My Most Important Lesson (Thank you, Dad!)

I remember the day I discovered I was a runner.

It was third grade in Western Nebraska. Mr. Howard made us run a lap around the football-sized field behind our elementary school. It probably wasn’t actually the size of a football field, but to a third grader, it felt enormous. I usually stuck with my friends, the three of us slogging along together, mildly annoyed. That day, I noticed the boys ahead of us, and I realized my pace felt like walking. Like, maybe I could go faster.

So I did.

A little faster. Then more. And more.

Suddenly, I was cruising past everyone. I remember the thrill of it, how light and strong I felt. I pumped my arms harder and crossed the imaginary finish line first. I had beaten everyone in my class, even the boys. I was hooked. I wanted to do it again.

That year was also the first time we participated in the citywide track and field day. I had switched elementary schools and found myself racing against friends from my old school. I won the 400-meter dash, the most fearsome event of all: an entire lap.

From that point on, the pressure to be fast, to win, crept in quietly. I was too young to understand it, but my body understood. By fifth grade, at my final track and field day, the pressure to still be the fastest girl felt sickening.

I hated running now.

My dad slipped away from work just before the race. I found him in the crowd, and he studied my face.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Awful,” I said, or some fifth-grade version of that. “What if I lose? I hate being this nervous. I hate it.”

He paused, then said something I’ve carried with me ever since.

“Good,” he said. “It’s good that you’re nervous. It’s your body’s way of telling you: I’m ready.”

I kept competing as I grew older: sports, music, dance. And instead of interpreting that no-good sick, jittery feeling that felt so much like fear, like what if fail? I learned to read it as preparation.

I even came to fear not being nervous. That felt like a sign I wasn’t ready, that I hadn’t done the work to be ready.

Even as forty-something it’s still there. And at times, it spikes randomly (thank you, perimenopause). And I still hate it. But I accept it, I respect it, and strangely enough, I sometimes chase it. But I don’t like it. Before every challenge of my adult life, I still have the same internal conversation: Why am I doing this to myself?

I think many of us experience that sensation and misinterpret it as danger. Stop. Avoid the thing causing this! But somehow, I learned something else from my dad. I learned there was only one way out.

The end of the panic was to do the thing that was making me panic. And often, on the other side was the joy I’d been seeking in the first place, whether I won or lost, succeeded or failed. It’s true what they say, the only way out, is to go through it. After years of working as a child psychiatrist, I’ve come to believe that much of modern anxiety is fueled by the opposite lesson. We’ve become very good at escaping discomfort, but not very practiced at moving through it.

I wish I could give families I work with a recipe on what it means to move through it. It'll look different for everyone. For me it was practicing that internal dialogue of recognizing when I was running from maybe the very thing I should be running toward, through, and across the finish line. Regardless of what place I finished, and in what shape I was when I did. That's the whole point, the process, not the outcome.

Thanks Dad, for those words, the lesson, said at the right moment at the right time.

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Happiest Father’s Day to those around the world, to those that have loved, lost, and for whom this day can be complicated to celebrate, I leave with you the warmest wishes.

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