Seven years ago when my son was born, my mom came over regularly to lend a hand. Each time she showed up those first few weeks, I’d go lie down for a couple of hours while she kept an eye on Nathan. I’d wake up to find a contented, usually sleeping baby, and also that she’d simultaneously managed three loads of laundry, vacuumed, scrubbed the bathrooms, and started dinner.

While I was deeply appreciative of everything she did, it also left me feeling woefully inadequate. On my own, I barely managed to brush my teeth every day. Nathan required all of my energy and focus, while my mom was able to multitask like, well, a mom. I was struggling with breastfeeding, I’d been peed on when I didn’t change his diaper fast enough, and I considered a shower every third day a feat of superhuman willpower. Watching her do it all with ease when I couldn’t eke out the bare minimum made me feel like a fraud. I was an imposter mom—surely someone would see how bad I was at this and give my baby to someone better at doing all the things.

“Am I doing something wrong?” I finally asked one day. “Why is this so hard for me, when it seems so easy for you?”

***

In January, I ran 15 kilometers along the shoreline of Maui. The ocean was on my left, the mountains were on my right, and the sun rose behind me as a tropical breeze nudged me on toward the finish line.

It was beautiful, empowering, and surreal. But I also wasn’t sure I was going to make it there.

Only a few weeks into my official race training schedule, I developed a nasty case of shin splints. Despite regular icing, heating, massaging, stretching, and greater-than-medically-advised doses of ibuprofen, the pain persisted. Eventually, it was so bad I couldn’t walk across my living room without limping, much less run a mile.

One of my friends is a physical therapist, and she suggested using kinesiology tape. You’ve likely spotted it on an athlete before—Kerri Walsh made it famous (and earned her spot on the box of tape I buy) when she taped her shoulder with it and won Olympic gold. If it won a gold medal for Kerri, I figured it could help me manage nine measly miles, so twice a week, my friend came over to massage and tape my leg.

It worked. I could run again, relatively pain-free, although the aching always resumed when I was done. One afternoon after she finished taping me, my friend studied my hips and had me flex my feet and bend over and touch my toes, searching for the source of my pain.

“You’re not out of alignment or anything,” she assessed. “It must just be that your form is really that bad.”

She hesitated, and then added, not unkindly, “Maybe you’re just not built to be a runner.”

For the next three weeks, that phrase rattled my brain, my nerves, and my resolve. Every time I got winded two miles in, every time I clocked an 11+ minute mile, every time my legs throbbed, her words twisted into a taunt in mind. Real runners didn’t struggle like this. Heck I even got passed on the trail at the park the other day by a woman easily in her 70s, and she looked like she was doing fine.

I convinced myself that running wasn’t hard for any objective reason. It was hard because I was terrible at it. I cried every step of five miles one Saturday, convinced I was a fool for ever thinking I could be a runner. I tearfully confessed my fears to Anna, my workout accountability partner. Anna’s a fitness instructor and has been running her entire adult life. She’s completed marathons and triathlons, and when I told her that running was hard and I was hitting a wall a measly five miles in, I was honestly a little embarrassed. What would she think of me? Instead of judgment or condescension though, she handed me grace.

“It’s not easy for anyone,” she said. “Yes, it’s harder for you right now at relatively shorter distances, but you just started running, dude.” (Anna’s from Northern California. Her pep talks are frequently peppered with dudes.)

“You can’t compare that to someone who’s been running for a decade. It’s hard at different points depending on where you’re starting from, but it’s always hard.”

It’s always hard. That should be incredibly discouraging, but it had the opposite effect. I kept waiting for running to get easier, assuming I was doing something wrong because it was still hard. I was too insecure to entertain the idea that it was hard for everyone, but simultaneously too proud to admit that I’d been a runner for about five minutes and so naturally I was going to be kind of terrible at it for awhile.

She also gave me permission to slow down. I’d been pushing myself to reach a 10-minute mile pace—which, frankly, isn’t a terribly impressive speed anyway, but somehow I’d gotten it in my mind that I couldn’t possibly complete this race any more slowly and it still be respectable. My endurance, and my shins, were paying the price for my need for speed.

The last words of Anna’s pep talk were a gift; an invitation and a challenge that became the beat my feet would run to.

“So you had a hard run? Welcome to being a runner.”

I checked my pride and slowed my roll. I started logging 11:30 and 12 minute miles, and found my legs didn’t hurt nearly as badly after a run when I did. I completed six and seven-mile training runs without walking because I’d brought my pace down to a manageable level.

When I stopped competing—with others, with the version of myself I thought I ought to be—it didn’t necessarily become easier, but it became possible.

***

Seven years ago, when the tearful, overwhelmed, newly-minted version of me wondered why I wasn't awesome at this taking-care-of-babies gig yet, my mom just smiled and reminded me, “I’ve been a mom for three decades, Jennifer. You’ve been doing this for three weeks. It’s overwhelming because it’s new. You’ll get there. Give it time.”

It made sense when she said it, of course. I had no idea what I was doing, and I was responsible for keeping another human being alive. That meant my house was going to be a mess and my personal hygiene standards were going to fall to basement levels while I figured things out. My mom wasn’t there to make me feel bad about myself because I couldn’t manage everything on my own; she was there to offer grace and a helping hand so I didn’t have to.

I knew all of these things in my head, but I still wanted to be better than I was. I wanted to feel better at it than I did.

“I guess so,” I mumbled, gazing at the clock and trying to judge when Nathan would next need to eat.

My mom gave a small gasp and reached out to touch my arm.

“Did you see that?” she asked. “When you talk, Nathan turns his head and looks for you. He knows your voice already.”

I looked down and, sure enough, my tiny son was gazing up at my face intently, as if memorizing my features. He knew my voice. He knew I belonged to him. And it didn’t matter to him that I couldn’t seem to get the clothes from the washer to the dryer in the same day or that last night I had served cereal for dinner. Maybe I couldn’t keep pace with my mom’s mothering prowess just yet, but maybe it didn’t matter. It wasn’t my ability that triggered his recognition; it was my presence. I wasn’t everything, but I didn’t have to be. In those early days, showing up was enough.

In the weeks and months that followed, I did find my stride. My house still isn’t as clean as my mother’s (my dinners aren’t as good either), but what was impossible seven years ago feels doable now. Not easy, necessarily, but manageable. The title that I once wasn't sure would ever quite fit comfortably now rolls easily off my tongue.

I’m a mother.

***

Maybe I’m not built for running, but when race day came I ran anyway. It was hard and I was slow, and I finished 88th out of 102 runners. But I watched the sun come up over the Pacific, and accepted cups of water handed to me by children who cheered me on by name as they read my race bib. One woman held up a sign that read, “You’re the greatest ever!” and I honestly got a little choked up. When my feet crossed the finish line, someone draped the same damn medal around my neck that the first place runner got, and I swear you couldn’t have wiped the grin off my face if you tried.

Motherhood is the same way, isn’t it? It’s harder than I thought it was going to be. It hurts sometimes and it’s hard to keep going and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve rounded a corner expecting a flat, unchallenging stretch of ground and instead I find a hill that looks like a mountain from my vantage point.

I’m doing it though. One day, one hour, one forward step at a time, I’m raising these children God entrusted to my care, and I’m downright honored to be running this race alongside you. Together we can encourage one another and cheer each other on as we keep pressing forward toward the finish line. There’s always going to be someone faster. There will probably be someone slower. Our pace is not the most important part though; showing up is.

There’s no medal for motherhood (side note: there should totally be a medal for motherhood), but eventually our kids will be grown. In the meantime, maybe it’s the first mile that we find the hardest—starting is never easy. For others, the middle is where we struggle; we’re far from the beginning, but the finish line is also nowhere in sight. Some of us deal with injuries and setbacks that slow us down and forever change the way we run.

Two truths remain: at some point, it’s hard for everyone, and we’re all going to finish anyway.

It becomes easier when we learn not to compare our race to someone else’s. We don’t know how long they’ve been doing this or how much it might hurt to keep going. Remember that forward is a pace, and crossing the finish line isn’t the point anyway; it’s the steps that get us there.

Right foot. Left foot. Chin up.

And don’t miss the view.

Words and photo by Jennifer Batchelor.