Here at runladylike.com, Fridays are all about sharing the inspiring stories of fit people who motivate all of us to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday. I usually interview runners, triathletes and casual exercisers as part of my Friday FITspiration series who are making choices every day to be as healthy as they can be – in both huge ways and through simple, small victories.

Today, I’m sharing a FITspiring story, but I’m letting the person behind the inspiration tell her story in her own powerful words.

I’m honored to introduce you to my friend Robyn Castellani. Robyn recently finished her first half marathon after losing her mom to cancer. What started as running to deal with grief has transformed into a personal and inspiring journey to something much greater. Robyn has discovered the power in finding mental strength and creating positive stories to help us be our best. Robyn lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and when she’s not running or riding her mountain bike, she’s CEO of a consulting firm that helps organizations develop meaningful messaging and high performing narratives.

This is her story …

“My Mom was never an athlete – she grew up a genteel Southern lady, with asthma, and she didn’t believe in sweat. As for me, I had always been a dedicated athlete in school, but never a runner. In recent years I admittedly logged way more hours on the couch than on the road. In fact, until a year ago, I hadn’t gone running in years. But we started running together this year, Mom and I. And when I started running with her, I went from someone whose GPS refused to categorize my speed as “running” to finishing my first half marathon, in just a few months.

“The twist to this story is that my Mom is not alive. She died in January. She was my best friend. Her death was long and hard and painful, and after she died I literally couldn’t figure out how to move forward.

“After a year filled with the frantic energy of caretaking, it felt like when she passed, all my momentum just drained away. I was stuck on the couch, watching Housewives, eating Nutella by the spoonful (okay, the jarful) and I saw everything I had worked for – my fitness, my new business – starting to slip away from me. I knew I had to do something, some challenge that would force me to get off the sofa and literally put one foot in front of the other, find my way forward in a world without Mom. So I signed up for a half marathon and a training program to go with it. “We’ll do it together,” I said to her. “You can run with me.”

“Running is something I always do when I want to get back in shape, and this time around I had started running again after Mom got really sick, mid-2013. I think I knew that life was about to get hard, and something inside me said, “You need to be strong for this.” I guess running was the best way I knew to get strong, so I started to run. By the time Mom died, I was running 4 miles at a stretch.

“Once I started training, every day had a focus. My plan told me what to do next. Tuesdays were slow runs and speed work. Thursdays were longer tempo runs. Saturdays were prep runs. Sundays were long runs. Mondays were for resting. I could get up in the morning and know, “This is the one thing I definitely have to do today.” It was a plan. It let me get a little bit stronger, a little bit faster, run a little bit farther, every week. It showed me how to move forward. It gave me something to work for.”

Success Starts With the Story You Tell

“When I set out to run the half marathon, I wanted to change my body. But more than that, I wanted to change my narrative – my story. I wanted to stop being stuck in grief and start moving forward with life. I wanted to create a new experience to share with Mom so that I would understand that even though she had died, she was still with me. I wanted to prove to myself that maybe life would get harder but I could get stronger. I could rise to meet all the challenges in front of me, starting with this half marathon.

“I build narratives for a living, and research shows that the stories we tell ourselves change our brain, our beliefs and our behavior. Think of every story you tell yourself as laying down a track in your brain, because that’s what you’re doing: each story you tell yourself sets down a signal in your brain that is literally visible on an MRI. We’ve all seen the sports psychology research, for instance, showing that runners who practice positive “self talk” (aka, positive narratives) run faster than those who think critically. That’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the power of narrative. We use stories to overcome grief, to master new skills, to build up our courage, to improve our performance. People who can build effective narratives are more likely to perform better in school,  avoid depression, perform better at work, win elections if they run for office, and, yes, live longer and healthier lives. As I tell my clients, it’s as simple as this: if you want to change your outcome, start by changing your narrative.

“So that’s what the training was for me. It was a way to build a new narrative for a new life. Every time I pulled into my favorite running park, I laced up my sneakers, locked my car, turned on my GPS and said, “Okay, Mom. Let’s go.” Early in my training, I jogged down a hill, rounded a corner and the French Broad River came into view, shining silver in the sunlight. A goldfinch swooped in front of me, and I felt a burst of energy, and I said out loud, “See, Mom, isn’t this great? Do you get why I love it now?” It was a great mother/daughter moment – the first time I could ever really get her to feel why I love sports so much. I thought in that moment that Mom had never been able to run before, because of her asthma, but she could run now, with me.”

The Narrative Power of Running

“I suppose I could have done a number of things to stay connected with Mom after she passed. I could have imagined reading books with her. I could have started meditating or praying to find a connection.  But running has a unique power. First of all, it’s physical – it changes your body, which makes it easier to change your brain.

“When you run, you are building up skills that are useful for any narrative. You’re learning about resilience, endurance, pushing through pain. You’re quite literally experiencing what it feels like to get stronger. You’re finding that you can have moments of joy in the midst of a lot of pain, and in fact, you can’t have that joy unless you take on the pain. You learn that your brain is a muscle as important as your quads if you want to succeed.”

“I have found that when I want to change my narrative, nothing is as effective as running to help me do it. I imagine most of us, when we run, build narratives as we go along. We’re looking for ways to make ourselves stronger, better partners, better at our jobs, better at parenting. We’re using our runs to answer tough questions in our lives. For me, that’s always been a huge part of the sport. Even as it’s changing my body, on some level, it’s changing my brain as well.

“Most of the time, I know that narrative was something I was building inside myself. There were a few times, though, when it seemed like it was living outside me, too. One day, I had a long run scheduled. It was a hard winter day, the wind blowing so fierce that I could feel it push me backwards with every step.  The air was so sharp I could feel the cold like a blade in my lungs. Standing still and breathing was hard enough, let alone running. I was doing 2 4-mile loops, and after the first loop, I stopped at the car to take a swig of water. I looked at the gray world I was about to run back into, foreboding and mean, and I said out loud, “Okay, Mom,  I know this is a rotten day to run. If you’d rather go hang out in heaven, I can finish this one on my own.” And I could hear her voice, quite as clear as if she were standing just beside me, her familiar Southern lilt, filled with love, as she answered back:

“That’s okay. I would always rather be with you.”

”I know she wasn’t literally standing there. But I heard her voice. I shared a moment with her. I felt her love for me, in that frustrating cold training run, like a beacon of warmth and love. It was as true as any story I could ever tell.

“As for Mom and me? We finished our half marathon together – the Asheville Half Marathon on June 7, 2014. We weren’t fast, but we crossed the finish line. 13.1 miles, when a year before I had not run a mile in 5 years or more. When 4 months earlier, I was sitting on a couch, literally unable to put one foot forward. I had friends who knew what the training meant to me and who knew why I was running – lined up to cheer when we ran past; one friend drove all night to be there and napped in the grass at the finish line until I crossed. My husband rode back and forth on the route on his bike, delivering water when the aid stations ran out at mile 6. I had written “Create Hope” on my arm; it was Mom’s theme line. And when I crossed the finish line, I wasn’t crying because of what I had lost. I was laughing because of all that I had.

“Near the end of my training, I was running along the river, and I passed beneath a glade of trees. I had a Mom moment; I had just asked her a question, and she had answered, clear and quiet, in my thoughts, but so present with me I felt like I could touch her. As my sneakers crunched across the gravel path, I thought, one of two things is going on right now. Either my mom is alive inside me, speaking through me. Or she is alive outside me, in a different form, somehow speaking to me through the world around us. Either way, I thought, is okay with me.

“That’s my story. And I’m sticking to it.”

What touched you most about Robyn’s story? Have you ever used running to deal with grief in your life? What is the story you tell yourself while you’re running?