Running to Fort Point

I became a runner during my clinical rotations of medical school. When my days overflowed with meaning. So much to process, to honor and to grieve. To move through. 

From holding the hand of a dying patient my same age, to experiencing the purest form of joy helping welcome new life into the world on the labor and delivery service. 

A medical career positions us in the front seat to life — the hard, beautiful mess of simultaneous suffering, joy, hope, fear, humor and love. Despite my physical departure from the hospital each evening, separating mentally was arduous. 

Abruptly transitioning back to the stillness of my “regular,” non-medical life felt strange, even uncomfortable. Running became my sanctuary to mentally move through unrefined meaning while my lungs burned with the gift of life. 

I routinely run to Fort Point to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Or to not see it, as often it is concealed in thick fog. 

Running to Fort Point and looking up at the iconic bridge as it remains steadfast in all-weather became a physical embodiment of the quiet resilience and deep rootedness I seek to preserve within myself during the challenges of medical school. 

Even when I can’t see the bridge through its shroud of fog, I know with certainty it is there. Steadfast. In my faith journey, I often require this tangible reminder that unseen does not mean absent. 

Eventually a day arrives like the day I took this photo during a run, when the invisible becomes visible. And the magnificence that has been there all along awes more than ever before.