Timing of travel in March was cramping my race schedule. I had to deviate slightly from my challenge to do one race a month in 2014.

On Saturday morning, I woke up early and headed to this place.

I had a plan.

I would run my old high school cross-country course.

My March race would be a race against my 16-year-old self.

The course is not particularly easy (especially for someone who has spent the better part of the winter running the flatlands of Columbus, OH). A quick lap around the football field and then out for laps around the old soccer and baseball fields, a run up the hill behind the high school and out into the neighborhood. You finish with Heart Break Hill (otherwise known as the Flower Farm Hill) before ending where you started in front of the stadium.

3.2 miles

I ran it in 24 mins 32 seconds.

I kicked her ass.

It felt good.

Then I returned to the Conwell’s and did a little of this-

I think it may end up being my favorite race of the year.

Dear Heather Ann,

Let me introduce myself, I am you in 20 years. I hope you don’t find this too forward of me but I am heading home tomorrow and started thinking about you, my 16 year old self, and I felt compelled to write.

This weekend I will sleep at the Conwell’s (yes, your friendship with Chrissy survives and thrives into the adult years) and I will take a well-earned trip down memory lane with my daughters (you will be glad to know you finally got those sisters you always wanted, you end up with three daughters).

It struck me today that there are some things I wish I would have known back then; I wish I could have told you.

Now is my chance, so bear with this middle-aged women for a moment as she shares with you some well-earned advice.

1. You are strong. Just because you didn’t make the cheerleading squad freshman year does not make you weak. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Spend more time believing in your abilities and you will find what you need.

2. I know you desperately want a boyfriend. Boys are great. You will find many to love and be loved by over the years. Choose wisely and be patient. The right ones will come, don’t manufacture them in your own head and settle.

3. Spend more time with your parents. Ask your Dad to write down his words.

4. You have a great group of friends. Know they love you and will be by your side for years and years to come.

5. That semester abroad you will take- stay the year. Life in the states will be here when you get back but you may never have the chance to travel like this again.

6. Stand up for yourself. Spend less time trying to please others and more time allowing your voice to be heard.

7. Really, don’t drink in high school. No good can come of it (Mr. Conwell probably has some idea you all are stealing swigs of the hard liquor he keeps in the garage).

8. You are beautiful. You may not think your bangs are high enough or your legs look good in those new Guess jeans (which by the way are so not worth the $80 you made your parents spend on them), but you are stunningly beautiful. It will take you years to understand that.

One final piece of advice, spend less time wishing away these days and making plans to “escape”.

You will leave home.

You will spend years chasing down dreams in other cities.

But, one day you will long to come home again.

You will want to share this place. You will need your new family to understand how it shaped you.

So soak up your home. Enjoy all that is has to offer and don’t wish these years away….

Much love,

H

I had another blog post written in my head for this morning but then last night happened and as I was getting ready for work today I knew I had something else I wanted to share.

Two things actually

1. Music heals the soul

2. I want to be my friend Kari (or really I want to see myself approaching life the way she does)

To the first, Kari and I went to hear Green River Ordinance last night at Skully’s Music Diner (http://skullys.org/).

You know in high school how you had that  playlist you’d listen to before a big game or athletic event you were participating in (except back then it wasn’t known as a playlist it was referred to as a cassette tape that you dubbed from the radio)? Anyway, these guys are that playlist for me. I listen to them every morning when I run and they pump me up for the day. They are my happy list that gets me motivated to tackle it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9cIzzijnfU

http://www.youtube.com/user/greenriverordinance

Skully’s, in my humble opinion, is one of the best places to hear live music in Columbus. Intimate, approachable, great set up and most importantly a place that doesn’t make me feel like an old, soccer mom trying to be a college student for the night. It takes me as I am!

Last night I just felt happy. For an hour and 30 minutes all was right with my world and it was all so good.

Secondly, this happened

I know the picture’s a little grainy, but that’s me and the guitar player for the band. Kari and I decided he was a Keith Urban look-alike. Kari asked him to take a picture with me.

You see Kari does that kind of stuff.

She makes me stand in the front row, take pictures with adorable band members who are probably a decade younger than me and stay out late on a school night.

As I was brushing my teeth this morning the phrase that popped into my head when thinking about Kari was this-

She lives life boldly.

I love that about Kari.

She’s the first one to hop up on stage and sing, or dance until her feet fall off. She’s always game for an adventure and she encourages her children to be open in that way as well.

I spend too much time thinking about what others think of me. Wondering how I will be perceived.

I would have never approached a band member for a photograph. What if he says no?

I would have stood at the back of the venue and swayed to the music, beer in hand. What if I stood up front and people couldn’t see over my 5’7 frame?

Nope, Kari encourages me to take chances, to live in the moment. Her example encourages me to Live Boldly.

So that’s my plan for the rest of the year.

1. Listen to more live music

2. Live my life more Boldly

Thanks Kari for an amazing evening. I love you!

The divorce has consumed me. As we drew closer to the moment we would sign those papers, I felt as if I were walking to my own execution. A bit dramatic yes, but very much the feeling in my soul.

Now that it is here, gone and life has kept moving there is a sense of relief.

While it has been important for me to write about it, we have moved through this place.

I am ready to focus again on life.

So today as the snow fell and I realized we had nowhere to be and nothing to do, I relished the chance to live in the moment with the girls.

There was the “sticky blocks” as Ellie calls them.

And Sidney volunteering to clean my kitchen.

There were verses to memorize and write on the kitchen wall.

And of course snow to shovel (we definitely needed our Dora umbrella to get it done).

We finished the day with our own Oscar pre-show party. Come on, no one watches the Oscar’s anymore it’s all about the pre-show party (or it is when you have kids who need to be in bed by 8:30). We critiqued the clothes and laughed at Ellie’s obsession with Kelly Osbourne’s hair “Momma is that really purple?” “Momma why did she color it purple?” “Momma it’s really ugly!”

Yes that is life lately and it is glorious.

Not much is written about the end of a marriage, the moment when you sign away the union you created.

A union you believed to be ordained by God.

A big white dress, a bridal party of 16 and a cathedral full of 200 closest friends and family on a clear, crisp, November Saturday made you feel enveloped in love as that union was initiated.

No, the ending is very different from the beginning.

The end comes in the form of a conference room in your lawyer’s office on a cold, February morning.

You gather with the man you pledged to love for eternity and together you tell the private judge you’ve hired that you want him to remove your marriage from the courts records. With the strike of the pen you become once again Heather A. Dahlberg.

The literal end to the partnership that brought you from your awkward post college years to your middle-aged identity, now, in name only, brings you squarely back to the place you started.

As hard as it is for me to write, I am ashamed by the women I was just 6 months ago who thought that those who divorced just didn’t “work hard enough at it”.

If only it were that simple.

If I could just look at my little girls and explain away this horrible thing by saying “Momma didn’t work hard enough and it’s over”. The simplicity in that statement would clear away the clutter in our heads, but that statement would deny the truth- divorce much like marriage is much more complicated than that one size fits all statement.

Loving Brock was everything perfect and beautiful to me in this world.

His love brought me confidence and it delivered to me the three most precious gifts.

But, once you pull the string on a marriage it is nearly impossible to stop it from unraveling.

So mine has unraveled.

And this ending has humbled me.

I will walk away a less, judgemental women.

I will walk away having seen the best in a marriage.

I will walk away knowing that opening yourself up to someone in this manner is what God ordained.

On Sunday morning we decorated for Valentine’s Day.

As a child I remember my mom pulling out the box of decorations before each minor holiday (Valentine’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, 4th of July ect) and getting a little rush. We didn’t just celebrate Christmas and Easter. We found a way to celebrate year round.

I want to carry that tradition on with my girls. Unfortunately, I don’t have a box of decorations for the minor holidays so the girls and I had to improvise.

Construction paper, markers and scissors were all we needed.

We spent an hour on these and I had to make the girls stop.

Incredibly simple. Cut out a heart, write on it something you love about one of your family members, then tape it to the kitchen cabinets. When we were finished we had this:

Now, each morning, I wake up and have these staring at me. And every night, when I am engaged in that last-minute game of what else can I accomplish before I fall asleep standing up, I look up from taking the dishes out of the dishwasher or making school lunches and I see these.

Best Valentine’s decorations ever.

How do I feel anything less than incredibly grateful for the gift I was given on Tuesday night?

Even now three days later, I still find myself moved by the experience.

Sitting in the gallery that evening, a witness to the pomp and circumstance.

I’m still not sure why out of the many who should have been there I was allowed to sit in that seat.

Most grateful for the moments that were not seen on national TV-

The entire Capitol rising to a standing ovation as a war hero took his place three seats away from me. His Dad supporting him as he rose to the cheers of hundreds. My eyes stinging as the tears started to roll and the evening had just started.

The conversation with the man next to me from New York City. We had an hour and thirty minutes before the speech started, where unencumbered by cell phones or electronic devices (those had to be left behind), we chatted about everything from politics, to foreign policy to the obesity epidemic in children. What relief it was to fully engage in a conversation without the need to check my iPhone every 2 minutes.

That same gentleman looking over at me with a glimmer in his eyes as the bright lights came on and the First Lady took her seat. “Heather I think we have one of the best seats in the house” he chuckled as she sat down just 5 seats away from us.

The thought that crossed my mind too many times to count that evening- my Dad would be so proud of me. He would have called up everyone he knew, sent out an email alert to his entire congregation and shouted out the window at the drive thru attendant giving him his morning coffee “My daughter is at the State of the Union tonight”.  Even at 36 I still just want to make my dad proud.

I have had numerous awe inspiring and rewarding moments during my over 15 years in politics but Tuesday night will go down in the books as one of the top highlights.

I didn’t vote for the man giving the speech.

I had spent a great portion of the last year questioning why I do what I do as my frustrations mounted over the vast divide in politics today.

Yet there I sat being inspired simply by the chance to witness, to soak in the evening.

I came home on Wednesday afternoon.  The feelings of that night have remained. I hope they continue to linger far into the new year as I get back to the business of influencing my political sphere while raising my three young girls to find value in the work of government advocacy.

I am one lucky lady.

I start every day the same way.

My phone rings at 4:45am.

The gear laid out the night before is put on in a sleepy fog.

Shirt, running tights and shoes ready to be worn, ready to tackle the miles.

My treadmill and I do our dance for the next 45 minutes.

Some days I have a fire in my belly and I push myself harder and harder until a little one emerges at my side asking for chocolate milk or a TV show turned on.

Other days I hate the machine. I pound out the miles cursing it and myself until I am exhausted, drinking my propel water and lounging on the couch wondering why I wake up at such an ungodly hour.

Through the good and bad mornings, the one constant, running is my meditation. Without it I know I could not have managed these months.

When people ask me how I can stay sane, how I can move through these days with a smile on my face I tell them it’s because of four things:

1. my faith

2. my girls

3. the support of my family and girlfriends

and

4. my running

One thing running has never been for me is a competition.

I run for myself.

I run for the clarity.

I run for the solace.

I run for the quieting of my head and my heart.

With that in mind I decided this year to challenge myself.

I detest races.

Races of all kinds- family fun runs, 5K’s, half marathons. I hate them. Hate the people on top of people, the noise, the claustrophobia of it all.

So this year I will run a race a month.

One race, every month in a different city.

I started the year last week with a 5k -The Frigid Fantastic. It was a frigid 14 degrees at race time.

I don’t think I have ever run in weather that cold before, but myself and a 100 others did it.

When I finished I felt such a sense of accomplishment not because of the numbers on the clock but because even though it was colder than humanely acceptable, even though I had to miss Sid’s basketball game, and even though I almost fell a million times in the snow and ice, I still felt comfort. My heart was calmer and my head was clearer.

So I will run into 2014. There will be a half marathon in Rochester, a 5k in Chicago, a 10k on Kelley’s Island, a Tough Mudder in upstate New York, and the Flying Pig in Cincinnati among the others.

If you happen to be up in the early morning hours feeding a baby, taking care of a sick child or on your way into work, think about me pounding out the miles on my treadmill and say a prayer. It’s silly really I know, but if you wouldn’t mind simply put a good word in for me.

And if your up for a visitor or a running partner and you know of a decent race in your area shoot me a note and you may just end up with a house guest.

Ellie’s birth was a scheduled c-section. When I arrived at the hospital in the early morning hours of September 24, 2010 I went through the usual protocols- the ultrasound to confirm her position, the IV placement, the forms and releases. They then walked me to the operating room as Brock was instructed to sit in a chair outside while the nurses and anesthesiologists prepared my body for surgery.

Alone, for all intents and purposes, and naked (both literally and figuratively), the skilled team went about their work.

I hunched over my 40 week belly as the nurse held my shoulders and the anesthesiologist began the process to administer the drugs that would remove all feeling from my chest down.

He was the same anesthesiologist I had at the birth of my first daughter. Clearly a veteran of many c-sections, he set me at ease with his kind eyes (the only thing I could see) and his clear tone.

A pause in conversation as he concentrated while inserting the needle in my lower back.

“Well, that needle just bent, let’s try this again” he told me.

And again he tried but again the needle bent while he attempted to puncture my back.

“Mrs. Schmaltz, do you work out a lot?” he asked.

“Well, I only run” I responded.  I always felt the need to articulate that I was not an athlete just someone who enjoyed an evening jog five times a week.

“You are strong” he told me. “I’ve had this happen a few times over the years and its always the athletes, always the runners who bend my needles. You are very strong”.

I was stunned.

After the third attempt he punctured through the muscle and less then 45 minutes later our beautiful Ellery Jane was born.

After the excitement of the birth and the feeling in my legs returned, I replayed the conversation with the anesethesiologist for Brock. We both got a chuckle and I never spoke of it with anyone else. But I did replay it for myself  many times in the days and weeks after September 24, 2010. In fact I have rewound that moment on almost a daily basis for the last 4 months.

You are strong he told me.

You are an athlete.

I am not the girl who ran cross -country in high school only to gossip with her friends, not because she wanted to truly participate in an athletic endeavor.

I am not the teenager who hated her thighs so much she  ducktaped them under her prom dress so she appeared smaller.

I am not the nineteen year old who was so desperate to loose the dreaded freshman 15 that she worked out every morning for hours on end and ate nothing but peanut butter on rice cakes for an entire summer before her sophomore year in college.

I am not the young woman who doubted her worth on her very first “real” job as she sat in the offices of some of america’s most influential DC politicos.

I am not the young mother who was in such a hurry to get back in shape after the birth of her first child that she walked four miles a day with her daughter strapped to her chest in the baby bjorn at only three weeks postpartum causing a six week setback in her recovery.

I am not the middle aged woman who questions whether she will ever love again.

I am strong.  Plain and simple.

A strength that emanates from my core.

I will not be ashamed of it.

I will not question whether I am worthy of that title.

I will own it.

When I reflect on the moment three years and four months ago in that operating room, I want to track that doctor down and give him a gigantic hug. I want to tell him what a seemingly mundane comment did do and has continued to do.

It is in those seemingly meaningless moments that we have an opportunity to enormously impact a life. It is with that doctor in mind that I will continue my year of looking up.

Dear Audrey,

It’s 5:30am on the morning of your seventh birthday. You, my wild-eyed child, are awake sitting next to me as I immortalize your day with the traditional birthday letter. This is the first year you can read the letter on your own. My how far you have come!

One of my all time favorite photos has to be the one of Sidney and I cuddling on the couch at our old Hickory Valley Drive house. It was just days before you were to make your appearance and my belly was huge with what would prove to be all 9lbs. 1 oz of you. It was the calm before the storm!

You arrived screaming into the world on January 12, 2007. The whole family was beyond excited to meet you just two years four months after your big sister Sidney had made her presence known.

We named you Audrey Hope.

It was a name your Dad and I choose to honor the symbolism of your birth; at a time of great personal turmoil you brought such hope to our lives.

The hope and the joy you brought to our lives that first year and for six more after that has made this family strong and whole.

Your personality is larger than life. Your energy is contagious.

From the minute you wake up each morning, to your head hitting the pillow hard at 8:30 each night, you live life to the fullest.

We all could stand to learn a thing or two from the way you choose to approach life. Smile on your face, arms wide open ready to tackle the world and give everyone in your path a healthy dose of the “Hopie charm”.

Remember your first day of school outfit for the Childhood League Center? The one that at three you picked out all on your own and had such pride wearing it and showing all your new classmates your “style”.

I could drop in millions of pictures of you and your style over the years (in fact I almost did). But it’s not about the way you look my love. It’s about the personality behind those skirts and dresses and stylish haircuts. You own who you are and your Dad and I could not be more proud of the “who” inside of you.

You are our strong, confident, intelligent, seven-year old.

You are the light of our life and the joy in our days.

Thank you for letting me be your mommy. It is a privilege that every day I thank God for granting me.

I am looking forward to watching this next year unfold for you. I know it will be a good one, but do me a favor will you? Remember every day that you are loved beyond measure and that no matter what your family (me, dad, Sid and Ellie) will always be here for you no matter where the miles put us.

I love you Audrey Hope Schmaltz. Enjoy your day.

Love,

Your one and only Momma