Coming of Age

Spoiler alert: anxiety

Five years ago, in the span of a couple months, I achieved two major goals. I qualified for the Olympic Trials Marathon, netting a small sponsorship with my longterm brand-crush Oiselle. I also unlocked a new level in my career by landing my first six-figure job. Both were significant markers of external success. I envisioned entering a higher plane of contentment sustained by a steady stream of Instagram likes and paychecks direct depositing.

Snagged an OTQ and a new job at Oracle. What could go wrong?

The likes and the paychecks arrived. It wasn’t enough. Actually, it was too much. I got everything I wanted, and then I got anxiety.

2019

Work

The challenges at the new job quickly overwhelmed me. I’d jolt awake in the mornings with my heart racing, my brain contemplating the day’s tasks. I’d spend hours at my desk procrastinating or stuck, not knowing where to start a task, or wait until it was too late to ask for help, then get chewed out by a superior.

Looking back, I’m not sure it was actually that high pressure of a role—I didn’t have a quota, and I was in a three month training program before I had to do any real work. But there was a lot to learn. I was working at Oracle, which is one of the biggest tech employers in the world. There were new customers, new products to support, and it was my first time working in a big sales org.

The scale of a corporate campus fascinated me. With a company so obviously spending money on me, I felt somehow more pressured to perform.

The complexity of the role was one new element, but the culture shift was probably more destabilizing than I realized. I had spent the first five years of my career at small businesses and tech startups where the whole company worked in one room, pressed against each other in open offices. At Oracle, my direct team was distributed around the country. If I wanted to ask a question, instead of turning to my neighbor, I had to send a Slack or an Outlook invite. Startup culture had its downsides, like the CEO (who was also in charge of HR) making porn jokes. Good luck reporting inappropriate conduct! But my coworkers and I had been close. We called each other family. I knew it was risky to believe, but part of me meant it. We cracked jokes all day, and got drinks after.

Further increasing my psychological distance from the concept of belonging at Oracle, none of the other new hires appeared to be struggling. What was wrong with me? My new role almost doubled my prior salary. It was a confidence boost on one hand, but on the other, the stakes felt higher. And it was an embarrassment to be struggling this much. When I brought up the discomfort of my imposter syndrome to some more senior coworkers I trusted, they told me the feeling never really went away.

Running

My running was freshly challenging that year too. Though I had qualified for the Trials, I didn’t level up like I thought I would. Training was lackluster, and I didn’t get into any of the US Championship races I tried to enter. Running typically comforted me when times were tough, but in a year of feeling sluggish, adjusting to my new job, and a couple small injuries, it wasn’t enough to pull me through.

Wilder

A few months into my new job, I landed a spot at Lauren Fleshman’s Wilder retreat. You had to write an application to get in, and it cost what would have been an exorbitant, unaffordable sum only the year before. So it felt a little exclusive, even though as I arrived, Lauren exclaimed happily, “It’s Cate from the internet!” She knows who I am, I thought. Score. But also, the pressure was on. Make her proud.

Unfortunately, Oregon was not far away enough to escape my mental lows.

The retreat was focused on the paired practice of running and writing. Every detail attended to. Women only. I don’t think I even saw a man for three days. It was peaceful and beautiful. Serene, even. But I broke down in tears when deciding whether or not to skip the run workout one day. And my writing, which we were sharing out loud with each other in small groups, took on a dark tone that disturbed me. Its honesty shocked me. I had this beautiful life. Why wasn’t I fulfilled? Why wasn’t I even okay?

The retreat inspired me to start therapy that fall. I started to practice more self compassion. I found a way to keep going. I even got a little more comfortable at work.

But I also got running back.

I had been injured part of the summer, and felt so sluggish in the months before that. I was hesitant to enjoy running as much as I wanted to. But with the Trials just a few months away, and fresh vigor in my legs, it felt so good. It was like coming home from a date, slamming the door closed, and breathlessly sliding to the floor in ecstasy—joy in being chosen. You can’t fully control what happens next, which is part of why it’s exhilarating.

I knew I was doomed if running ever went away again. I told my therapist this. I don’t remember what she said to do about it. When faced with choosing running or actually doing something more about my mental health, I picked running.

Trials

I pulled together the most mileage I’ve ever run in the 4-month build prior to the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials. Oiselle and my online fanbase remained incessantly and joyously supportive. Although I ran slower than I wanted, finishing in the bottom 10% of the field, I knew it was an accomplishment to be proud of. It was a tough day for a lot of people, and I was happy to be a face in the crowd of a historically large women’s marathon trials—an event that’s only been happening since 1984.

I ran most of the Trials marathon with my friend Sarah. She’d given birth to her son 6 months before. I knew this was a feat, but I didn’t realize quite how big it was at the time.

After the uphill battle of running in the past year, I decided it was baby makin’ time. I still wonder what would have happened if I stuck it out another year in work and running. Would I have found my stride? Of course, the pandemic canceled every significant race the rest of the year, so I didn’t feel like I was missing out on a lot. I also question if I was ready for kids, but are we ever? I had a job with maternity leave for the first time, we’d been married for five years, and I was 30 years old.

I was fortunate to get pregnant quickly, in April of 2020. Pregnancy was now my main mental occupation, a new way to belong, and a new thing to post about on Instagram. Once again I was able to defer actually handling my mental shit.

2024

It’s been five years since I took that new job, and four years since the Olympic Trials race. That was the last time I competed seriously.

I’m on my second solution consulting gig, now at Adobe. It’s a role that would have been wildly inconceivable and amazing to me, just five years ago. I’m a mom to two fantastic little girls. I’m effectively retired from competitive running. My capacity at work has improved vastly. Parenting has borne new challenges, understandably. My marriage has gotten more complex.

I have gone to therapy for most of the last five years. And anxiety has stuck around. It’s rarely about anything specific besides work, or climate change, but that’s the point. It just feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop even when things are good.

Coming of age

In my last post, I mentioned the term matrescence—a period of mental and physical changes, like adolescence, that women go through when they become moms. And this one, this time, feels like my first real coming of age. My children are still quite young, and while they’re changing rapidly, that’s what we expect. Myself on the other hand, it’s like these changes are surprising me at every turn. My teen years weren’t like this. I didn’t experience that profound sense of feeling different. But it’s the closest way I can think to describe it: raw, tender, confused, searching for my place.

Running was always my compass—it was the first thing that was mine in a big way. It arrived so unexpectedly, so clear and sharp, that I knew exactly where to go. It was the biggest yes of my life. It shaped my college choice and how I oriented myself and more decisions for years after.

Super mom and the fifth trimester

I want to say things have gotten better.

First, the good stuff: I have tapped a well of self-compassion. As I nurture my children, I am learning to nurture myself with the same grace and tenderness.

I have cultivated resilience. Giving birth once, navigating birth trauma, and then having a home birth the second time helped me so much with this. I just don’t question myself as much anymore.

I roared my second daughter out in a birth tub in my bedroom, with the powerful support of two midwives

Not to say going back to work after having children was smooth. After the life changing experience of home birth, I felt like the natural birth community that had supported me just dropped me off at the doorstep of the Adobe office and said “Good luck! You’re forever changed, but no one is going to ask you about it again, and the skills you learned are not going to carry over.”

There’s one (and only one, at least from what I’ve found) popular book out there, The Fifth Trimester, that speaks to moms returning to work after having kids. “You’re probably really good at your job,” it counsels. “Just keep playing to your strengths!” Bold of you to assume I’m good at my job, I remember thinking as I read. I hadn’t felt good at my job in years. My anxiety could never.

It did say to lower the bar, which I agree with. The only other concrete advice I remember it offering was to not make any sudden decisions about work in the first few months back. I made it a whole four months back at Oracle, after my first kid was born, until I left for another new gig. Everyone else was getting these monster raises by taking new jobs, so when a recruiter from Adobe called, I leaped. The move proved fortuitous, as Oracle slashed my department several months later. But I had a 9-month-old. It was awful timing for me personally. Without even my niche book advice to steer me, I felt pretty rudderless.

I liked the book. It’s on my motherhood shelf. It’s just not enough.

Adobe is great, literally a dream company. And I am no longer a sleep-deprived zombie parent to a baby who wakes at night. Nor am I pulling all-nighters to compile my quarterly deliverables…that only happened once, at 7 months pregnant, thank you very much. But it’s still hard (surprise). I’m still too invested in the idea of performance at work and in running, which is exhausting and ego-busting.

While I don’t get anxiety’s racing heart quite as often now, I do get uncomfortably wired.

I wrote about that last fall:

I get quite stressed too. I want to say I was used to being stressed before I had kids, juggling running and work together. But this is a new level. I get sick more often and stay sick longer. I’ve always been a teeth grinder, but I apparently took it up a notch last year (“Going HAM,” were my dentist’s exact words). That resulted in getting two crowns and eventually my first root canal. Healthcare stress! And although I’ve mostly figured out my running-related injuries, it’s not been a clear path back. I’ve spent most of the last five years either pregnant, postpartum, and/or in bouts of injuries: pelvic organ prolapse, dehydration cramp pains that lasted weeks, and achilles tendinitis.

Stress, anxiety, and overnight parenting did a number on my sleep. When parents say they haven’t slept in months, it’s not literally true, like zero hours of sleep ever. It just means you have felt kind of unbelievably, low-level shitty for months, and maybe can’t remember the last time you slept through the night. It wasn’t the newborn waking that did me in. I expected that. It was the anxiety spirals keeping me up at 1 a.m. when after 14 straight months of depletion and toddler night waking. I felt like I should have re-assimilated into working mom life, into running, into being a good wife by then, which is what made it so trying.

Still here

I’ve had so many hard days, so many hard weeks, all strung together, that sometimes I can hardly believe I’m still doing all of this. Still doing this job, still showing up to plod my few miles around the neighborhood.

Some days, I’m baffled at how I ended up here. And I don’t know why I’m doing half of it.

I know it’s normal, but this was just not modeled to me growing up. It was a world of stay-at-home moms. But I’m working, in charge of two tiny humans in my off hours, navigating daycare and hiring nannies and paying their salaries and leading bedtimes and so many meals… and without running and training, specifically, being a daily joyful habit that buoys me and gives me purpose.

The jig is up

As a young person, I bought in to the idea of excelling at running with the intensity of a religious convert. I think that’s what enabled me to be so successful. Deep down, I knew it couldn’t last forever, this devotion. But with the examples of so many mom runners crushing it, I didn’t think I would lose that part of my life yet.

So many women offer encouragement that this is only temporary, and that running will always be there for me. Let’s say they’re right, and instead of three months, this season is just four fucking years long. Instead of constantly looking at my feelings of overwhelm as indication I need to change something, or optimize, or try harder, can I just be here and be grateful? I am wearing myself out, trying to find a way out, and I think that’s contributing to my anxiety.

I was blaming matrescence for making this chapter so hard. And the responsibility of raising kids certainly up the ante. But so did that new job five years ago. And I have been rising to those challenges. I am supported. I am resilient. I’m pulling it off, aren’t I?

I am able to hold space for myself in what feels like a contradiction. The old me would have said there are no excuses for not performing—if you want it, go chase it down. I know it’s not that simple anymore, which is nice because if it was I’d probably hate myself. Honestly, I think I’m doing a great job. I try to be honest about my choices. I know everyone has their own battles, and many fight theirs with less privilege than I have.

I think the real coming of age is being okay without this sport. I want to get there. But I still have some more growing up to do.