Santanna has a dear friend, Elsa; Elsa has a big sister Ana.  Tomorrow I am running the Mankato Marathon and I am wearing a shirt for Team Ana; she is 7 years old and is starting her second round of Chemo for brain Cancer on Friday.

People always say to me “I don’t know how you do it…whatever “it” is, sometimes I think it is the training or the racing, sometimes I think just being a momma to 4 kids is beyond peoples realm of capability.  I always humbly laugh this off, for real, because I choose what spoons I put into the kettle of life, if you will, and that I have goals that I set and achieve.  These are for me and I hold no one else to my goals.  So I appreciate when people are in awe, but I do not do it to impress, I do it to better my life, or my family’s life.

Just like parents of ill children’s do, there sense or normal takes on such a drastically different perspective, yet their lives become directed by appointments, meds, turns, coughs, etc.  So the truth is that whatever “it” is is so much smaller than the battle Ana, her family are fighting, and so many other families have to fight.  I can do 26.2 because I can’t imagine how Ana’s parents do “it”.

Ana will be the wind at my back tomorrow.