These Are My Shoes: Love and Emily
Love
It was early when the phone rang. Love, still in bed, didn’t answer. Then her phone rang again. “This guy, this stranger, kept calling my phone, I’m like, WHAT? So I came out with my bonnet on. I came out.”
It was Love’s first day running with Mile in My Shoes. When she had seen the flyer about MiMS at the Volunteers of America (VOA) reentry center in Roseville she got excited about the running part. Running was something she had done a lot of while she was away. But she was skeptical about the morning part. The morning part never got easier. She got a lot of early calls from one of the VOA mentors.
“He was so persistent. I mean he would call me like, for real, five times. He would be saying, ‘Love, Love, Love, It’s time to get up.’ A lot of times I got up just because of that. He didn’t give up and I’m like, well why would I give up on myself?”
This wasn’t the first time Love chose to not give up on herself.
“When I talk about going away, I don’t need to be ashamed of it, I went to prison. For nine years,” she said. “I got taken into custody from court. I dropped my daughter off at elementary school and told her I’d be back to pick her up. I didn’t see her for the next seven years.”
Her daughter was six-years-old. Love arrived at federal prison handcuffed from her waist to her ankles to her wrists. She said at that moment she made a choice. “One of the things I told myself when I got off that bus, shackled, was that I’m going to become better and not bitter.”
Love started taking classes and reading books and began running. She said she ran five days a week, three miles a day and nine years later, she got out.
“I was released from federal prison, I already had a plan,” she said, “The plan was, I ain’t losing, I ain’t going back, so whatever it takes that’s what’s gonna happen.” She found a church community, moved into the VOA, and showed up to run with Mile in My Shoes. At the time she had no running gear and no money to buy it. She never expected to get something for nothing.
“When they would give us running clothes - I’m like man, this is what’s happening!” she said, “in the world we’re living in, it’s always tit for tat, reciprocity, you give me and I give you and it was never like that with them. It was just a genuine concern.” She said that concern made her feel welcome during a time of uncertainty.
“I went through that stage in my life, I come home and there’s all kinds of fears, people gonna judge you, you got a stigma, you got this and you got that,” said said. Her years in prison made her closed off and wary of others. “I really couldn’t trust anybody, so when I got out running with them - it just felt like I was a part of them,” she said, “then as time prolonged, I literally started feeling like we were family.”
She felt that she fit in right away. “I never felt any kind of distance. I never felt like I was the black girl out of the group. I never felt like that.”
On one of those first weeks with Mile in My Shoes, Love was paired up with a run mentor named Emily. They clicked immediately and it was in their blooming friendship where Love said she truly felt she could be herself.
“When I met with her it felt like a breath of fresh air. There was no pressure. There was no worries,” Love said of Emily, “Not with just the running part but personal things that I could talk to her about that I couldn’t talk to anybody else about. It’s caused me to open up again and to trust again.”
That trust turned into support and encouragement and accomplishment. Love said, “Mile in My Shoes has caused me to leap into some things that I said I would NEVER do but because of the accountability and expectations, they have really caused me to grow.” She continued, “when people are expecting you to succeed and they’re there with you, that makes you want to succeed.”
Love was tested one rainy day this past summer. “I’m a black girl with coarse hair. I do not run in the rain and I do not run in the snow,” Love declared. She went out to run that afternoon when she had thought the rain had stopped, but halfway through, it started again. “I was like, oh shoot! And then I’m like, you know what?” She paused a moment then continued, speaking quietly and thoughtfully, seemingly surprised at herself, “I am gonna do something I ain’t never done. And I ran in the rain. I was so proud of myself.”
Now two years out of prison, Love has seen success first hand. She moved into her own place and is a union carpenter training to be a project manager.
“I got out and literally took off running,” she said, laughing, “with Mile in My Shoes and with my life. I just started working and going after what it was that I wanted.” She continues to work towards her dreams and knows one thing for sure. “Going back to prison is never an option, never a question. Don’t even exist in my mind.”
Love said she didn’t accomplish her goals on her own. She credits her strong faith and her MiMS family and thanked Emily for being a positive force behind her with the umph and encouragement to push her at the right moment.
Emily
“Running is the thing and that resonated a lot with me,” Emily said as she remembered what first drew her to become a Run Mentor with Mile in My Shoes. “Running is the change. Running is the THING.”
In her mid 20s, Emily ran her first race. She called herself a middle of the pack runner and said, “I’m very comfortable in that space.” Over the years as she signed up for more races, she found herself signing up to fundraise for charities.
“I’d be like, hey, look what I’m doing,” Emily said sarcastically, “I’m going to run a marathon and you should be in awe of that and because you’re in awe of that, you should give money to this organization that’s trying to cure cancer.”
She was quick to add, yes, please give money to important cancer research, but the thing that drew her to MiMS was something different. She said, “Whether I raise a dollar or I never put any money into the mission, running is the thing.”
Emily became a Run Mentor in 2017 and has run with the Roseville VOA Reentry Center team since 2018. “I think Team Roseville is a special group of people that keeps me coming back,” she said.
“Now if I’m going to run a marathon, it matters, right? Because I’m either training with people or helping others run their first marathon or their first 10k,” Emily said. “That’s a thing that we’re doing together and that feels a lot more real. It’s a more genuine connection.” She added that the connection and the successes don’t just come at finish lines. “There is a success story in Mile in My Shoes every day. Every day there’s something where someone has success.”
Simply stated, Emily feels good running with MiMS. “All that feeling good is endorphins from running, which I am into,” Emily laughed, “but there are also the conversations where it’s like a cathartic release of whatever’s on your mind or on your chest or weighing on you or having someone to celebrate with.”
One such person for Emily is Love, a Resident Member. “It always just felt like we were friends,” Emily said, adding that they talk to each other about everything. “Love and I are the same age. We have lived very different lives but we still go through things together. We are ‘figure it out’ kind of people and we’re, ‘see it through’ kind of people and I think that that’s part of it.”
Love + Emily
“The first run that I remember was when you forgot your sports bra,” Emily said, smiling at Love. The two friends got quiet for a moment, and then they both laughed.
“I DID!,” Love exclaimed while giggling.
Emily remembered that early morning at Mile in My Shoes as the first time she ran with Love.
“You were like, I’m fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. And I’m like, okay! We ran and I think we got to the driveway and you’re like, it’s not fine.” The two ended up walking that day, and Emily said it felt like they were just hanging out. Love thought the same.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I felt like, even though it was 6 o’clock in the morning and I don’t hang out with anybody at 6 o’clock in the morning.” Love said and they both laughed. “When she allowed me to call that pace, that made me feel good. That made me feel like, okay, I don’t feel pressured and I can be myself. I literally started to feel like she became a friend of mine and not just somebody who’s above me but a part of me. That walks alongside me.”
“It always just felt like we were friends,” Emily said.
At the time of that first run, Emily was the team lead for Mile in My Shoes at the Roseville VOA Reentry Center. Love had just moved in. She said she had no friends and only knew a few people from her church.
Love had just spent nine years in federal prison. She had missed nine years of her daughter’s life. She remembered deciding to “become better, not bitter.” She spent her time soul searching, learning and running. She also leaned on her faith, though over those years, she became wary and untrusting of others. Joining MiMS helped change that.
“I just really started to love Mile in My Shoes because I felt that they were authentic.” Love said, “It’s caused me to open up again and to trust again.”
Love felt that connection and support from Emily most of all. “When I met with her it felt like a breath of fresh air. There was no pressure. There was no worries.” She said she could talk to Emily about anything she was going through. They laughed together and cried together and talked about everything in between.
“No judgement zone, never was no judgement between us,” Love said, “I never felt like I’m an ex felon and she’s not. It’s always felt like we were just people.”
Emily agreed and said that Love’s experiences with MiMS and their friendship matched her own. She speculated on why they got along so well and said, “Love is a lot of energy and like… I can be that way too.” They both laughed.
Love moved out of the VOA before she completed her goals with MiMS. She said that didn’t sit well with her, so when she had the opportunity to join a virtual team this summer, she jumped on it. Emily was her team captain and the two spent the summer with their teammates keeping each other on track and sending encouragement. Emily helped coach Love through two virtual 5ks, the first one they ran together at Lake Como.
“Love killed it! We ran that race so fast!” Emily said adding that a couple months later they also ran the Downtown Run Around. “We could have done that race twice, she could have done the 10k.” Emily said afterwards Love said that she’d do a 10k on Thanksgiving.
“And she has a great memory,” Love said, laughing.
They both remember one particular run from early that summer, shortly after the unrest in Minneapolis.
“We were running by those corn fields,” Emily said, remembering the story with Love. “We saw people in their yards and you were like, I wonder what they’re thinking seeing a white lady and a black lady running together.”
“For them to physically see that people can still look different but not be different and still do things together, I like for people to see that,” Love said. “It’s been so much racial tension and racial division just because of the color of your skin or the texture of your hair? It’s all so foolish. For them to see us two running together - same path, right?”
Months later, just before Thanksgiving, Love and Emily’s virtual MiMS team were making plans to run the virtual 10k when the Governor announced an order restricting gathering with anyone outside of your household due to rising COVID numbers. Emily decided that she needed to take action. “That order went into effect at midnight and that morning I was like, Yo, you want to go run a 10k like right now? And so we did.”
“I was gonna stop, I was running out of gas, seriously,” Love said of the race, “and I was like, E, I don’t know if I can make it, and she was like, Love, do you remember you said that you was gonna run the 10k Turkey Day? And I was like, E, why would you remind me of that?”
“All of a sudden I caught a second wind and I completed it,” Love said. “I was so proud of myself and I know I wouldn’t have did it if it wasn’t for her. That’s real talk. I wouldn’t have never done it.”
“For the record, I didn’t run those miles for you. You did that,” Emily said.
“I did,” Love said quietly, “but you helped me, encouraged me, you had expectations of me and because of that, it’s what gave me the umph I needed. Some people need that in their life, E.” Love paused a moment. There was a catch in her breath as she continued. “There’s so many people that need somebody to push them along the way. There’s been so many times that you’ve done that for me. And I will forever be grateful for that.”
“As inspiring as you say I am to you, you are that, tenfold, for everyone else,” Emily responded. “It’s something that I’ve been very fortunate to experience.”
The two run together often. They have plans for the coming months. For one, Love will be starting the next Mile in My Shoes session as a Run Mentor. She wants to help someone the way Emily has helped her. She also has big running goals.
“I haven’t run a marathon, yet. That’s the next step,” Love proclaimed.
“This is being recorded!” Emily said, laughing, even though they both know that there’s no way she’d ever let Love forget.
