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Brenna Cohoon Athlete's Blog - April 8, 2020

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ILXCTF - Mike Newman   Apr 8th 2020, 11:43am
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Blog #7 – The Comfort We Are All Trying To Seek Right Now

 

By Brenna Cohoon

 

Heading into my spring break last week, I was looking forward to having some extra time to unwind and reflect further on my thoughts at this difficult time.  I guess my idea of relaxing involves falling flat on the sidewalk during one of my first runs of break!

 

Let me provide a little bit of background information about myself: I’m a pretty clumsy person.  More often than not, I find myself bumping into things around the house.  I suppose this is also reflected in how I run, as I have now taken some mean spills while training three or four times in the past couple of years.  Therefore, the outcome of my run that day did not come as much of a surprise to me.

 

I tripped on an uneven piece of sidewalk while running around my neighborhood.  As I got up, my hands and knees stung from scraping against the ground upon impact.  I let out a sigh of defeat as I realized my run for the day was over - I needed to get cleaned up and bandage my cuts.

 

At first, I was embarrassed that I managed to fall yet again.  My ability to stay on my feet is a running joke in the family all thanks to my clumsiness.

 

Then, I got upset with myself.  I wondered why I fall so often and why I can’t just avoid tripping.  After all, I run over uneven sidewalks every single day.  Why did I fall all of a sudden?  

 

Sitting in my room with an icepack on my right knee and band-aids all over, I realized it’s useless being mad at myself.  I didn’t decide to fall on purpose; it was an accident.  Thankfully, I wasn’t seriously injured, so that wasn’t something to worry about.

 

Upon further reflection, I started to connect this metaphor of falling to everyone’s lives right now.  With the coronavirus completely transforming everything as we know it, most people’s lives are almost put on hold for the time being.  This outbreak and the effects it has on others can be seen as a fall.

 

How long it takes us to recover from this fall is completely out of our control.  However, our thoughts and actions both during and after the “recovery” is within our power.  

 

At this time, we need to allow ourselves to experience whatever emotions we’re feeling regarding this whole situation.  Being patient and positive should be our ultimate goals, though.  In terms of our actions at this moment, we need to be smart and comply with the rules put into place by the government, as well as the recommendations presented by the CDC.  If we practice social distancing now, we can be celebrating social closeness much sooner!

 

Once our “recovery” time finally concludes, we should pick up where we left off.  Metaphorically speaking, we will be getting up after our “fall”.  When normalcy returns to our lives, we should express gratitude in everything we do and keep in mind some of the valuable takeaways from this strange event in our lives.

 

As we all know, it’s hard for anyone to say how long it will take for us to recover.  This was a really, really hard fall.

 

What I do know is that there is some hope for student-athletes in Illinois.  Last week, the IHSA announced that as of now, spring sports are set to start as soon as we return to school.  Although there is so much uncertainty revolving around the remainder of the school year, sports seasons, and essentially everything else in life, that announcement gave me hope.  Sure, things may not go according to that plan, but the sheer possibility of having a shortened outdoor season provides me with a kind of optimism I’ve been able to carry to other areas of my life.

 

I also know that I cannot wait for the day this is all over.  I’m ready to learn in a classroom again, run with other people, and embrace my friends.  For now, I’ll wait for that day with open arms (trying to stay on my feet), awaiting its arrival with as much patience as possible.

 

Photo – ©2017 Laura Duffy





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