Emotions…
Today’s post is written by one of our SBT GRVL athletes, Maggie Lowe.
Recently, one of my amazing teammates wrote about some of the physical pain she deals with every day. It was beautiful in the kind of way that raw honesty can be beautiful. It might break you apart a little bit…but there is much beauty to be found in broken things. Just think of stained-glass windows and the Japanese art of Kintsugi or “golden joinery” whereby broken pottery is mended by the addition of gold-dusted lacquer. People like Sarah who live with chronic pain have a kind of strength that defies human logic and a power beyond understanding: the power to do it again tomorrow.
I believe that there are a lot of people out there who get on the bike day after day because the adventure and joy they find out on the bike reminds them of why they will do it again tomorrow. There is another group of people on bikes that I am a bit more familiar with and that I’d like to introduce to you as well. Maybe you’re part of it?
I was not a cyclist before 2019. I owned a bike at the time that was three years old and had 55 miles on it. In 2019 though, I put 200 miles on it in June alone as part of a fundraiser. I put in a lot of miles, a lot of smiles, a lot of sweat, and a lot of tears in 2019. What caused the escalation? Very simple…Grace.
Grace and Maggie
That’s Grace and I. I may look exceptionally uncomfortable there but that’s just because I was. Grace is my best friend’s daughter and it is a running joke how nervous I get around babies (not really a “joke” though since it is 100% factual information). She was the first child I was ever going to get to spend a lot of time around. I was super excited to stop being “uncomfortable aunt Maggie” and become “fun aunt Maggie who always brings me loud toys”. I had agreed with her parents to that long before she was born. Then she was born. And then she got sick.
The human body is an incredible thing. What are the odds that you would take your little girl to the hospital because her stomach was being weird only to discover it was because fluid on her brain and the only reason she had fluid on her brain was because of the tumor. When I found out they were doing a biopsy, I drove to the hospital to sit with the family. One of the things I will remember for the rest of my life was my friends having to tell their family that their first born had a rare and very aggressive form of brain cancer.
The human body is an incredible thing, though. Over the next 11 months, I watched a child too young to speak for herself…fight for herself. She bounced back from everything faster than the doctors thought she would. I watched two thirty-year-olds balance work, each other, a new pregnancy, and caring for a child in cancer treatments. I watched them have a new baby, move to New Jersey for treatments, and come back home. I watched them walk up to the pulpit and speak at their daughter’s memorial service. I believe I am still a little ashamed of the fact that when they started toward the podium all I wanted to do was run out of the building. If I didn’t see it…maybe it wasn’t true. The one obsessive thought from the time for me was this: I just can’t know a dead two-year-old.
You see, Grace is my youngest ghost but by no means my only one. I have eight I think about on an almost constant basis and more who exist in my periphery. In 2009, four friends from my graduating class passed within 12 months of each other from a variety of causes. The next year two of my uncles chose to end their lives. I lost another friend to complications from drug addiction. In 2016 my father died. In 2019, in the same week, my father’s best friend, my mother’s best friend, and my best friend’s daughter all passed away after heroic battles with cancer. Those are my ghosts. My friends.
I have always been very careful how I speak about Grace. If it is anything written, I overanalyze every syllable and punctuation mark because I am terrified of acting like my pain is comparable in any way to her parents who I still adore. What has recently come to my attention is that I am not just being protective and respectful…I have been gatekeeping my own emotions. The fact is this: I still mourn her on a regular basis. And think of and miss her nearly every day. And my emotions do not even register as a fraction on the scale of how much her parents miss her. All that to say, in April of 2019, I was still working to get my emotions packed into a box in my mind and that is when I saw an Instagram ad to win a brand new Trek bicycle.
It was a giveaway in preparation for the Great Cycle Challenge. One month to ride as many miles as you possibly can to raise awareness and funds for pediatric cancer research. This is where my longstanding tradition of committing to a biking goal without really thinking it through started. I may have wited an hour…I don’t think I did, I just immediately signed up and committed to riding 100 miles and raising $500 dollars. I had a month and a half to get ready, most of which I spent doubting myself and my abilities which I shared with my therapist, Tammie, who is a cyclist and has walked with me through every new ghost addition since 2011.
I told her I wasn’t sure I could do it. She looked at me, with skepticism on her face and spoke some of the most powerful words I’ve ever heard. “Maggie, you know how to ride a bike right?” I nodded and she leaned in closer. “Then put your fucking helmet on.”
So I did. And I rode 200 miles that month and raised over $1,000.
I recently listened to a podcast with Meg Fisher and Rebecca Rusch both of whom know a lot about cycling, ghosts, and cycling with ghosts. What they pointed out through the course of the conversation is that facing hard times on the bike prepares you for hard times off the bike. I absolutely broke down when I heard this. My therapist and I had figured out long ago that one of my coping mechanisms when life gets hard is to just stop moving forward. I don’t go back, I don’t go on, I don’t get up, I don’t sink down…I don’t move at all. Hearing this podcast made me realize the beauty of the bicycle. Everytime I get on the bike and I press on through a hard ride, I am rewiring my brain to acknowledge the pain and the grief and whatever else is there before putting my fucking helmet on pedaling forward.
I’ve met a lot of cyclists in the last three years and what I have learned is that a lot of people with ghosts are drawn to the bicycle. I’ve talked with people who will tell you that the bike saved their life after a hard situation. People turn back to the bicycle after losing their spouse, their parents, their child, their dreams, their health. I think that’s why there is so much humanity in the cycling community (with obvious exceptions). We’ve all in our own ways experienced pain and we refuse to leave anyone feeling lost, alone, or empty.
These days, I think of my ghosts as my invisible peloton. As a matter of fact, on the drive home from a emotional training ride recently, I spent some time thinking about my invisible peloton and what kind of bike each of my ghosts would ride. I know Kayla would be on a seafoam colored beach cruiser with a white wicker basket that was always full of flowers. Mary would be on a Specialized Shiv tri-bike because efficiency is key. Lucas would be on a rainbow colored unicycle playing guitar and no one can change my mind. Chad would be riding a straightforward hybrid that is trustworthy to get you where you’re going. My uncle Tony would be on a classic, simple, tried and true 7 speed Schwinn and my uncle John would be on a tandem, always room to invite someone else along. Jessi would be on a second hand, hard tail mountain bike. Maybe she got a little off track sometimes but she had what she needed to get back on track. My dad would be on the back of uncle John’s tandem…or riding on the handlebars or maybe on a fat tire bike you could take to the beach or on the snow. Something forgiving and approachable. right beside me, at the front of our little pack, Grace would’ve been spinning fast on a little pink tricycle. She would have a little puppy horn and streamers on her handlebars…and I would have some to match. We are now 11 days out from the race, and over the weekend I added two more to my invisible peloton. One of the best men I’ve ever met, Marlin Mabe will be riding along on a cargo bike…prepared to get you anything you need and take you anywhere you want to go. Also, the handsomest, goodest boy I’ve ever known is with me only in spirit now and I’ll forever have Lord Stewart Rigsby, my hairy golden retriever mix running along with the crew, stopping at every high point to survey the land he’s sure he owns. I’m sure he owns it too.
If you could see us all tearing through the mountains of Colorado this August…we’d be a strange looking crew. And you’d feel welcome to ride along with us and invite your ghosts along as well. And your pain would be the same, but easier to handle because you weren’t in it alone.
That is what this team is all about. If you’re too scared to try, we want you to know that you are welcome here…no hesitations. If you’re already doing it and sometimes it feels like a little too much…we’re the people who will come along side to help you and keep it from being overwhelming.
After all, we’re all the same.
And we’re all on bikes.
