What Started She Didn’t Come Home?

I started healing last year, 2023, when I was forced to be still with running after completing the TCS NYC Marathon. I learned the implants I placed in my body seven years ago was what was making me sick, I had three lumps in my right breast and two in my left that were suspicious, and I had a right sub pectoral tear. I ending up having biopsies, testing, counseling, surgery, and more health and mental health problems after the surgery. 

Without running to give me an outlet, I was forced to come to terms with what I went through in my childhood. I first started to journal and then started speaking to my therapist more about dreams I have, experiences I’ve been through, flashbacks, and how much I hated myself without knowing it because of how I was raised and treated and what I endured. I started talking about how I felt like failure because I always find myself in situations that seem okay, but my hurt and wanting to be loved so bad often led me to more pain and heartache, by ignoring what was not okay.

When I faced this conclusion and started to process I realized I am capable of hard things and I always sold myself short because of the darkness I was fed. I wanted to do something more than run for myself and earn medals; I ended coming an activist as my therapist calls me. I started to research women who never came home from their walk, jog, run and were either missing or had their lives tragically taken. I faced walls and of course I still deeply struggled with what I had been going through in my personal life as well. 

I have continued to research, read, write, and advocate since February of 2024 for every woman I uncover. Some days are hard when I read their stories and the details of what happened. Some days are super hard knowing they would still be alive if their parents would have been taken seriously, if prisoners weren’t released when they have the death penalty, if DNA had been tested or placed in a database.

I knew when I started She Didn’t Come Home that all I wanted to do was run Every Women’s Marathon for the women who never came home. When I started researching, much like I always do I found myself in a bigger frying pan than I could handle. But I refused to give up, like always too.

How could I give up after reading how she walked to school, but she didn’t come home, actually she never even made it to school.  She jogged around the block, she didn’t come home. She ran around the track, she didn’t come home. She went out and she didn’t come home from an activity that should be enjoyed; not constantly worried if someone is going to take you out from behind with their car, jump out of bushes and grab you, gun you down, stabbed you from behind, if you’re going to be staked, or harassed.