I was one kilometre into my Saturday morning parkrun.
[In case you’ve never heard of it, “parkrun” (all one word, all lowercase) is a free, weekly, timed community event that happens in over 500 locations around Australia and is currently in about 20 countries around the world.]
I was jogging along incredibly slowly. I am currently committed to low-heart-rate training, which means I’m lucky if I can run faster than 10 minutes per kilometre. If you’re not a runner this will mean nothing to you, so imagine this:
I was so slow that many fast walkers were overtaking me.
One of these was a man at least 20 years my senior. I made a lighthearted, passing remark (that I’ve since forgotten) and he replied in a way that made little sense for the flow of the conversation but a lot of sense to a fellow parkrunner like myself:
“This is my 50th location!”
[Translation for non-parkrunners: “This is the 50th different place that holds a parkrun that I have walked, run or volunteered at since I started my parkrunning journey. And I’m so excited I have to tell someone!”]
He used a tone of voice and a language pattern I’ve heard several times over the last handful of years I’ve been parkrunning. I don’t know how to describe it exactly but it somehow conveys that the person telling me their news thinks that their achievement is amazing and must be more amazing than anything I’ve ever dreamt of achieving through parkrun.
It used to really irk me.
They would tell me about their amazing achievement like they were better than me, failing to realise I had already far exceeded that goal.
I would usually correct these people.
Sometimes bluntly. Sometimes in a lighthearted way. Sometimes by trying to lead them into actually asking me about my parkrun experience instead of carrying on about themselves with no regard for me beyond seeing me as a person to brag to.
But on this day? With this fast-walking older man who blurted out his latest (nearly completed) achievement?
This time I heard something different come out of my own mouth:
“Wow! That’s exciting!”
And I meant it.
My genuine first response was one of empathy. That is, I was able to, spontaneously, be with him in his excitement.
I really got that it wasn’t about me.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t thought to ask me about the number of parkrun locations I’d been to.
In fact, it was only after he moved passed me that my mind wanted to butt in and remind me, “I’ve done more than three times the number that he has!” And even with my mind pushing its way in, it still felt easier than ever before to just let him have his win.
This is what happens as we heal our past trauma.
In the past, I clung so tightly to my achievements to bolster my flailing self-confidence. But the more I heal the wounds of the past, the more my genuine, innate self-confidence emerges, and the less I cling to the things I’ve achieved.
There are little signs of this everywhere in my life but here are two other examples from parkrun:
While I still regularly attend parkruns I can’t tell you off the top of my head how many I’ve now done.
While we still regularly seek out new parkrun locations to visit, we go more for the fun of it than the bragging rights. In fact, if this grey-haired man had asked me how many locations I’d been to I couldn’t have told him an exact number.
These things are no longer as important to me. I now know, deep in my bones, that I’m amazing whether I’ve been to one parkrun location or a thousand.
In fact, if I’m proud of any achievement at all it is noticing how much I have changed.
It is in seeing the real-life effect of all these silent reps I’ve been doing while no one has been watching.
And if you’ve been doing trauma resolution work of any kind, whether it’s silent repetitions at home on your own when “stuff” arises or working through your pain with the support of a practitioner, therapist or healer of some kind, (or both) then kudos to you.
May you be gifted with unexpected interactions with strangers who show you have far you’ve come.
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