I grew up with a very overprotective mom. She’d admit as much. If she let me do something as a kid, it was the golden ticket for my friends to tell their parents that Aaron’s mom said it was ok. And the parents agreed, “if Debby said it’s ok, then we won’t say no.”
None of this is a negative thing. In fact, she’s my best friend. And, let me be clear, I was a clumsy, injury-prone kid with allergies and asthma that landed me in the emergency room from time to time. It made sense to want to put me in a bubble.
Part of that bubble included warnings like,
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“Don’t run, you’re going to have an asthma attack.”
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“Don’t lift heavy things, you’re going to hurt your back.”
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“Don’t go to the gym, there are lots of germs there.”
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“Don’t do that, it’s dangerous. You’re going to break your neck.”
Again, she wasn’t always wrong – except for when I outgrew my asthma and no longer needed allergy shots after high school. To this day, I still get the asthma comment. Dad goes along with these too, often based on the same fears, but sometimes as he says, “to insure domestic tranquility” (quoting the Constitution).
But the purpose of this post is not to complain about or blame my parents for anything. In fact, when the message comes from love (which it does), that’s all that’s needed for us to learn from it. But learning from it doesn’t always mean listening to it. So, now I run, lift weights, spend hours in the gym every week, and of course, mom’s favorite . . . rock climb – not to defy my parents, but to truly show that I’ve learned from them. I’ll explain . . .
Lesson 1: There’s a difference between fear and danger . . .
As I mentioned, growing up with asthma landed me in the emergency room from time to time. In fact, we first discovered my condition after a little league baseball game. As everyone left the game, I asked my mom to slow down. The field cleared out, and others were already at Baskin Robbins as we approached the hill that led to mom’s car – the only one left in the lot – when I passed out. We are alone, but she got me into the car. Instead of heading for ice cream, we went straight to the hospital where I received a shot of adrenaline. The moment was scary for both of us, and afterwards, we learned that I had severe asthma. When my doctor explained this, I responded that I was not going to let the disease change me. In some ways, that was true – I continued to play sports and have an active childhood – but in other ways, I let it limit me. I happily used mom’s warning to get out of activities that meant running long and far – which I hated anyway. I was often among the slowest runners, and now I had an excuse to get out of it. But it was an excuse driven more out of fear than danger.
First, I always had an inhaler, so I was not going to end up back on that abandoned hill alone with my mom gasping for air again. Second, using the pulmonary function test that I had, I knew how to recognize when I was primed for an attack versus when I was not affected. If my breathing function was low, then the risk of an attack naturally dictated what I could do. If my lungs were fine, then asthma was simply a fear, not a danger.
Over time, after years of allergy shots, I outgrew the worst of my asthma. I carried an inhaler in case it ever acted up, but I rarely pushed myself to the point where it might do so. I had that moment on the hill in the back of my head, perhaps because mom’s warnings often reminded me of it – or perhaps because it was my own fear.
Running was rarely my thing until this journey started, but when it was (including early in this journey), I always had my inhaler, and I was cautious about how far and how fast I ran. As running became a bigger part of my fitness, I noticed something that my years of being afraid of it had not prepared me for. The longer and farther I ran, the less I was affected by my asthma over time. The cardiovascular conditioning naturally improved my lungs!
I always heard my mom’s warning about asthma when she told me not to run. But as important as the words were about safety with asthma, it was just as important to not listen when she told me not to run. With running, I learned not to fear what might bring on an asthma attack, as I discovered it would also prevent future ones.
