On October 26, 2006, my life changed forever: my mom decided to end her life. I was only 25 at the time. For the next 18 years, I really struggled with my mental health, but it's only now that I've started to take it seriously. That's when I found running, and it's become the biggest help for dealing with my own problems.

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Every time I start a run, I'm scared. I'm scared that I might stop caring about reaching my goal, or that I'm just making myself look silly, or that my goals are just too big to achieve. But no matter how much I worry before I start, once I finish the run, everything feels right. It's like all those steps I took were exactly what I needed to do.

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So now, I always run scared. It reminds me that being afraid doesn't have to stop me. It's part of the journey to getting better, where every run is a win against the doubts that used to hold me back.