David Goggins talked in his book “Can’t Hurt Me” about keeping a cookie jar of things you have done and been proud of to use when you are down or need to find the next foothold and get past a hard place athletically or otherwise.  I’m going to keep this list of cookies out front and not forget.

2023 Update:  I am throwing out the old items below and starting again…need to rebuild myself.

• Did 30.7 miles Stone Cat 50k with a cold
• Did 23 miles ragnar
• Did 2 Spartan supers back to back
• Ran ~12 hours at Killington Ultra, 25.6 miles, 12,100′ elevation gain
• Swing dancing in Chicago
• Hills at Nashoba
• Out late at nights on Fridays doing interval training
• Consistent training for months building up tolerance…many hours on the roads and trails
• Did Bonefrog 3200′ elevation
• Did Clovis 13 miles + 180 burpee jumping pullups
• New Bedford Half Marathon completed without issue in 2:30
• Quit GE after 17 years wanting to do something I believed in and no clear way to do it.  Scariest thing I have ever done and  here I am 10 years later in a beautiful house, in a job I love, with a wonderful man and not living on the streets – which is the picture that kept coming to mind immediately after quitting.
• Moved to Italy in a very difficult job and did the job while learning Italian – leaving the job decently fluent, having found a wonderful Lindy Hop dance partner who was the Rock and Roll champion of Italy.  Found him after I could understand enough Italian to read the newspaper (no internet then) and hunt down the dance studios.
• Quit GE the first time while I was doing very well and moved to a new city (Chicago) in the hopes of learning something new consulting.  In Chicago, in addition to meeting a great consulting team and friends I still have today, I learned how to dance which opened up a whole new world and friends to me, and learned nutrition/got in the best shape of my life (before now).  Learned to love living in the city and also by keeping my eyes open at the music school I was taking piano at on the weekends, found the most amazing quintet to play in.
• Learned piano as an adult and worked hard at it – enough to play pieces like Liebestraume by Chopin.
• Started WISE (Women in Science and Engineering Program) in 1990 which is still serving hundreds of young women every year encouraging them to pursue careers in science and engineering.
• Realized that the most important place to be is where you are and then found friends in Boston at the community garden and started to be more involved with my neighborhood and people around me.
• Put a few green roofs on in Boston
• Hopefully made a difference in the life of my Little Sister from Big Sister Program, who I am so very proud of and so happy to still have her in my life 25 years later – despite having lost her for a year or so along the way.
• Learned to swim as an adult and went at it hard with daily swim team practice
• Survived stepmotherhood with myself, kid and husband intact and all doing well – this has been perhaps the hardest thing I have ever done
• Surviving workout 16.5 during Crossfit Open 21/18/15/12/9/6/3 thruster @65 and burpees over bar in 26.56.
• Having done 12 strict pullups in a row.
• Completed a half marathon.
• All my max lifts to date, deadlift of 265
• Leaving the executive track at GE and changing the course of my life to take care of myself first and doing what made me happy moving back to Boston in 2003.  This taught me to trust my gut and not listen to anyone but myself.
• Terrified of giving presentation at Energy conference but did it very successfully and created a new presentation picture based that hopefully was way more impactful than any I have given in the past.