My version of running is a slow, steady pace, for 2-5 miles. When I start running, the first 10 minutes tends to be the hardest. It is hard because I am shifting my body and lungs into a new state – from slower and passive to active and aggressive. I am pushing all my physical elements to go. There is resistance. My lungs must adjust. My legs need to warm up. My torso and arms are adjusting to the jarring pace as my feet steadily hit the concrete and propel me forward. It is never my favorite part, but always necessary: the least comfortable part of the process. 

That is why, within the first few minutes of my run, I head for the largest hill in my neighborhood. It is about a quarter mile from my house, and about a half mile long. Once I arrive, I run downhill first. Thankfully is the natural order in this process – you have no choice but to start at the top because it is a cul-de-sac. Therefore, it becomes strategic because when I run downhill, it gives my body a little break while it adjusts to the pace. Gravity propels me forward. It prepares me and closes out the warm-up. It is a small victory that provides momentum for the hard part. 

When I get to the bottom of the hill, I always turn around, pause and look up and assess. I pay attention to the cars parked on the side of the street. These objects turn into tickers of progress. I look at the sidewalk – are there any obstructions, like garbage cans or people chatting in the middle of them? I need clearance because I do not want to stop once I start. If you stop in the middle of an uphill run, game over. I need steady momentum. If there are obstructions, and most times, there are, I will start the uphill run on the street. It is a slow traffic street, so it is relatively safe to run when necessary – a calculated small risk, easily mitigated by turning my audio down, and paying attention to the sounds around me as I go. 

When I start my steady climb up the hill, I stay on the street until the obstacles on the sidewalk have been passed. While running up the street, I use the cars as my markers for progress. Each car is only a few feet from my peripheral. I never look too far ahead. Once I pass a car, I focus on the next. Occasionally I glance a little further, and think, wow! Once I get to the silver truck ahead, I will be halfway! I then refocus on surpassing what is right in front of me. Bit by bit. Car by car. Each parked car propels me to the next. By the middle of the hill, I feel winded but able to keep going. It is around this point that I begin to make my way to the sidewalk to complete the latter half of my run, because as I start to get winded, I need markers of progress at a quicker pace to keep my mind present and engaged.

The sidewalk is made up of cement panels. These panels are roughly 2.5 jogging steps long. At the halfway point, they are wonderful markers and a good mind shift. The smallness of them allows me to continue momentum when I am growing especially weary of the trek, because I just remind myself – only 2.5 steps and you are onto the next one! It is so simple to look down and see what is right in front of me, and push forward, checking off another panel. The panels add up much quicker than the parked cars. I surpass one, and then the next, and the next. I glance ahead and find a small marker that shows I am almost there. A street lamp. Once I hit that streetlamp, I think, I will have just a few more yards until I reach the top. The sidewalk panels seem to go faster when I see the end is near. 

When I summit the hill, I am short of breath, sweaty, and in a state of general discomfort, but my mind is filled with something so pure: relief. 

Relief is a powerful because it grants us freedom. When we push through something hard, we gain freedom. Freedom sets us in a place of neutrality, and neutrality puts us in a place to receive. As I continue my run, which has only just begun, what tackling that first hill does for me is shift my body from resistance to reception. As I hit the top of the hill, my body is now neutralized while in a state of motion. When we’ve neutralized ourselves, resistance dissipates, and we are conditioned to receive. The relief is enjoyable and subconsciously reiterates what I am capable of. What has happened is, my body has aligned to the new state of motion because it has completed something hard. In other words, I have grown or expanded in my capability. When my body aligns to my mind, the rest of the run becomes fluid. Not easy – because I am still in a state of motion and still pushing – but fluid. I no longer feel resistance. I caught the current going in the right direction and am letting it carry me, instead of paddling upstream. Even on other hills, I propel with much more ease. I have done this before. I can do it again. No hill is harder to clear than the first hill, because showing up from a rested state is the hardest part.

Getting to the top of that first hill and beginning again on flat surface is a powerful reminder that we can do hard things, as Glennon Doyle would say. We can do hard things and find relief at the end. It does not mean we stop, it means we are fully capable of carrying on. 

Marks of progress are important. They keep us going when we are amid the hard things. Celebrate those marks of progress. The sense of joy raises your vibration and carries you forward. What parked cars or sidewalk panels can you look for that tell you, you are on the way, when you are in the midst of a challenge? Find them – they are little universal hints that the divine has your back. Reinforcement of your power. 

And remember – I made the choice to run that first hill. I brought that first hill to myself. When we become a part of a challenge, it is because we invited that situation in. We have it into our lives to prepare us, and to use it as a tool to gain freedom. Our subconscious is powerful. We may not realize we have run ourselves to the hill, but believe me, nothing else brought us there but our mind and our own two legs. Do not deny yourselves the hills. Summit them and grow. Allow the relief you are capable of and deserve, to propel you. 

Whitney Ellison is a thought leader and coach of the Enneagram and Quantum Energy. Learn more about her by visiting her website, wellisonenterprises.com and following her @wellisonenterprises on Instagram where you can find all of her Enneagram series interviews and other comings and goings.

Last week was a tough one for me. Tough is relative – I know everyone has their stuff. I know my version of tough is nothing compared to another’s. All the same, for me, it was a tough week. My childcare fell through in the afternoons, so as soon as naptime was over, my work time was over. My husband helps immensely but he has an employer and works full-time. His hours are limited during the day. After the pandemic started, I chose to pivot, leave my employer, and start my business, Wellison Enterprises, allowing time and flexibility to navigate raising 3 young children. I had always wanted to do this and given the nature of the pandemic and balancing having a career, this seemed like the best time to jump because my family needed me more than ever. It has had a lot of benefits. It also has its days. 

Last week probably would have been more tolerable but for the fact that my daughter is amid 18-month sleep regression, so we are averaging about 3 hours of sleep per night, right now, again. The compounding effect of a lack of sleep on the lack of help that I deeply rely on to get things done was a lot – even for someone like me who has a lot of emotionally therapeutic tools in her toolbelt to navigate these situations. Sometimes tools are unmatched compared to a screaming, fussy, growing 18-month-old, who wanted to either be held, or completely left to her own devices, which included tearing through every possible cabinet, learning how to climb onto the dining room table, gravitating toward the fire poker, and when that was taken, sitting in the ashes of the fireplace, among other things. Dinners did not get cooked. Cleaning did not happen. The older kids had a lot of screen time when home. And yes, I got to that place. The one everyone dreads. The one nobody wants to admit to. 

I felt sorry for myself. 

I think the level of pain I had last week was amplified by a collective pain for all the mothers who were able to rely on fluid and functional childcare until the pandemic hit. Yes, this is a place of privilege. Yes, it implies access and financial security. In case nobody has noticed, it is also a huge reason why almost 3 million women have left the workforce. There is a collective grieving happening right now because there is a lot of loss. Last week hurt deeply, not because the babysitter cancelled, but because lack of childcare now for me, is a triggering event. Not having childcare has created trauma in my life. The new way of navigating parenting children and working as a mom – even a mom who started and owns her own business now – looks quite different than it did a year ago. It has uncovered that what we believed to be true, was never true to begin with. Yes, I received more time with my children, and I am grateful for that. And I am sad because that part of trust and access in my life died. It is being rebirthed in a new form – a much more honest form. But there is grieving to this process. 

It was a learned belief that my husband and I had access to paid childcare when we needed it, until we did not. And when we did not, I was the one who had to really step up to the plate at home – and this is while I had a full-time job too. That experience has instilled in my mind a limiting belief that I will experience loss every single time a childcare-giver cancels last minute (and stuff happens – this is not a critique on my amazing caregivers). It brings back the panic and invisibility I felt a year ago. I am still very much in the grieving and the figuring out of what the hell happened. I fully intend to move past this belief and recover from this trauma, and I am doing the work to get there. But it is very raw right now. I imagine it is for so many others as well. 

And you know what? It is ok. It is ok that I cried out of frustration. It is ok that I felt alone and like quitting everything. The really hard part is that I did not feel like I could talk to anyone about this. It seems as though this narrative is becoming played, and folks are tired of hearing about the squeeze women experience daily at the loss of childcare – even other women. Even other mothers. Not feeling like I could be received where I was made me feel very alone and invisible. It revealed something to me – and this is very vulnerable for me to say – last week, I needed and was looking for sympathy.

Sometimes sympathy helps us feel seen. And yes, I am referring to sympathy. Not empathy. Empathy implies the person has been there or can imagine being in the shoes of another. Sympathy implies that they have not been there, and cannot imagine being in the situation, but that they see there is a hard time going on, and then they gently acknowledge this. A simple “I see it’s been a rough week. I hope it gets better soon,” goes a lot further than an “at least you’re not …” or “You got this! Just push through.” Reframing can be helpful in a lot of situations, but it is also a defense mechanism that communicates to the other, “I can’t be bothered by this. Or your discomfort is a drag,” and it’s used to avoid having to deal with uncomfortable emotions. It has nothing to do with the person feeling the pain, and everything to do with the person prescribing the reframe. Reframing can actually perpetuate the pain of the other by making them feel less than or not entitled to their own emotion. It’s a good thing to watch out for because it is easy to do. 

However, well-intended sympathy can equate to grace. To holding space for another in grief. An acknowledgement. Not pity. It’s about saying, “I meet you where you are. I see a brighter day ahead, but you take the time you need. It’s ok to feel this way.”

Think about it in this context: when people are grieving the loss of a loved one, people often offer sympathy – not empathy. They offer sympathy because they have not gone through the tragic situation and are not the ones in total grief, but they want to acknowledge the person who is – that they see them and that the hold space for them. Most of the time, it is not pity that founds sympathy, it is grace and understanding that life is hard in this season for another, and that it is ok for them to be where they are. It is letting them know this. When you think about the mass exodus of working women, and of the ones who specifically left because they had to become primary caregivers after it became clear the system was hollow, understand they are grieving. They are grieving their freedom to work and raise kids in the way that they chose. They are grieving the part of their identity they so strongly held onto after shifting into motherhood – the one that said, “I am still a person too.” They are grieving the fact that they were told the institution had their back, but when push came to shove, it had nothing to offer them. 

So sometimes if you don’t to know what to say, sympathy will do fine. “Sym-” means “together,” and “-path” means “emotion.” I think that there is value in that. Meet us where we are.  

Whitney Ellison is a thought leader and coach of the Enneagram and Quantum Energy. Learn more about her by visiting her website, wellisonenterprises.com and following her @wellisonenterprises on Instagram where you can find all of her Enneagram series interviews and other comings and goings.

I met with a spiritual teacher last week. It was powerful. There were a handful of times that I used the word “hate,” and when I did, it was fueled with emotion. She would pause me after I would say the statement, “I hate it when that happens.” Or “I hate malice,” in the context of when I suspect people of have ill intentions toward me (a discussion for another day). I consider myself to have some strong tools, so you can imagine the shame and sadness that hit me when I realized this truth about myself. Darn it – there it is again: that ever-present and gently uncomfortable reminder – I am still work in progress.

We talked about the word “hate”. About how we can choose freedom from that word and the burden it presents. Hate does not serve us. I reflected on this. I believe and teach that forgiveness is the ultimate freedom: for and from ourselves. It unshackles us from the thing that happened to us. It is an action not meant to unshackle the other person- they were never shackled by our pain to begin with – only by their own. The effect of the pain we harbor, caused (accidentally, subconsciously, or intentionally) by another only holds us hostage – and if we do not reckon with it, it comes back and comes back and comes back. Even when we try to block it and control it with words like “hate”.

Hating something or someone makes us feel small and is the opposite of freedom. It returns us to the wounded child who desperately needs our love and affirmation of worthiness. It cycles until we reckon with it – by identifying the source or the roots – and extracting them. Words like hate are simply flags that there is internal work to be done.

I have found work to do.  And thank God, I suppose. Because the day I stop finding more spiritual work to do might be the day I depart from this Earthly plane, and I am not particularly interested in leaving too soon. 

What I learned from this conversation is that there are places, things and people that have triggered a pain so deep, I have only been able to label my response and beliefs grown from that pain as hate or other low vibrational emotions. This allows a continued assault on myself. Allowing hate in – even if just in semantics – really means I have allowed the pain to settle and fester. If I want to continue to lead and help others rise, I must also continue to help myself rise by unloading the weight that holds me back.

Hate begets hate. Love begets love. I choose love. It was love that brought me to this conversation, love that helped me see I have work to do, love that will support the processing and love that will allow me to forgive – both myself and others. It is love that makes way for freedom.

That is my truth. What is yours?

Whitney Ellison is a thought leader and coach of the Enneagram and Quantum Energy. Learn more about her by visiting her website, wellisonenterprises.com and following her @wellisonenterprises on Instagram.