Kind of a crosspost day today. A couple of days ago, I talked about Psychosis. I’ve also talked about LudoSport and the impact it’s made on my mental health.
This time last year, I was approached by a publisher to write a book about my mental health recovery. We’d talked about doing it before the pandemic, because I’d started learning to walk, then run again after a neck injury, that was to me, life altering. And I say ‘to me’ because I only needed a zimmer for a bit, and by our trip a month later to London, I only needed a cane. I needed that cane for nearly a year, on and off, especially when we went to Disney, but I was lucky. No one can tell I had to learn to walk without feeling part of my leg any more (yes, you can do it, no I don’t recommend it, 0/10, do not like).
Recovery for anyone is complex
One of the reasons I’ve refused to talk about recovery, really, is because everyone recovers differently. In my case, I’ve recovered…in a way that sort of worked out fine, but wasn’t optimal. But, as you can probably see, I’d already gained quite a bit of weight before the accident, so, I was trying to find my way back to ‘fitter’.
I don’t ‘get’ the endorphin thing that people talk about when they exercise. Or at least, the discomfort I feel has always mostly overrode the instinct to do it, other than, for a while, running. Something that’s obvious from photos of me, I think, is that I have quite long legs. To put it in perspective, as it were, I’ve got 36 inch legs, and I’m 5’4″. Were I the “correct” proportions, I’d be a bit taller, but I’ve got a short body, and long legs, which really confuses people when they actually look at me properly. (no it’s not the jeans I choose, I really have stupidly proportioned legs. Shorts that should look fine on me look indecent, because my legs are too long. I can make gym shorts look like hotpants, and you’d think that’d be a super power. It’s really not).
So…with all that in mind, I pitched a book about using running to settle the mind, meditate, and still be mindful of surroundings, and at the time (pre-pandemic), the book was accepted.
Then, my son’s kidney stuff happened, and literally the day he got his stent out (I’m deliberately playing it down), the UK was locked down. No running for me, but, by that point I’d already discovered the fatal flaw in my pitch – I didn’t like going as far from the house any more, so I couldn’t talk about running.
Kai finds her bliss, so the book was revisited
In case it’s not clear to everyone how much LudoSport has changed my life, it has. Years of therapy has left me a bit twitchy, sure, but at the same time, it’s also left me with an exquisitely precise knowledge of where my limits are. So when I started geeking out about LudoSport, we revisited the book pitch.
I did however resist changing the title to Rin, Girl, Rin. (A rin, and a nir are two types of moves with lightsabers, one in one direction, one in the other). It’s not just about LudoSport, though, now that we’ve started the edits, it does feature quite a bit.
So…that’s the story of Run Girl Run. This will basically be the same post on BooksbyKai.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
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