{"id":23719,"date":"2025-12-01T21:50:59","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T21:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/?p=23719"},"modified":"2026-02-21T00:25:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:25:27","slug":"tpbafbmdlofbsi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/2025\/12\/01\/tpbafbmdlofbsi\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts prompted by a FB memory – dropping liz off for back surgery in 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Carousels of Comfort and the Camaraderie of our Pasts - that's not growth when we cling to singular often decayed methods<\/h3><\/span><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Patterns often feel strange to me. What I find most compelling lives in the quiet observations and lived experiences that shape my perspective as a functioning dyslexic. I cannot dismiss these moments\u2014they are the way my mind digests and processes the world around me.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The wisdom I\u2019ve gathered has rarely come without frustration or failure. Growth, for me, has almost always meant confronting obstacles, and that confrontation brings its share of hurt and pain. Lately, I feel the weight of that truth pressing harder than ever, and I keep circling back to the same question: to what end?<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The wisdom I\u2019ve gathered has rarely come without frustration or failure. Growth, for me, has almost always meant confronting obstacles, and that confrontation brings its share of hurt and pain. Lately, I feel the weight of that truth pressing harder than ever, and I keep circling back to the same question: to what end?<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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This is not to diminish what she endured: the fall while protecting our firstborn down a flight of stairs, the heartbreak of secondary infertility, and the countless challenges she has faced as a human, a woman, a wife, and a mother. What I share here is only a morsel, a glimpse into her resilience.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Last night, Liz and I laughed about how my instinctive response is rarely \u201cNo.\u201d More often, it\u2019s something like, \u201cOkay, that seems inconvenient\u2026 but how can I better align myself with a perspective I don\u2019t yet have?\u201d Maybe that\u2019s my way of inviting humility. I even joked about it recently at a local Novemberfest, when a stranger noticed my Ironman hat.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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That brief exchange opened into something deeper: I asked him about his journey, his reading, his efforts to grow as a human. He admitted he wasn\u2019t strong in body yet, but was working hard on his mind. He spoke with genuine admiration about my triathlon pursuits, and then carried on about his own path\u2014until my little boy, Lucas, tugged at me with a gentle reminder: \u201cThat\u2019s long enough, Dad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carousels of Comfort and the Camaraderie of our Pasts – that’s not growth when we cling to singular often decayed methods Patterns often feel strange to me. What I find most compelling lives in the quiet observations and lived experiences […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[674,817],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2025-check-ins","category-prnci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23719"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23725,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23719\/revisions\/23725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}