Life-altering choices are often associated with deeply personal events that happen to us during our lives.
Here, we are bringing a deeply personal story directly from our founder, Marc, which led him to a decision and an opportunity he wants to share with you.
If you haven't had a moment like this before, you will; and if you have, you'll know what I’m talking about. On March 31, 2020, I got a phone call. My aunt, basically my mom, was dying. It didn't seem to be COVID-related, but the pandemic was impacting everything from flights to admissions to the ICU.
Defying all the warnings about COVID and refusing to let one of the most precious people in my life die without me right by her side, I jumped on the first airplane out of Burbank, CA, and dashed across the country to be by her side.
She didn't die right away. As it turns out, she was suffering from a viral infection that her doctors hadn't identified. From the day I landed, I started fighting for her life. Given only days to live, with a lot of advocacy and her own will to live, she shared another ten months with her family, and I hardly left her side the entire time.
Raised, protected, and taught by this woman, I admired her. I’d called her almost every day of my life for just about as long as I could remember. When she'd answer, no matter how she was feeling — and she was often sick — she'd burst into a booming, sing-songy, "Hey Marc," every single time, with all of the energy of a mother who hadn't heard from her child in a year. It had always just been the day before, sometimes just hours before. Every time, it would light up my heart.
Over the last ten months of her life, I got to know my aunt all over again. She was a tough cookie. She'd withstood more pain and illness in her 66 years of living than anyone on the planet that I knew. Her siblings often told stories about how she had been sick since the day she was born.
But...
She never let anything hold her back. She traveled. She had beautiful, decades-long friendships. She took classes for personal development and learned how to create ceramics. She learned how to paint. She was a founding member of a singing group. With that singing group, she sang up and down the east coast of the United States and on stages with recording artists, bringing people to tears with her melodic soprano voice. For a short time, she worked two jobs while helping raise and support the two kids, enjoyed a satisfying career, owned property, and helped every single member of her family, including me. Maybe especially me. She got me in front of a typewriter for the first time and then a computer for the first time. She made sure I had access to a library. She showed up at school with a chocolate cake when I needed something for show-and-tell. She lived an entire life, even though she died at the young age of 66. She lived.
Looking back over her life, recounting her stories, I compared it to mine and asked myself, "how do you want to live your life?" I decided I wanted to live it a lot more like my dear Aunt Lynn — doing the things I love, just like she did.
I knew I had to make some changes. Because of my aunt, I’m launching the Run Success Experiment.
