Hi, I am Laura and hail from the Bay Area here in Northern California. In 2011 I started a blog called Running4theReason to document my fundraising and marathon training efforts for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program and found a good amount of traction and success therein but my life priorities changed, running took a backseat, that blog got a virus, and I found myself in a very different mind frame thanks to all that the pandemic taught (much more on that later…).

I’ve made a lot of adjustments in my life since then and even recently- my biggest accomplishment therein being quitting drinking. As of today, I have not had alcohol in over 200 days. Wow. If you were able to read my old blog (damn virus!!!), you would think I was the poster child for drinking. Most of my races ended with wine and/or beer, I planned life events and all celebrations around drinking, I was even fairly boastful of the next day’s hangover- the more horrible I felt, the better time I had, right?

Nope. Not right at all.

Giving up alcohol is an interesting ride- really forces you to face your inner demons and teaches you to become your own best friend. I realized quickly how much I was using alcohol as a crutch for nearly everything: if I felt stressed, sad, celebratory, bored, and/or lonely I would reach for a bottle. Removing that option has improved my physical being, but my emotional state can often teeter, forcing me to look to my spiritual side in order to navigate without the anesthetic I was so used to relying on. Plainly put, I’m feeling all the feelings now and some of them are beautiful and some, downright ugly (much much more on that later as well…).

Seeking to gain more inner peace, while missing running as an athletic endeavor and desiring to connect with people on a similar path of enlightenment, I started a 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training certification program here in Berkeley and will “graduate” in February 2023. There is an abundance to learn and I am loving all that I am taking in; but, I am feeling a tad overwhelmed balancing work and life with my studies right now- I am behind on homework and have yet to actually try to teach anyone yoga (other than my fellow classmates) but I am working on a plan for all that (you guessed it, there will much much much more on that later too!).

And with that I say YAY ME for returning to the blogosphere and YAY YOU for joining me on this journey! Where this path will lead, we have yet to know but the bricks we lay to get there is what life is all about… so much more to come…