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COVID, week 54 + Alexi Pappas’s Bravey – book review

COVID, week 54 + Alexi Pappas’s Bravey – book review

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I mentioned last week that a COVID-induced change that I hope sticks around is the relatively new openness, or comfort, that more people seem to have when it comes to talking about mental illness. 

As we all can attest, the pandemic has upended life, so profoundly, in so many different ways, for so many, that more people are citing mental health maladies in the past year, than perhaps ever before. (Admittedly though, let me own that I don’t have the actual stats to back that up, but I think it’s a logical conclusion, based on what we do know. The pandemic also forced many providers into telehealth settings, which is another COVID-induced change that I hope sticks around. More treatment options = more opportunities for people to seek care. That’s a win in my book). 

Anyway. With mental health becoming a significant conversation piece over the past year, it has been illuminating to see additional coverage of mental health-related topics. I think it’s especially interesting coming from athletes (and runners, in particular), people whom you may, at first glance, assume have it all, have their shit together, what have you. Many people unduly think that one’s prestige or accolades may protect him/her from the grips of mental health despair, but cursory observations show that that’s not always the case.  

Enter: Alexi Pappas and the New York Times, early December, 2020. 

A lot of runners may know her for her time at the University of Oregon, her impressive track speed, perhaps her debut at the marathon distance in Chicago a few years back, and/or that she set a Greek 10k national record during the ‘16 Olympics in Rio; she’s a decorated athlete, for sure. (And of course, this is to say nothing of her creative pursuits). 

Before the New York Times op-doc she and Lindsay Crouse released in December — ahead of her book’s publication in January — many of us, myself included, probably didn’t connect her and mental health in the same breath. 

If you haven’t yet watched or read the NYT piece, do that first; I’ll be here. 

It’s pretty powerful stuff and an excellent segue into Alexi’s newly-released memoir-in-essay, Bravey.

I recently procured a library copy of Bravey and tore through it in a few days’ time, between pockets of distance learning. Admittedly, I knew very little about Alexi Pappas’s life, beyond what I just mentioned above; I had little-to-no knowledge about the filmmaker side of her life, her marriage, her upbringing, nothing. She’s even from the Bay Area (Alameda), and I had no clue; I feel like everyone local should know that!  

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I knew from watching the aforementioned NYT op-doc in December that she suffered from depression after the ‘16 Olympics, but I was gleefully ignorant about its severity or depth — or her family history — until the earliest pages of her memoir-in-essay. 

Powerful is what I keep returning to, as I try to describe Alexi’s life story, but I think that sells it short. There’s a lot going on in its three-hundred-plus pages. 

It’s a woman’s life story, yes, but it’s more than that. 

It’s ruminations from an Olympic professional runner, yes, but it’s more than that.  

It’s the life story from a mental health consumer — whose own life and upbringing was very deeply affected by her mother’s mental health challenges — yes, but it’s more than that. 

I don’t really know how best to describe it, to be honest. 

When I finished reading it, I knew I needed to write about it, but where to begin?

Or how exactly to convince you that you need to read it? I don’t know, but it’s urgent that you add it to your queue. 

Alexi punctuates each chapter in Bravey with lines of her own poetry — she turned down competitive, rare MFA poetry scholarships to pursue a fifth year at Oregon to eventually launch her pro career —  and as readers become more familiar with her life, the short verses read less like the whimsical “gotchas” they may seem at first glance and more melancholic, given her story. 

In the earliest pages of her memoir, Alexi shares with readers that she lost her mother when she was four years old to suicide and that for years, she, Alexi, didn’t know. Her mother smoked cigarettes; as a young girl, Alexi knew that cigarettes could kill you; her logical conclusion, as a four year-old, then was that her mother died because she smoked cigarettes. 

It is absolutely gutting to read.  

Alexi describes some of the numerous times when her mother sought in-patient treatment for her mental illness — and her periodic, harrowing reprieves at home, and what Alexi remembers witnessing — and her descriptions give readers the type of unfiltered, heart-breaking, and honest impressions of the gravity of her mother’s precarious health that only a small child, witnessing it all go down, can provide. 

It is profoundly tragic and uncomfortable to read but obviously critically important. 

Each essay in her book could stand on its own, independent from the rest of the chapters, but I think as a writer, Alexi brilliantly wove her story together. Not every essay is about her mother’s death, per se, but clearly the loss of her mother permeates her life in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. 

It’s the same with her running career and her filmmaking, writing, and creative career; it’s disingenuous to think that each lives on its own island, liberated from the other, but she doesn’t necessarily devote every single piece to all of the aforementioned. 

She makes all of her decisions — about her Olympic aspirations, her professional running career, her creative pursuits and unconventional career with her husband — informed by all of it, even when, at times, it may appear to be competing interests.   

In many ways, readers could describe much of her memoir-in-essays as a love and appreciation letter to her father, who single-handedly raised her and her older brother, void of most female mentors, for much of her life. It is from the dearth of female role models that her father felt compelled to enroll her in both Girl Scouts and sports from a young age, and the latter — certainly influenced by her father’s athleticism when she was growing up — arguably helped get her wheels in motion to aspire to Olympic greatness, even as a young child.

I absolutely love and gravitate toward professional athletes’ memoirs (and runners’ in particular) because I like to learn about how everything played out, getting them to where they ultimately end up, because in some small way, us plebs can usually relate. 

Alexi’s story is so memorable because, yes, it’s about the aforedescribed and her obvious innate and earned talent, but it’s also a front-row seat to her ongoing self-examination for which a lot of the time, she has no clear-cut, direct answers. 

Her acute awareness that she lacked female role models in her life for so long — and her attempts to fill that void (a la Girl Scouts, initially) — permeate her story and definitely inform her experience, even down to the scrutiny she places on her social media presence. She knows that there is always someone watching — perhaps a little girl like she once was, someone looking for a female role model to fill a void — and it’s fascinating to see this thread wind through her lived experience.  

When Alexi, herself, becomes severely ill after the Rio Olympics with her own mental health maladies, in time, she — and us readers, along for the ride — realize that the connection she shares with her mother is much less abstract than she once thought. Just as it is elsewhere in the book, when she explores her mother’s illness, the vulnerability through which Alexi describes her own illness — and how it affected her life, career, relationships, her Nike contract, all of it — is deeply uncomfortable and may leave you feeling like a bit of a voyeur, like you’re passing by a terrible car accident but can’t not look. 

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That’s the point, I’d argue. The less we talk about this stuff — or rather, the more we continue not talking about it — the more it lives and breeds in darkness and isolation, and the more it’s fueled by unnecessary shame, embarrassment, and stigma.

…which gets us to the point, of what it means to be brave, or to be in Alexi’s crew of braveys. She rightfully acknowledges that systemic issues like racism preclude many people from being able to fully realize that which they seek, regardless of how brave they may be. 

For her, being brave — becoming a bravey — has meant seeking out the opportunities for growth, even if it means that said growth is accompanied by a whole bunch of discomfort. Mood follows action. 

“not your first     

not your last

enjoy your now

now will go fast” 

(112)

“run like a bravey

sleep like a baby

dream like a crazy

replace can’t with maybe” 

(6) 

This “mini-movement” of braveys that she created is 

“inward facing, a choice you make about your relationship with yourself. We all have dreams that we’re chasing, however big or small, and we can all decide to be brave enough to give ourselves a chance. I think that’s why the term resonated with so many people: Anyone can be a Bravey, and the permutations of what that means are infinite. It’s a switch you flip in your mind.”

(7)

Re-reading these excerpts, the foundation of Alexi’s story, certainly lands a little bit differently once you know what it took to get her there, to that realization. It is shitty that she has had to endure so much to get to that place, but we are lucky that she has so graciously tried to share her painful, lived experiences with us. 

I, for sure, am most grateful for Alexi Pappas’s bravery.

Be safe and well, friends. xo

COVID, week 1 & Kelly McDonigal, PhD’s The Joy of Movement

COVID, week 1 & Kelly McDonigal, PhD’s The Joy of Movement

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At the rate we’re going, I’ll have little memory of this all in a week, so I suppose it’s worthwhile to write it out here as much for you — to compare to what’s going on where you live — as it is for me,  to remember how fast life can change. 

COVID-19 seems to have had a similar effect on time as does child-rearing, wherein the days are somehow really long and really short at the same time. It sounds impossible until you’re in the thick of it, and then suddenly, you get it. 

Since last week’s writings — which seem like a lifetime ago at this point — Santa Clara County is one of many counties in northern California to have issued a Shelter in Place, basically barring residents from leaving home except for very specific reasons, like going to a job that’s essential for society or for getting groceries or medicine. Fortunately, leaving home to exercise outside is allowed, though stipulations still apply: maintain the social distance of at least six feet (unless you’re with people with whom you reside), no big groups (nothing over 10, if I recall correctly), and so on. 

It’s a little weird, to say the least. 

not that we usually run while holding hands or anything, but it is weird to run alongside someone while keeping a very specific buffer zone.

In the mix of our homeschooling adventure — oh, right! I forgot to mention that A’s school is closed at least through the beginning of April and G’s preschool is right there as well, though it’s quite likely that both children will be out of school for (much) longer. It was around mid-day on Friday, March 13, that schools in SCC began communicating with families that they were closing for several weeks to help mitigate the virus’s spread. Somewhere around that time, late last week, most/a lot of the tech companies here (or whose hdq are here) told their entire workforces to transition to working remotely, and so it seemed nearly overnight, we (my family yes, but California in general) went from a fairly typical go to school, go to work, go to extracurriculars, do life as you know it routine to a screeching, full-stop halt, a life where if whatever it is isn’t happening out of your home, chances are quite, quite high that it ain’t happening at all… or if it is, it’s in a way unlike anything you’ve ever done before. 

can’t help but wonder how their little brains are making sense of all this weirdness

Again: it’s all a little weird, to say the least.   

The kids and I have been diligent about getting outside for fresh air (PE? sure!) because that’s a normal thing to do, even if what we’re doing right now — having school at the kitchen table, led by yours truly– is completely abnormal. (Quick tangent here to say that my mom is a retired public school educator and education administrator, so I’ve grown up knowing first-hand how overworked and underappreciated these souls are. Props, again, to the educators who make the world go round. I spent more time this morning explaining, and re-explaining, to my preschooler the various ways one could make a capital- and lower-cased X than is probably necessary. I know I’m no substitution for Ms. M, but deargod!). Anyway.

fresh air and the outdoors, all normal

We have been following a daily schedule to the best of our abilities because I’m pretty sure most of us (humans in general, yes, but my progeny in particular) do better with routines than they do with chaos — and especially during a trying time like now, with a seeming million unknowns flying around and news (fake or otherwise) coming at us at light speed. My job is to give them normalcy, so even in the utter lack thereof wherein we’re currently residing in Silicon Valley, I am trying to make our days have rhythms and cadence similar to what they’d have at school. 

Trying, of course, is the operative word.

recent rains (finally!) are making the plantlife quite magnificent and that nearby stream quite active

In recent weeks, I’ve mentioned how good The Joy of Movement was, and I still wholeheartedly stand by it. My quick and dirty book review of it is basically that if you’ve ever considered yourself someone who loves to move your body — however you do it — because it just makes you feel good, this book is for you. It backs-up all of those hunches you’ve had about exercise’s effect on you, particularly on your mental health, with all types of research and studies that are meaningful and pertinent.

If the opposite is true — that you’ve never really considered yourself to be someone who quote-unquote LIKES exercise — this book is still for you. I think the author does a solid job of convincing everyone that they have something, a few things, really, to gain from exercising, in terms of their mental health. It’s a solid read, fairly quick, and if you’re in the market for something from which you want to walk away feeling inspired (and chompin’ for a run [or your movement of choice]), The Joy of Movement is for you. 

Finishing The Joy of Movement right before COVID-19 blew up reminded me of how important I deem exercise (and specifically, running) to my health. It’s as natural to me each day as, I don’t know, breathing. Ninety-nine percent of the time, my movement of choice brings me immense joy, regardless of my pace, my distance, how much climbing I did, or any other metric that only runners care about, and I’ve often ruminated on how lucky I am to be able to do it in the first place. I’m fortunate to be able to want to do it and be physically able to, yes, but I’m also fortunate to be in a position where my life circumstances allow me to. My privilege isn’t lost on me. (Another quick aside to say that Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s new book, Tightrope, is so, so good and also heartbreaking. Reading it in the midst of the COVID shutdown is another level. More to come, highly recommended). 

Regarding running and COVID: over the past few days, with COVID and shelter-in-place and everything else engulfing everyone’s attention span, I noticed that my running has changed ever-so-slightly. It’s not necessarily because my goal races are out the window, which they absolutely should be — Big Sur announced its postponement last week, the spring PA schedule is decimated, and I imagine Mountains to Beach will make their postponement announcement any day now — but I think it’s because I’ve instinctively needed running to be something other than it was for me in days prior. 

In the past week, all I want is to hear the birds singing, or the cows bellowing, or nothing at all. 

Hearing my breathing is enough. 

Seeing the electric pink of a burgeoning sunrise reminds me that I’m here for this, right now. 

I could tell you what yesterday was like, or I could take a stab at hypothesizing what tomorrow will bring, but in doing either (or both), I’d be missing out on what’s unfolding before me, all the messy and uncomfortable bits of it. 

Or I could just stay right here, in this present moment, and roll. It might be a colossal failure, and it might not be pretty, but trying again and again is the only option. 

If movement has taught me nothing else, it has taught me the value in staying put — uncomfortable as it may be sometimes — and that eventually, a path appears, and the only way out is through.