On Movement, Resilience, and Learning to Listen to the Body
The year I ran the marathon was a burn-down year, though I didn’t know it yet. I was doing what I always do when life starts to feel too loud, I was moving.
I ran in the snow, I ran when I had somewhere to go, I ran fast and I ran slow. And I ran a lot of races.
My first half marathon was almost my last. I remember feeling amazing in the start, mile 4…mile 6…oh I’m sailing! Bob Marley had me cruising. But then the mile marker showed: mile 11. I still have 2.1 miles to go, still 10% left. What?! Ok, need to get my mind straight…focus! Roughly only 2 miles left, already finished 90%…it’s like a B in school, I need to get the A. (It really is mental.)
My husband, who had been running all over Central Park to catch me at different mile markers, was to my right. I was coming up a soft incline. I remember 3 other women and a man in a pack. We didn’t speak, but we were all there together pushing in hearty breaths. My pants were navy with stars, my shirt was black, and my face, welp, tomato red. When I saw my husband, I glanced over and screamed, “I’m dying!” I heard a chuckle from a girl in the pack. To myself, I said I can’t believe I’m doing this to my body!
But the high crossing the finishing line was all I needed to continue training for the full. Training miles stacked up quietly, one after another, giving me hours of silence inside my own body. Running had become the place where I could think without falling apart.
The marathon gave me space. Lots of space: 26.2 miles, to be exact. Long, quiet hours where my feet moved and my thoughts finally settled. The repetition was meditative. Silence has always been where I think best. Training gave my days a shape of clear schedules, with a finish line waiting somewhere in the future. With a goal on the calendar, I could stay focused. I could process without unraveling.
I loved that time. The thinking. The sorting. The gentle permission to turn inward. I’d lace up my New Balance 1080s in the dark, slipping quietly out the door at 5:30 a.m. while the house was filled with tiny toddler snores, or climb onto the treadmill at 9 p.m., the hum of it my was a companion after a day of meltdowns, diapers, and dishes. The silence was a luxury. Sometimes I cried mid-stride, tears mixing with sweat, the road blurring for a beat as I let myself feel instead of holding everything in. I knew I was reclaiming ME when music I once loved found its way into my ears again.
But my joints didn’t love all those miles the same. Slowly, my body began to push back in ways I could no longer override.
I was thirty-nine years old. I had carried and delivered two children, maybe not through my body in the traditional way, but they had lived there long enough to leave their mark. My bladder never forgot.
Somewhere deep into training, I noticed something shift. I felt the urge to pee, but when I went, nothing happened. Other times I’d go, only to feel like I had to go again immediately after. It was strange. Disorienting. Easy to dismiss, but persistent enough.
I mentioned it to my OB-GYN. He told me to talk to my internist. The internist sent me to a specialist. He ordered a urinalysis, glanced at me, and said he thought I was fine, “It’s probably core muscles adjusting, maybe spasms from the workouts.”
That answer was good enough for me. I took the test and went right back to running. I tucked the concern so far away that when the results came in, I didn’t even rush to look. My symptoms had eased. I assumed everything had settled.
But when I finally opened the report, the story had changed. Suddenly, I was sitting in a nephrologist’s office, hearing words like kidney wall thinning. Then a hepatologist—coarse liver lining. My ANA levels were off the charts. By the time I was waiting for the rheumatologist, my mind had already convinced me I was dying.
Every sensation felt suspicious. Every ache carried meaning. I wondered if my body was quietly turning against me.
When I let myself imagine the worst, it wasn’t death that scared me. It was disability. An autoimmune diagnosis. The kind of fatigue that turns life into something you watch instead of live. I couldn’t imagine not going—not moving my body every day, not playing sports with my daughters, not being the mother who runs alongside them. I couldn’t imagine needing rest more than presence.
My memories were still being made. I wanted to be there for their milestones, their futures, their dreams, for the people who would come into their lives and believe in them when they needed it most. The thought of being too tired to show up, that was what terrified me.
To cope, I sang to myself out loud, every day, sometimes multiple times a day for weeks.
Every little cell in my body is happy.
Every little cell in my body is well.
I sang it while brushing my teeth. In my head while waiting in line. While driving. With my daughters. It was the only way I knew how to stay inside my body without panicking.
For most of my life, movement has been my solution. When things felt overwhelming, I pushed harder. I trained more. I stayed busy. I mistook endurance for resilience.
But my body was asking for something else now. Not another goal. Not another mile. It was asking me to listen.
I didn’t need another dramatic ending or fresh start. I didn’t need to outrun what was trying to get my attention. I needed a new relationship with listening. I needed to listen to my body, my boundaries, and the quiet truth that had been speaking all along.
Mileise Allegrucci is a mother, writer and former executive. She writes about transformations that shape a life, and is currently working on a memoir that focuses on healing and identity.