Tender

On being brave enough to dream, and brave enough to fail.

What does winning mean?

Watching people try breaks my heart open. A good sports movie, even if they lose. A RomCom where the lead is earnestly chasing his dream girl. A friend trying to have a baby. There’s something tender in watching someone want, watching them yearn openly for a goal, speak a dream they can barely imagine out loud, putting a desire into the ether in hopes it comes back fulfilled.

Last week, I watched a woman named Mandy try to run 250 miles across Arizona. She had completed a handful of 100-mile races before – The Leadville 100 (15k feet of elevation gain) and The Cruel Jewel 100 (33k feet of elevation gain) – but this would be her longest attempted race yet and the most elevation gain.

Mandy hired our video production company, Stoked Ember, to document the attempt. At first, I thought she just wanted an adventure film about a crazy race and all the eccentrics these ultra events attract, herself included. But on day two of this five-day race, I paced her for seven miles, and we talked about the real reason: she knows that we are trying to make it as a small video production company. She knows we want to do more outdoor documentaries. She knows she can make room in her business’s budget to pay us. She knows she can make our dream come true while racing to achieve one of her own.

This particular dream of Mandy’s ended around mile 145, at 4:00 AM on Thursday. She had to turn around and come back to the aid station, where we were all waiting, cameras in hand, to hug her while she cried, to wipe our own tears. Not because we were disappointed in the outcome, but because we were so very proud, so very tender, and so very sleep deprived.

We’d spent the last four days watching her shuffle into aid stations, dirt on her cheeks, a smile plastered across her face, and plop into a chair. Her husband and kids would help her remove her dirty socks and trail-worn shoes. They’d rub her feet and dunk them in ice baths before tending to the half-dozen blisters forming between her toes and underneath her toenails (never seen this, but it’s a thing). We watched her cry in pain because her quad was killing her (she found out post-race that she’d torn it at some point). We’d applaud as she limped out of the aid station again into the inky night of the Arizona wilderness, headlamp bobbing slowly as she began to climb the next hill.

Mandy didn’t meet the goal she set out to accomplish - but she met herself along the way, and by inviting us along, we got to make one big dream of our own come true.

Who poisoned the cows?

I work for a nonprofit that invests in small businesses in Uganda. Every summer, we visit our partner communities, catch up on life, meet new babies, and admire how much the babies from last year have grown. We eat lunch under the mango trees, walk the school properties, and share pictures from our lives back home.

One of our partners, St. Paul School, runs a dairy cow business that they’ve been growing for over two years. We’ve been watching this business grow for years. It started with one cow – the students would spend lunch break moving her around to graze new patches of grass and refill her water. She got pregnant, and the next summer we met the little calf now tethered nearby. That baby cow grew, and the mom got pregnant again, and there was a lot of hope for this business and a lot of daily joy these cows brought the kids and teachers at school.

Last month, someone in the area poisoned the cows — the pregnant mother and the two-year-old. Both died. Teacher Tonny, who had been the primary caretaker of these cows, was devastated. That day, the cows were grazing on the next-door church property, tethered by long ropes to wooden stakes so they wouldn’t wander away. Tonny speculates that someone put poison in their water bucket, but no one knows why.

For the past five years, St. Paul School has been starting small businesses and saving the profits to cover school expenses, allowing more children to attend at free or reduced rates. Last year, they started their own scholarship program. The dairy cow business had promise – and still does – but they are back at the starting line, and it’s hard for me not to feel disappointed and hopeless. But then I look at them, and this is just an unexpected, crappy hand of cards and they’ve played with worse and come out ahead. Yes, they are back at the starting line, but it’s a race they’ve run before, and even the strongest poison can’t kill hope.

What am I daring to dream?

So many people in my life are working their way towards once-in-a-lifetime dreams, and what a privilege it is to walk alongside them, to cheer them on. They say, “show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future,” and as luck would have it, I’m surrounded by dreamers.

It’s their contagious inspiration that encourages me to ask, “What am I brave enough to dream?” Is it writing this Substack or getting my photos in NatGeo or something simpler, like surfing in a new beach town?

Maybe it’s the dream of being homeowners, of creating a communal property that invites people to be a little less lonely. I’ll need some bravery here because we’re $20,000 shy of a down payment and unsure if our gig jobs will bring us across this particular finish line.

I called my mom on her birthday, which was the third day of Mandy’s race. I explained how Mandy’s mom, Shaire, flew out from Colorado and showed up to the aid station clutching a plastic CVS bag filled with blister-care supplies. She didn’t once set it down while waiting for her daughter to arrive. As soon as Mandy hit the top of the parking lot, Shaire moved towards her as fast as she could, still holding this little bag. She wrapped her daughter in her arms, and they stood like that, outside the porta-potties, in this dusty parking lot in Jerome, Arizona, for as long as Mandy’s tired legs would allow.

My voice caught in my throat as I stifled a little sob. My mom said, “I love that your life is such an adventure and that it moves you to tears. Don’t ever lose that, my love.” Maybe that’s my big, once-in-a-lifetime dream, that’s the direction I’ll continue to point my compass: towards creating a life that makes me feel things – hope, sorrow, joy, wonder.

If so, I’m already there.