The week before the race I’d gotten a bone scan because my wonderful physical therapist suspected I might have a stress fracture. She feared this because I’d been experiencing pain while running for the previous month. In fact, I’d had to take most of the month off from running, and bike instead, so I could let whatever was wrong heal. It wasn’t healing, though.

The bone scan revealed no stress fracture, so that meant the pain was coming from tendonitis or muscle inflammation. In other words, running would hurt, but it wouldn’t hurt my body permanently.

As my fantastic orthopedist said, “You can run through the pain. If you’re into that.”

Was I into that? You ‘d think the answer would be hell no. But a funny thing happened to me in the course of this training. I wanted so much to be a runner, to be a successful runner, to not give up on my training, that I stopped listening to my body. Running was hurting me, but I wouldn’t stop. My physical therapist had to really force me to see this. She said, “Running is supposed to be fun!”

For real?

That was news to me.

But it was news I finally became willing to hear. I vowed that if I was in too much pain during the marathon, I would stop running. One good option was to simply turn off the course at the halfway mark, along with the half-marathon runners, and accept a medal for that race.

However, at Mile 13 I still thought the pain would be manageable.

By Mile 14 I knew that it wouldn’t be. I had been having muscle cramps along my quads and IT bands on both legs for two miles. The trouble spot on my right thigh was completely flared up. Both knees were on fire. This was in addition to some truly mind-blowing menstrual cramps. (Pardon the vivid detail, fellas.)

I had already started walking off and on at mile 11. By 14 I couldn’t run at all.

I called my husband. He was in a CVS with my four-year-old, buying me tampons. (I’d left him a frantic message 3 miles earlier. Husband of the Year times twenty!) He stood in that CVS aisle for thirty minutes, just listening to me sob.

I want to say for the record here that I would have completely collapsed at that point, without that phone call. With it, I just kept walking forward, along the Schuylkill River. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day. Even in my distress I could see that, and it made me cry even more. Out of joy too, and gratitude.

Mile 19

A few people have asked me why I kept going after Mile 14, why I didn’t just turn back. The answer is partly practical. I was planning to meet my husband and younger son again at Mile 18. I thought I’d make it to them, even if I had to walk, and if I needed to at that point, I could grab a taxi with them back to the hotel.

I hung up the phone with Kevin at 16, where I nabbed a tampon from the Red Cross tent.  After I pulled myself together, I started running again intermittently.

It hurt. It hurt, really, like nothing else has ever hurt me besides childbirth.

During this training process I’ve often thought of myself as wimpy about pain. I don’t know why I’ve judged myself that way. I did give birth to a 9 pound, 4 ounce baby, standing up, with no pain meds. So let me say this out loud so I can hear myself say it: I’m not a wimp.

But this hurt, and I’m sure my face showed it. I must have looked like I was struggling. The Schuylkill River stretch, as lovely as it is, lacks spectators. If I’m remembering this right, people start showing up again around Mile 18. Unfortunately, because he’d stayed on the phone with me for so long, my husband couldn’t get to our meeting point there on time. After I passed the Mile 18 marker and he wasn’t there, I called him again. He was at Mile 17. The soonest he could meet up with me was at Mile 22.

So now I knew I needed to get to Mile 22. I had no fucking clue how I was gonna get there.

At around Mile 19, I was beginning to lose it. At the top of a hill, I passed a woman who read the name on my race bib.

She looked at my face and said, “I see you, Rebecca.”

People, I am telling you, I cried my heart out after that. Are there any more powerful words in any language?

Mile 22

My husband and little boy met me here, and ran with me. My baby got upset when he saw me crying, but he kissed and hugged me. After I fell into Kevin’s arms, that is, and sobbed for a minute.

I could have stopped at this point. But I was so close! I just wanted to finish the stupid thing so I could cross it off my bucket list and never run again as long as I lived.

Mile 24

I called my friend Lisa, just to hear her voice. She had just finished the marathon herself. I was really happy for her, and happy to hear her talk about it. She didn’t want to talk about it though. She said lots of beautiful things to me, and comforted me, and promised to meet me as soon as I was done.

Mile 25

I saw the lady with the “180 Days Until Homecoming” shirt. She was walking too. She looked calm and strong. Talking to her for a few minutes steadied me. She was thirsty, so we shared some water. I ran again for a little while after that. It hurt, and I cried some more.

Mile 26

At the finish line, my sister Tammy met me. She had to hold me up because my legs just sort of buckled under me. My older son was there too. I got my medal and he tried to get me a second one! Then my sister Heidi came jogging toward me, crying because I was crying, and that made me cry even more. She had just run the half marathon like a flying gazelle, and then came back to meet me at the end of my race.

God knows she had plenty of time. I ran the first third of the race at a good 10-11 minute mile pace, which is strong for me, but with all that walking, I crossed the finish line at 5:48.

Dude, I‘ll take it. I finished that damn race, and I’m proud of it.

At least I think I am. See, it’s like this…

Whenever people ask me about my marathon training, I usually say, “Oh yeah, it’s totally destroying my body, but you know. That’s okay.”

I regret to say that for the past several months I’ve noticed nothing askew in this sentiment.

So what if I hated absolutely everything about running? So what if every run felt like willingly subjecting myself to sadistic torture? That’s normal, right?

After I ran my first half marathon I came home with a vicious stomachache that kept me crying in bed for the rest of the day. Second half marathon: same thing. When I started my current training, I knew it was coming. I knew that by the time I reached the weeks when my training runs were thirteen miles or more, I’d have to figure out a way to prevent the stomachaches, or else the second half of my training would be a nightmare.

This time, the stomachaches started at seven miles. And soon, at four miles. And then every four miles thereafter. I began sticking to four-mile loops around my apartment, so that I could stop home after each loop, be violently ill, catch my breath, and then head out again. I did this for two full months. Every weekend I faced down my long run of the week knowing how sick it would make me. Knowing that I’d have to face that moment, again and again, where I’d be sick as hell and still have to strap my water belt back on, get out there again, and run some more.

I went to a nutritionist. I went to acupuncture. I read diet and nutrition books for runners. I asked the advice of everyone I know who runs. I wore out Google looking for stories of people with similar issues and hoping to find some magical cure. I tried everything. No dairy or fiber for twelve hours before the long run. Then twenty-four hours. Reduced caffeine. No artificially flavored chewing gum – my one vice: I usually chew it like a bookie all day long. Then there was the nutrition during the run. I calculated the exact formula of carbohydrates, salt, potassium, and water per fifteen minutes of running and carried the whole mess in two fuel belts around my waist as I ran. I even made my own rice balls to eat on the run so I could control the ingredients.

It got a little better, but really, nothing worked. I was miserable. Even the thought of running was starting to make me feel sick. And yet I refused to even consider the possibility of bailing out of the marathon. I still followed my training plan to the damn letter.

Then one day my legs just kind of gave out. I went for a routine five-mile weekday run, and halfway through it my leg muscles started spasming. Quads and calf muscles both: they just freaked the fuck out. I’d heard of leg cramps but holy wow! It was like a dozen Charlie horses all at once. They lasted throughout the two-mile walk home and kept at it periodically all night and into the next day. When I tried to run again two days later, my legs could barely even extend. I made it half a block.

And then I wrote the world’s most pathetic email to my saintly physical therapist, who advised me to stop freakin’ running for a couple of days, for God’s sake, and let my legs rest.

I took a week off. And during that week, instead of rushing home every day to squeeze in a manic run between work and picking the kids up from school, I just kind of relaxed. I met my husband for lunch. I got a pedicure with a friend. I read a book. It was … amazing!

Taking a little time off gave my brain a chance to start thinking clearly.

My marathon training had become this kind of drawn-out self-punishment. I don’t even know for what. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be a wuss and drop out. I felt like I should be able to endure the stomachaches gracefully and stop whining about them.

After my week off I was scheduled for my second sixteen-mile run. I didn’t want to do it. I had several long, pained talks with my close friends about whether they would forgive me if I bailed out of the race. They just shook their heads and showered me with love.

The day before the run I followed all my new dietary rules. In case you’re interested, the day before = the following magic quintet: one avocado, one sweet potato, three eggs, one-quarter block of tofu and a bowl of salty white pasta; during the race = 1/3 Clif Z bar alternating with one Clif shot blok + 6 oz. water every twenty minutes, and (let’s be honest) an Immodium before the run. When I headed out I told myself that I could decide during that run whether to continue with the race plan, switch to the half marathon, or bow out entirely.

Since I told myself that – that I could stop anytime – and for the first time truly believed that I would allow myself to do it, I was able to just take it easy. Every time I started to feel sick, I stopped running and walked for a while. I took two fifteen-minute breaks at home, at four miles and at eight miles, at which point I called my husband and told him I was definitely going to switch to the half. I was just going to head out for another mile or two to finish off the run.

At twelve miles I realized I hadn’t had a stomachache yet. I felt pretty good, actually. So I decided to try for sixteen. At sixteen miles my legs were on fire. I was exhausted. I must have scared the hell out of the residents of Brooklyn Heights as I ran, audibly groaning, down the Brooklyn promenade. I cried. I sang out loud to Patti Smith. It was awful.

But also, it was wonderful. For the first time, I got it. I understood how it’s possible to run a marathon. Without the stomachaches, it was just all the other stuff: the leg pain and indescribable fatigue, and all the emotion you can’t control. But all of that was doable.

I ran eighteen miles. That marks the longest run I have to do before the actual race. If I wanted, I could just coast from here.

Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. When I described my method in this last run to a friend who is a running coach, she pointed me to this super-interesting article about a run/walk strategy for marathons.

This is what I’d accidentally done during that eighteen-mile run. Whenever I started to feel sick, I stopped and walked. Which presumably gave my poor tummy a chance to calm down and get right again. Then I started running again once I felt fully ready to do so.

I also let go of the terrible pressure I was putting on myself to run faster, to feel less pain, to be less of a baby, to stop whining. I took care of myself instead. I vowed to myself, in fact, that I wouldn’t let my body come to harm. That I would protect myself.

Those words, spoken aloud at mile fifteen, when darkness had already fallen, when I was completely overcome with exhaustion, had a powerful effect. They had what I think will be a lasting effect. They made me able to push through those last miles. Because I knew I had my own back.

This past weekend I ran a 10K race in Prospect Park. I’ve explained before what a slow runner I am. I tried the run/walk strategy, even for this relatively short race, and ended up with the fastest pace I’d ever clocked for any race or run. (Still pretty slow, but for me, a big deal.)

I knew that undertaking this marathon training would teach me something. I had some ideas about what that would be. I’d hoped I’d become more brave about physical pain, for one thing. I didn’t have to get all G. Gordon Liddy about it, though, did I? And subject myself to pain unnecessarily. The fact is my body was screaming at me to slow the fuck down, and I wasn’t listening, and that is a lesson I hope to take away from all this. I cut everyone else in my life serious slack all the time. I need to give myself a break once in a while too.

So I’m going to run this marathon. (I think. My knees are flaring up. They hurt like hell even during short runs now. We’ll have to see.) But if I run this marathon, I’m going to do it slowly, and walk part of it, and just try to finish and celebrate all the work I’ve put in so far. And take care of myself. And be proud of how far I’ve come. And let go of the compulsion to do it perfectly.

And most of all: enjoy it.

One day I was telling a friend that I felt depressed, and I was trying to explain why. I said it was as if a geyser of energy were constantly shooting upward out of the top of my head – emotional energy, creative energy – but that the force of that energy was too explosive. So I spent a lot of time shoving a cap down on it, to hold it in. As a result, it exploded internally, and made me sick inside.

She made an interesting suggestion. She told me to find a physical activity that would mimic the force and motion of the geyser, and then do it. This made a weird sort of sense to me. It seemed right to actively find a place where I could take the cap off and let loose. I had a little trouble picking the right activity, though. Is there an exercise in which you’re propelled off the ground like a rocket? I couldn’t think of one. Bungee jumping, maybe? Trampoline? Gymnastics? I decided to choose running. If I lean forward a little, it’s kind of like preparing for take-off, no?

Many times in my life I’ve felt stuck. There’d be something about myself or my situation that I wanted to change, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Of course like any self-respecting girl I would try talking about it. That usually helped me feel better, at least temporarily, and sometimes it would even help clarify exactly what was wrong or missing or broken. That’s not nothing; I realize that. But it didn’t help me change what needed changing.

Which is what I want: to actually change what is bothering me. To solve the problem. Over the years I’ve had conflicts with friends over this. Someone would tell me about their troubles, and I would immediately hunker down and try to help them brainstorm a way out of them. Then they’d get mad at me. “I was just venting!” they’d say. In other words, “I don’t actually want to solve the problem right now. I just want to complain about it.”

WHA?

Conversely, I would share a problem of my own with a friend, and wait for them to ask questions about it, to help me analyze it, to point out the aspects of the situation that I hadn’t seen, to suggest courses of action, and…

*Crickets*

It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand this dynamic, and to seek/give support accordingly. Some people don’t like attacking their problems like a rabid terrier. Okay: noted. Not that they’re passive; they just go about it a different way.

But me, I’m the terrier. And to do my job properly, I need tools.

Maybe because I’m a writer and a reader, I appreciate symbols. I love the Jungian principle that our subconscious is constantly speaking to us through symbols, sending us messages, giving us clues, if we would only make the effort to interpret them. It raises a question: If my subconscious is communicating to me through symbols, can’t I communicate right back in the same way? If there’s something about the way I operate that needs changing – and talking about it, while it relieves pressure, isn’t working – can’t I access my subconscious and rewire it using symbolic acts?

In retrospect, I see that I’ve done this accidentally many times. As a kid, I was very shy – painfully so – and couldn’t bear to have any attention focused on me. The first job I took as a young adult was as a canvasser for Clean Water Action. I knocked on people’s doors and asked them for money. You can imagine how that went. My first summer was a miserable failure. I had never been worse at anything I tried to do. But I believed in what we were doing, I loved the people I worked with, and I hated the fact that I couldn’t articulate myself confidently. So I went out and knocked on those doors every day until I learned how to do it.

Because the Clean Water Action teaching system is so GREAT, the training was broken into discrete parts: make eye contact, keep it short and simple, be specific about what you want, use confident language, etc. So for example, if you want to sound confident, you don’t say the word try, as in “We’re trying to find out what’s in our drinking water.” You say, “We’re FIGHTING for the right to know about toxins in our drinking water.” In other words, you become more confident by acting more confident. You fake it ‘til you make it.

It works!

This phenomenon also comes up in teaching. When I first started, I worked with the lowest-performing classes in one of the lowest-performing schools in the city. My students were failing, and they were furious about it, and as a result their behavior was atrocious.

I came into that classroom full of idealistic bravado about teaching them to act appropriately out of a sense of personal responsibility and inherent ethics. You can probably guess how that turned out. I got my ass handed to me.

Thank God, I happened to be working with a teacher who used a behavior plan. According to his system, students earned points and rewards for specific, targeted behavioral changes. I gave him all sorts of huffy resistance to this system at first, calling it manipulative, shallow, etc. He just laughed at me. Because his plan worked. And mine didn’t.

I was asking these kids to reach for a golden hoop a hundred feet above their heads, and then getting mad when they couldn’t do it. He, on the other hand, asked them to reach for the hoop that was just beyond them, that they could stretch for and reach if they tried hard, and if they did, they were soundly acknowledged, celebrated and rewarded for it. He did this for them one step at a time, one level at a time, until they could grab for that final hoop. With his help, they built their own staircase there. But they did it by isolating specific behaviors and then mastering them. And the behavior wasn’t a generalized, “be good,” or “act better,” it was “raise your hand before speaking,” or “stay in your seat:” concrete, physical, doable actions. Symbols. Because by learning to raise their hands before blurting something out or remaining seated rather than jumping on the desk, they learned self-control.

I know this is not new. It’s behavioral therapy, or behavior modification, and millions of people (and animals) have tried it in one form or another. But for some reason it was news to me that I could choose to do it to myself, and change things that I didn’t like.

Interestingly, this blog is one experiment in that direction. As a teacher, I was trained to be aware of a particular gender dynamic in the classroom: boys usually raise their hands first. Before you even get the question out, many boys will have their hands up. Most of them don’t even know the answer yet. They just want to be called on. So they’ll take that risk and get their hand up and figure it out later. Girls, on the other hand, tend to stop, breathe, ask themselves if they know the answer, formulate an articulate response, and then raise their hands. In the time it’s taken them to accomplish this process, a boy has already been called on. As the teacher, if you wait a few beats after asking the question, allow it to sink in, and give all students a chance to formulate a response before you call on anyone, you give girls a better chance to be heard.

At the same time, you have to teach girls to just go for it. To be willing to make a mistake, to say something imperfectly, to be wrong. But to go for it. This blog is my attempt to practice what I preach to my students. I spend a lot of time editing my for-publication work, but on this blog, I edit very little. I write and then I hit send. Knowing it’s not polished. Knowing it’s still raw. Knowing people will read it and judge it and find fault with it, or not read it at all.

This blog is my symbolic act, and the goal is for me to learn how to not give a fuck what anybody thinks. The goal is for me to be willing to be imperfect publicly.

Today at the playground some lady started yelling at me because my kid was riding his bike too fast. He shouldn’t have been; it’s true. But she was rude about it, and loud, and she scared my child, and so I gave her a very public smackdown. I didn’t care what anybody else thought about that. In the past, I would have shrunken away and meekly apologized. But not today.

I thank this blog for that. Here, I say what I think without editing myself. I just force myself to do that, and then leave it up here for all to see or ignore. And lo and behold, the world keeps on spinning. Mostly, no one even notices. Which is perhaps the most hilarious discovery. No one really cares what I say! That is SO LIBERATING.

Another example: One year I gave up worrying for Lent. I know that sounds crazy. But it was actually the first time I tried behavior mod on myself. I figured my compulsive worrying was getting in the way of my spiritual life. I was living in a state of hyper-vigilance and trusting no one. So for the forty days of Lent, every time I started to worry, I stopped and prayed instead. And I always prayed one kind of prayer – I said thank you for something glaringly obvious and beautiful that I otherwise would have ignored. Because I was worrying so much – about so many ridiculous things over which I was completely powerless – I ended up praying a hell of a lot. At the end of Lent, I was changed. I had tripped a switch in my brain. I felt safer. By replacing worrying with gratitude, I shifted my brain’s focus away from the fear of what I might lose to all the bounty that I already had.

I didn’t start out feeling grateful. I became grateful by acting grateful, and I reduced worrying by replacing worrying with an act of gratitude. Isn’t that nuts? But it worked.

Right now I’m in the thick of whatever it is I’m trying to learn by training for a marathon. I started out wanting to become comfortable with being bad at something (I’m a terrible runner) and doing it anyway. Also, I wanted to become less afraid of physical pain. And I wanted to see that enormous, seemingly unreachable goals could be broken down into single, achievable steps. So far, so good. I do appear to be learning all of this. The great thing about these mind puzzles I give myself, though, is that I learn a whole crapload of stuff I didn’t expect as well. With the marathon, I’m learning that I’m too hard on myself (duh), that I could stand to be a lot more protective of my own health, and that I do too much stuff on my own (like, for example, running). (Whoops.)

Perhaps my obsessive self-challenges are weird. I don’t know if other people operate this way. I only know that when I hear myself lamenting some perfectly fixable problem more than once, I get twitchy. I start looking for a way to solve it. This way works for me. And even if it doesn’t work perfectly, it sure keeps me busy.

And now I leave you with a picture of this Georgia O’Keefey flower.