I've Been Broken And I Can Do Hard Things: Baby Loss and Chasing Dreams

I completed a marathon on Sunday. I'm still not used to seeing that in black and white. It doesn't quite feel like me. And yet it was. Four months ago, after driving back from my first run postpartum, not being able to complete 5km, I made the snap decision to run a marathon.

Over the next four months, I slowly built distance. First, being nervous about a 12km run, then a 15km and then completing 21km, thinking 'how am I supposed to do double this.' That's the thing though. We can so easily increase our goals without fully stopping to celebrate, to appreciate, where we've come from.

I started off running in memory of Charlie; 'it's for him,' I said. I wanted to raise money for the NICU in which he spent most of his life. And I did. I raised $5,000 through the beautiful generosity of the community around me. I soon realised in my training runs though, that it was more than that. I was running to prove to myself that I can do hard things. I knew I could do hard things. I birthed Charlie and held him and walked away from him after he died. But I realised, I had to teach this new version of Lauren, that she might feel broken but that doesn’t mean she can’t continue on. That she can do things with Charlie perched on her shoulder. And over the course of my marathon training block, I learnt to carry him softly with me.

I was lucky enough to be gifted my ticket to the first World Majors Sydney Marathon by my local run clubs, otherwise, it's a very swiftly sold out event.

Crossing that finish line, outside the Sydney Opera House, I was swamped by such an intense, beautiful wave of emotion. It was a mix of missing Charlie so profoundly, not wanting to do a marathon, just wanting to be at home with my eight month old baby but also realising I just completed a marathon!

And here's the thing. So many people see running a marathon as the strength. And even though I'm proud of my achievement, there's a little niggly thought that's attaching itself. I hate that my completing a marathon, perpetuates the idea that when we grieve, we must march on with solidarity. We must pick goals and chase them and achieve them.

Training for and running a marathon for me, was a necessity. I had arrived at a point, where I felt it wasn't possible to get much lower. My body needed something to take the edge off and I knew that things like alcohol were only going to make the spiral worse. I realised, I could stay sitting in a black hole, which I wasn't going to be able to surrender to for long and which was damaging my family, or I could get up and run.

And so whilst it took grit and determination to run 42.2km, the real grit and determination comes from merely surviving life without my boy. Getting up every day, showering, trying to keep a routine, making dinners, easing back into work, navigating relationships, when all you want to do is collapse, that's the real grit. That's the real marathon. It's less obvious, not as societally acknowledged but it's life long; there is no finish line.

I'm unbelievably proud of us for achieving this goal and I'm also cognisant that the marathon is not the hardship that I endure. It's not impossible but I probably wouldn't have run that marathon at eight months postpartum having a baby. So, it's bittersweet, the accomplishment.

I would recommend running as a form of therapy. There is something about getting out in the open air, the side to side motion a kind of EMDR therapy, the endorphins that help to soften the symptoms of acute stress. It doesn't need to be a marathon. For me, the desperate times required desperate measures. I can't understate though how over the last four months, running has literally been my road to some sort of salvation.

I miss Charlie and I'm learning to carry him with me. My body is changed and yet it can do things I never dreamt it could. I'm expanding and yet learning things within myself that I never knew were there. I've been broken and I can run marathons.