How do you feel?
In which I am very honest, so I both swear and look for the grace. Clutch your pearls.
Disclaimer: While I have never made it a habit to curse in my life or in my writing, I use the F-word in this piece. Twice. Both of them in the context of pain. If you know in advance that is going to make you uncomfortable, I invite you to skip this essay. Not every story will serve every reader in the same way; but for those who know the kind of desperation I write about here, I hope this one serves you.
Even if you’ve never gotten on a bike in your life, chances are you’ve heard of the Tour de France: the three week, 2,200 mile-long bike race through the mountains and cities of France. It is known as one of the most challenging human feats in the world. Cyclists climb their bikes miles up the steep slopes of the French Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges, willing their legs to keep moving with an other-wordly kind of grit. They reach speeds upwards of 60 miles per hour on the way down. On a bike that weighs 15 pounds. Wearing nothing more than a lycra bodysuit and a helmet. And these cyclists do this hundreds of miles a day, every day, for three weeks — until they cross the finish line drinking champagne on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
It’s grueling, painful, and dangerous. One rider said, “You have to be willing to suffer, and suffer greatly, to be a cyclist.” [1] And yet these professionals willingly commit their lives and sacrifice their bodies in the pursuit of stage wins, shaving seconds off their personal records, taking the sharp corners with just a little more risk than the rider next to them. Somehow, they can’t not do this impossibly hard thing. It’s their life’s work to ride a bike as fast as they can.
A few weeks ago, I took three of my kids to Phoenix for five days for my daughter’s volleyball tournament, and left the other three home with my mom and dad. Leaving my son, Cannon—an eleven-year-old with severe autism—is always a challenge. He would be in the care of two very capable grandparents, who know well his behavior struggles and would do anything for him, but still, he misses his mom and his other siblings and the predictability of his normal days whenever I’m gone. I’ve taken short trips that have gone pretty well, and others that have been really challenging for him at home. I’ve cancelled plans and re-scheduled them, I’ve tried to pivot and be flexible. I’ve done everything I can think to do when trying to determine what is best for all of my children, and that is impossibly hard, because it feels like that is so rarely the same thing. Motherhood is too small of a blanket to cover your feet and your shoulders at the same time. [2]
But with plane tickets purchased months ago and a rental car reserved and a daughter I truly couldn’t wait to watch do something she loves, I prepared Cannon the best I could. I boarded the plane with three other kiddos who also couldn’t wait for a few days away in the desert.
On the second day away, my phone rings with a FaceTime from my mom, which is never a good sign. My heart starts racing and my stomach drops in an instant, because FaceTime means Cannon needs me badly, and right away. I run to the quietest corner of the Phoenix Convention Center I can find (no easy feat in a space with 40 volleyball courts in it) and try to calm down a sobbing little boy from a few hundred miles away, and also try to watch my daughter proudly show me how strong her serves have gotten from a few courts away. Again, too small of a blanket.
The next evening, another FaceTime call. Given the time, Cannon should have been in bed. But he is terribly upset because he can’t find a special toy, so my parents call me again, knowing my voice is the quickest way to Cannon’s peace. We are in our rental van coming home from a volleyball team dinner, and my daughter asks Cannon if he wants us to sing a song.
“Yes,” Cannon manages through shaky lips and big tears. So four faces squish into the very cracked screen of my phone—a mom, a daughter, and two little brothers—and we sing “Baa-Baa Black Sheep” ten times through, in every color Cannon could come up with, while sitting in a rental van in the dark, in the driveway of my cousin’s home in Phoenix.
The screen on my phone is cracked because of the hundreds of times Cannon has thrown it, bitten the corner of it, or hit his forehead with it. I need a new one; everyone who sees this phone laughs at me and asks when I’m going to trade it in. But what is the point? It still lets me sing a song on FaceTime, and for now, I guess I’m really wanting to see how long something that’s already very broken can hang on.
//
During the 2023 Tour de France, Tadej Pogačar, one of the best cyclists in the world and a favorite to win after his 2020 and 2021 victories, lost a tough mountain stage. He simply couldn’t keep up with his main rival, Jonas Vingegaard. After riding neck and neck for nearly 100 miles, Vingegaard found just enough energy in his legs to surge ahead on a steep climb, and Pogačar could not respond. In footage from the scene, you can see Vingegaard turning his head to see if Pogačar will follow him, and you can hear Vingegaard’s team from the car radio encouraging him, “Pogačar is dropping! Pogačar is dropping! Keep going, Jonas!” He does. And Pogačar does not.
The two rivals entered that stage nine seconds apart. They finished it with a seven minute difference.
In the post-race interview, Tadej Pogačar sits down at the microphones, still sweaty and a little pale from the relentless physical effort he left on the mountains. He takes a deep breath and braces for the questions, shoulders down and neck slightly hunched, as if he doesn’t have the strength for any other posture.
“How did you feel today, Tadej?” the reporter asks.
Pogačar shakes his head a little, lets out the tiniest nose breath as if he’s trying to hold in a laugh, like this is the most obvious answer, having just fallen very behind in the biggest bike race in the world.
He leans an inch closer to the microphone, and one word comes out his mouth, with an incredulous chuckle behind it.
“Fucked.”
//
We had a Thursday morning flight home from Phoenix scheduled, but by late Tuesday afternoon, that flight was starting to feel years away. Managing Cannon from afar was becoming increasingly tense, and my son Jordi, who was with me in Phoenix and who carries so much anxiety for his brother, was starting to beg me to go home, too. One hour on hold with American Airlines, a few thousand airline points and a few hundred dollars to cover the difference later, along with some cancelled plans with my college roommate—because what is a trip I take these days without some cancelled plans?!—we were booked on the Wednesday night flight.
We got home late, walked into a dark house, then turned on the lights to find our way to our bedrooms. I almost wished I hadn’t turned the lights on. Because the light doesn’t hide the evidence: holes in the drywall of the stairwell, holes in the bathroom, holes in the kitchen; all of them painful reminders of a little mind trying so hard to live in this world, but finding this is not always compatible.
There was other carnage, too. Grandparents who tried their very best but felt terrible about the ways they couldn’t help. A younger brother who was devastated he wasn’t there to comfort his big brother, even though no one can in the most tense moments, and he should never have to hold this and it breaks my heart into a million pieces that he does. An almost-teenage big sister who was so conflicted; devastated for her brother, still frustrated we left Arizona early. An exhausted six-year-old dead weight in my arms, head on my shoulder asleep.
I know how to fix holes in the wall. I can fix two inch holes and ten inch holes. I can use patch kits or I can cut pieces of new drywall when needed.
I know what to do, I’m just so, so sick of doing it.
Still, I cannot look at these holes for one minute more than I have to. They taunt me, make me feel a rage that I don’t even know who to direct at—autism, myself, God?
Before I go to bed, I ordered more metal wall patch kits and more plaster and more texture from Home Depot. And I added an electric sander to my cart this time, because my arms are as tired as my heart.
//
“How are you feeling about motherhood today, Katie?” the interviewer asks.
Katie lets out the tiniest nose breath as if she’s trying to hold in a laugh—the kind of laugh that is trying so hard to cover up a cry—like this is the most obvious answer in the world, having just fixed the fiftieth or eightieth or maybe one thousandth hole in her drywall in the last two years (to say nothing of the windows at school and phone calls home, the long waits on the phone trying to track down the right medication, the hours of yelling and screaming I cannot soothe and the subsequent low-grade humming in my left ear at all times, the desperate prayers that I believe God hears but still go unanswered, and also, my cell phone screen).
Katie leans in an inch closer to the microphone, and one word comes out of her mouth, still with an incredulous chuckle behind it—although you might have to lean in yourself to hear it over the sound of sandpaper smoothing a broken wall.
“Fucked.”
//
Lance Armstrong brought the average American's attention to the Tour de France in the late 90s and early 2000s when he won seven races in a row, after beating cancer. We couldn’t believe the grit and the power of the human spirit it must have taken—to win the toughest physical race in the world after chemotherapy and stage four testicular and lung cancer? Just unreal, superhuman. I bet you had one of those yellow Livestrong bracelets circa 2002, too. No one could look away from the wonder that was Lance.
But the thing is, he cheated [3]. Among other things, he was blood doping, which is when an athlete injects oxygenated blood into their bloodstream before a race. More red blood cells means an athlete can ride harder and longer. He can be a superhuman.
I’m telling you this as a former athlete: you cannot cheat like that. It’s not safe, nor is it fair. Ethically wrong on every level. And in Armstrong’s case, given his playing field was technically leveled as every other cyclist in the race was doing it, he probably could have been forgiven by the racing world and general public but for the many, many years of adamantly denying the doping, even suing anyone who might accuse him otherwise.
It’s complicated, and not complicated at the same time.
A 2020 study [4] found that mothers of children with severe behavior challenges, like those associated with autism, experience post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms comparable to those experienced by combat soldiers. Is that what is happening to me every time my phone rings, when my heart starts racing and my hands start shaking, when my joints feel off, wrong, stiff, I don’t know, but not right; when the constant surges of cortisol remind me that my body hasn’t felt what it’s like to not be anxious in months?
So I’m also telling you right now if someone gave me something to help climb motherhood’s mountain, something to make me feel superhuman, I’d use it.
All I ever wanted to be in life was a good mom, but perhaps I’m no better than a cheater. Complicated, and not complicated, all at the same time.
//
“I don’t feel like I can handle my life anymore,” I cried to my mom the other night, as I told her about the stiff, tingly feeling in my right arm and both of my hands.
“Yes you can,” she responds. “Take a deep breath. You can, and you will.”
I have a notebook in my basement full of quotes from Robin Arzon, one of my favorite Peloton instructors. She knows how to bring it to you during a workout, dropping one-liners and motivational words and some swears at just the right moment. Recently, in the middle of some really tough tabata intervals, she looks into the camera and says, “Let me tell you something: ‘The second-wind’ is a myth. No one just gets a second wind in the middle of a challenge! The second-wind is a lifestyle choice.”
A choice. Something in my control when so much feels very out of my control. I like this. So here it is: Are you going to find a way to keep going, even when nothing in you feels like you’re able to?
You can. And you will.
But here’s the thing: I have to, need to, must be able to say out loud how hard it is. How completely “done” I really feel. How the grief over my son and the long and growing list of things I cannot do for him, for my other five, for myself, is the heaviest weight I have ever carried. So I have to tell you the honest answer.
But make no mistake, I will choose to show up for the next leg of the race. Because it’s my life’s work to climb as hard as I can.
//
The 2023 Tour de France saw Jonas Vingegaard hold his lead and take the yellow jersey to the finish line. Pogačar never could make up for the time he lost in the mountains. Vingegaard won, and got to stand on the podium with flowers in his hand and the applause of thousands in his ear as the sun set behind him on the Champs-Elysse.
But the next year? Tadej Pogačar reclaimed his title [5].
I’m endlessly grateful for people who can admit how tough it got for them, but keep climbing.
Who can scream and cry at God and ask where He is, but somehow, know in our bones that He didn’t leave us alone, that we’re not climbing at all without Him.
That’s all I really want to be in life now, too.
//
The F bombs were just what this piece needed, Katie. Beautifully written. If I were there, I would help you patch the holes. Praying you know you're not alone and for the strength to keep going.
"I have to, need to, must be able to say out loud how hard it is." Yes. Yes. Yes. This.