The Cave You Fear to Enter: Robin's Story of Healing Through Endurance
Content Note
This story includes personal experiences with self-harm, depression, alcoholism and addiction, family violence, and toxic relationships. We share stories like this as part of our mission to inspire action and possibility through the power of shared stories, but we also know that not everyone is ready to read something this heavy in every season.
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I didn't know when I was young that one day I would carry a hurt and an anger that threatened to swallow me whole.
I remember having a great start to my childhood. For many years my home was filled with love and rich memories; picking blueberries in our backyard, playing Nintendo 64 with my younger brother, riding bikes to the corner store for an ice cream treat on a hot summer day, taking vacations to the Oregon coast as a family to fly kites on the beach, doing the sports I loved like Tae-Kwon-Do and softball, and drowning oysters in Tabasco with my dad.
Then like a dark rain cloud that slowly covers a beautiful, sunny sky- things started to change. We moved to the Oregon countryside and life as I knew it started to shift quickly. My parents didn't laugh as much, instead they drank. Those good times I once recalled quickly gave way to volatile ones. Their divorce inevitably came and was messy and ugly- and being not only 12 years old but always being able to feel things emotionally very deeply- it took me down with it like a sinking ship.
My life as I knew it ceased to exist. My friends didn't understand. My parents didn't or couldn't know. I was depressed and carrying it all alone. I was taken to therapy and prescribed depression medication but that only seemed to make it worse. How could I let out the thoughts that consumed me? How could I handle what threatened to pull me under the tide? The only logical solution for my adolescent and pained mind was turning to self harm. I would sit in my room and cut my arms. To feel alive, to feel pain, to feel anything at all that made any kind of sense. I was fortunate enough to stop that pattern fairly quickly due to fear of being found out by peers and/or parents.
But self harm isn't an open and closed book. It would later manifest in ways that took different shapes and forms in my adult years.
I had left my house before I had graduated high school. By my mid-teen years my dad had moved to the next city over and started with a "new family" and I hated him for that and for his bottomless drinking, for being absent and for failing to understand me. I went from my dad being my childhood best friend to not speaking to him for most of my adult life.
My mom had re-married to the worst person I had ever met. He was a giant, ogre of a man who only fueled her alcoholism with his own, he was loud and verbally and physically violent. I watched my mother sink into a level of alcoholism that I couldn't quite fully grasp until my later years. She was in and out of rehab unsuccessfully and eventually this culminated in her losing her job and getting in a life altering drunk driving accident.
The things that she has said to me or done to me have left permanent scars on my heart and my mind. Scars I will spend an entire lifetime trying to heal. Unfortunately-if she is still alive- the last that I heard is that she is still drowning in her own darkness. But there is one important thing that I have learned from her in this life, which is exactly who and how NOT to be. Over time this has become my North Star.
So I was out on my own. Far too young and not equipped in any way for what lay ahead. I threw myself into industry jobs that required everything of me so by the time that I was off in the late evening/early morning there was only one rational option to do- party. Drinking after a hard shift was "just what you did". Anything to drown out the pain and anger. Anything to take the edge off of the rage I felt for what happened to me. I was lost. Lost in my feelings, in the world, and mostly within myself. I picked toxic partners that echoed not only my brutal internal dialogue of what I thought I deserved while simultaneously perfectly mirroring the worst of what I witnessed growing up.
After a particularly bad breakup with a narcissistic, abusive, compulsive liar, and cheater of a man- I decided my time in Portland was finally done and I moved to Texas. I sold nearly everything I owned, packed a couple of bags, and with $80 to my name I boarded a flight to Austin.
But sayings are sayings for a reason, and so "wherever you go- there you are." I may have moved physically, but my problems came with me. I found new ways to inflict old pain on myself. I continued to date poorly and drink and party to mask how I really felt. I had no direction or purpose. I made strides in finding a career in hair that I loved, but I worked with toxic people who also abused drinking and drugs.
Until one bleak and particularly lonely Christmas, I hit my own personal rock bottom. I saw a photo of myself and I truly did not recognize the person looking back at me. No, not in a typical fashion where one judges and critiques a photo of themselves- I actually didn't know who I was looking at. My depression and drinking had spun into me gaining 50 lbs, my eyes were glazed over and my face was rounded and puffy from all the booze. That was it. A switch flipped in me. I had to make the change.
I told myself I'd do dry January for once and just see how that goes. I started the New Year not drinking for once but going to a local gym and joining a community workout. I saw strong individuals accomplish beautiful athletic movements and was inspired. I thought "Okay, I like lifting weights but I hate running. I'll just train all year and do a Hyrox come November." So I went out and bought my first pair of true running shoes and promised myself to get through one mile. Just one. I couldn't stop, no matter the pace, I just had to complete it. And I did just that.
One mile slowly turned into two and two turned into three. It was a slow process but I found the joy in each step. Then a friend suggested I run the local Cap10K. "Excuse me?? That's in 4 weeks! What is a race?? Can I do a race? 6 miles?!?! That isn't possible." All words directly from my mouth. But with a lot of coaxing and an equal amount of research on my part- I signed up for my first race.
I trained relentlessly; for the first time my life had purpose and structure and a goal. I said no to late night plans and yes to early morning runs. Training for a race breathed life into corners of my existence I didn't know lived within me. It was like slipping the most perfect key into a lock on my heart and mind that I had searched for all my life. So on the first Sunday in April of 2025 I ran my first race. I crossed the finish line of my first 10K and sobbed. I had done it. Something I couldn't previously ever conceive- and it lit a fire within me that is burning just as brilliant, bright, and warm today.
The next morning I signed up for my first half marathon back home in Oregon come July 4th, quickly followed by my first Ironman 70.3 sign up that October. I learned these disciplines from scratch and fell head over heels in love with athletics and what it had given me, who it had created. This feels like my second chance at life.
Since then I have completed three 10Ks, two Ironman 70.3s, five half marathons, a relay from Dallas to Austin, a Hyrox Women's Pro Doubles, and a 42-mile ultra.
People assume I do it for the love of racing, and don't get me wrong I do love a race day! The magnetic energy, the wildly early morning alarm clock going off, and the feeling of accomplishment as your feet cross the finish line and you collect your medal; of knowing in your heart that all your training and daily incremental decisions brought you to this one moment. But it was never truly about just that for me. I learned I enjoyed the process more than anything- of who I became during my training blocks. The kind of person day in and day out that accomplishes these things. And in that, I had healed for the first time.
They say there's a strong correlation between trauma and endurance sports. That people who have gone through a lot of loss or hardships or abuse in their life tend to find these particular outlets. It's because it is a "chosen suffering". In choosing to do hard things I believe you can rewire your brain to be more prepared for when life does hit you with challenging times. To say that choosing my own pain and using it as a catalyst to heal my own lifetime of hurt changed who I was at my very core would be the understatement of this century.
So here I am, years later, and after much self-work and reflection I am left to think: Who am I to blame my parents? They're human beings having a human experience- just like me they are doing all of this for the first time. Could they have made better choices? Of course. But that's the funny thing about life; you can only live it forward, while it makes the most sense in reverse. As I neared the age they were at when all of this transpired, I found the more healed version of me coming from a place of understanding and forgiveness.
I still don't speak to my mother, at this point it's been more years than I care to count. But my dad has been sober for nearly 8 years now and we found our way back to one another. Was making the first call easy? No, it was horribly scary and messy. But I am often reminded of my favorite quote, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek." And my dad and my renewed relationship is worth more than all the gold in this world. He is the first text I receive each morning, he has cheered me on through every race and personal win, he is there for the hard days or seasons too, we talk and laugh on the phone now about childhood memories, and when I go back to Oregon to visit I feel like his daughter again. He isn't perfect, and neither am I. But I've learned to meet him where he is at and allow him to be himself, because of that my love for him has only grown.
I can only hope in this lifetime that you find the key to your heart and your mind like I have been so fortunate to. I hope that when you find it that you pursue it relentlessly, to the ends of this earth. Then maybe like me, you will find the home in yourself that you have always searched for in everyone and everywhere else.
Thank you,
Robin
If this story brought anything up for you, support is available: the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is free and confidential, 24/7 call or text 988.
