I am Kathy. I am the mother of two wildly active boys, Travis and Emmett. I am a writer, a speaker, and a dedicated long distance runner. I am also a dreamer, a truth teller, and a lover of adventure. Hope, joy, courage, and words matter deeply to me.

I found my niche in ultra running about 8 years into my running career. It is when I am most exhausted after running for hours and feel like I can’t possibly take another step, that I feel the most alive. I live in that space, that hazy physical pain turned triumph and the mental weariness turned clarity that defies words and yet still makes me feel superhuman.

Life was kind of breezing by all carefree like for us when my youngest son Emmett began having seizures. He was diagnosed with Craniosynostosis when he was just 14 months old and not long after, a lesion and bleed in his brain were discovered along with other complications. Emmett’s multiple diagnoses, surgeries, medications, scans, and rigorous hospital schedule affected the entire family but hit me especially hard and cast me deep into a world of hopelessness and depression.

Having found God “accidentally” through running back in 2010, it was my faith that held me together and gave me the courage to climb out of that dark place. God did not heal Emmett, but He gave me the strength to hold onto hope for the future. Running paved the way back to hope and helped me accept our new place in this life. It was a long, hard process to outrun the pain I was in but when I finally crossed that imaginary finish line, there were no traces left of who I used to be. I had completely and irrecoverably transformed under the watchful eyes of the road.

I came out of that experience feeling older and wiser, with the urge to connect with others that have also struggled through the impossible darkness. I know the despair that comes with watching someone you love suffer and the desperate desire to take it all away. I have a passion to comfort and guide others through their own tumultuous journey, as it was once me. For me, writing and speaking out about our life is just another way to do that. Regardless of whether our stories are the same or not, we have all struggled. By facing the truth in my life, I hope that I can reassure others that they are not alone and help them see that hope is possible. There is always hope in the long run.