Beyond the finish line - A journey of healing
Written by Laura Peterson.
I’m Laura, an ultra runner and mother of 3 boys.
I’ve learned along the way that stories are meant to be shared because by doing so “we foster connections and create an environment where solitude and secrecy of hiding give way to solidarity and support” - Ruth Rathblott, MSW.
I have spent so many years hiding my stories for fear of judgement and criticism but I’ve come to realize over the years that people will judge and criticize you whether you are being the truest version of yourself or whether you are presenting a diluted version of you in order to please others.
I now choose to showcase the truest version of myself and allow others to take it or leave it.
I grew up in the UK in a very high demand religious environment where love and affection were both pretty conditional. While I am not suggesting that high demand religions are inherently a terrible thing, I am saying that I personally struggled tremendously with this and felt the crushing weight of never being quite good enough.
As a child, running made me feel good because I was fast. I loved the feeling of winning and being praised for how well I had done. With running, I didn’t have to force anything that felt inauthentic.
Sadly, my joy for running didn’t last long; without parental support in pursuing my talent and passion, my dreams of becoming an athlete slowly fizzled out and at the age of 14 I began to use drugs and alcohol to escape the pressure of my perceived inadequacies and failures.
As a result of both parents being absent all the time and having no sense of self worth I experienced many things a kid shouldn't have.
At 17 I decided to go to college because I didn’t have a clear direction of what else I should do with my life so that felt like the best thing to do. Plus, all my friends were going and they seemed like they knew what they were doing.
I quickly signed up for the University track team which I was so excited about. I couldn't care less about my classes because I was running again and that’s all I wanted.
I had purpose, motivation, and direction.
On my first summer break from college I got some terrible news; one of my running buddies had died of a heart attack.
It didn't feel real.
I was in shock.
Without a healthy way to cope, I quit track and dove heavily into drinking and drug abuse. I was deeply depressed and eventually dropped out of college before my first year was up.
Soon after this my parents went through a nasty divorce and my Mother (who is American) moved back to the States (Utah). My lifestyle by age 19 had caused me to become quite sick so I decided to go visit my Mother in the States as a way to rest and recover.
Coming to Utah was like visiting a different world.
It reminded me of the 1998 movie Pleasantville with Reece Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire. Everything was clean, bright, sunny and everyone seemed so friendly.
I liked this place and I felt peaceful for the first time in a long time. I decided to reconnect with my childhood religion because my lifestyle back in the UK clearly wasn’t working out very well so perhaps this was the right path for me.
After all,
“we are programmed to seek what is familiar”
- Brianna Wiest, The Mountain is You.
Everything was going great; I was healthy, happy and began dating an amazing guy who I ended up marrying 6 months later.
Scott and I had 3 boys.
He was the perfect husband, I was the perfect wife, and we were living the perfect life. But the dark truth underneath all of it was that I was masking and ignoring a lot of my internal struggles.
I was trying to adhere to a way of life again that I just didn’t feel wholly comfortable with and I had still never dealt with my troubled and traumatic past.
I loved my husband and I loved my boys.
That part was authentic.
The rest was a total lie.
I was forcing my very asymmetrical shaped personality into a very neat, symmetrical box.
It was wholeheartedly uncomfortable.
“Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us” - Nicol Reed.
This quote rings true for my life more than any other. The universe, God, destiny or whatever you call it has a way of pointing us in the right direction and sometimes it’s through some shit first.
And I was about to go right through it…
In the summer of 2019 I was raped.
This experience was so heavily traumatic for me that it felt as though my brain switched off and I couldn’t get it to turn back on again.
Everything just powered down like a computer being shut off. My ability to feel positive emotion, to believe in anything I thought I believed in, to make choices for myself.
I was in there somewhere but I didn’t feel like I had control of the steering wheel.
I began to spiral out of control so quickly it left everyone’s head spinning. I couldn’t even stand being in my own skin anymore let alone around people who loved and cared about me.
I became suicidal.
I couldn’t take the emotional pain I was in anymore. I was in a constant state of fight or flight mode. Heart pounding and eyes wide all the time.
I was exhausted and terrified everyday.
All this eventually landed me in a mental health hospital. This was my rock bottom. But the good thing about rock bottom is that there’s only one way to go from there.
Up.
I was fortunate enough to have an amazingly supportive and loving husband who held onto me as tightly as he did.
From here I went to therapy. From therapy I began running again. From running again I found a trail running community.
From that community I found some amazing friends. From my amazing friends I began sharing my story, from sharing my story I became a mental health advocate, and I am now being flown to the UK to run in the London Landmarks Half Marathon on behalf of the non profit Still I Run, who raise awareness around the benefits of running for mental health and suicide prevention.
Running has always been my escape. Now it’s my reason and my purpose.
Running and therapy ultimately
saved my life.
When I'm running I can feel my whole system recalibrate. It’s said that there is a direct correlation between people who’ve experienced trauma and them turning to endurance sports.
“If you've survived trauma, you're already a reservoir of resilience. Now, imagine endurance sports as the gym where you build that resilience muscle even stronger.
Think about those steep hills you conquer or those laps you swim—they're like life's challenges, each one a reminder of your extraordinary strength.
It's an unspoken message from your past to your present, declaring, "You've weathered storms; this is your victory lap." - prettystrongcoaching.com
I now run with a large community of beautiful humans and I also get to run in some incredible races.
I am a very proud ultra marathoner.
With every step, every mountain peak, every finish line, every shared mile with a friend, I am reminded of the pain I endured and overcame.
Our minds are incredible things. They are a muscle and just like muscles they need training.
I am reminded of the quote by Stacy Westfall - “Your mind will quit a thousand times before your body will.
