Cheering for Yourself

I made my own signs. The day before I was scheduled to run my 1/2 marathon I got out the cardboard and markers and turned to my seven, five and two year old and said I was going to help them make signs to hold when they came to cheer for me at the race. I felt a bit weird doing it. It felt like I shouldn’t be the one creating my own merch. Was this cheating? I wondered to myself. Do these signs mean anything if I’m the one writing them?

There are many times in my life when I have had expectations that haven’t been met. Sometimes because I don’t communicate them to the people around me and sometimes because my expectations are unreasonable and many other reasons (expectations are quite the loaded gun). But what I’ve learned along the way is that you can help those around you meet your expectations. They don’t have to do it all on their own for it to mean something.

So on the Saturday morning before my race, I pulled out the sharpie and started writing in bold letters: Run Mom, Go Mom Go, My Mom is So Strong. My children pulled out the markers and started coloring in bright colors around each letter I wrote to myself.

So often I forget to cheer for myself. And sometimes I’m not even sure how to accept the cheers of others. It’s something I continue to work on. But as I helped create my own hype signs I realized it doesn’t make it less true or deserved if you say it about yourself, rather than wait for others to say it to you.