On the fifth anniversary of a day that modified Jessica Foley’s life, she feels able to take one among life’s greatest steps. On Could 26, 2019, Foley’s husband, Steven Trickett, was working the half-marathon at Ottawa Race Weekend when he went into deadly cardiac arrest within the last kilometre. Foley, seven months pregnant on the time, was left to navigate an unimaginable sea of grief on her personal with their two-year-old daughter.
For the previous 5 years, Ottawa Race Weekend has been a painful reminder for Foley, who’s from Newfoundland. However this Sunday, she’s going to be part of 1000’s of others on the beginning line for the Ottawa Half Marathon, able to honour her husband’s reminiscence and take one other step in her therapeutic.
Foley, 40, has by no means run a half-marathon, however she chanced on a documentary final summer season about one other Newfoundland athlete (who additionally went by way of the tragic lack of their accomplice) and began coaching for an Ironman. “I used to be immediately impressed,” she says.
When Foley informed her shut family and friends that she meant to return to Ottawa the subsequent yr, they have been supportive. She was put in touch with a program referred to as Playful Mindset, which focuses on youngsters’s psychological well being and addressing hostile childhood experiences within the early years. “My objective was to lift $1,000, and we now have reached $11,000,” says Foley. “Funds as a widow are robust; you lose that second earnings. It makes issues a lot tougher. This group provides extra applications.”
She is going to run the half-marathon with Ottawa’s Marnie Energy, a grief counsellor specializing in serving to youngsters course of loss and trauma. They met final yr whereas Foley was enrolled in Playful Mindset. The connection was speedy, they usually found a unprecedented coincidence: Energy was there together with her husband throughout his last moments in 2019. “The universe has introduced many individuals and connections into my life over the previous 5 years, and Marnie is one among them,” Foley says.
Foley, who can be sporting the identical bib quantity that her late husband wore in 2019—bib 11985—may have Energy working alongside her.
Foley has gone by way of a battle with grief over the previous 5 years, however by way of applications like Playful Mindset and assembly different widowed girls, she feels assured in sharing her story. “The feelings generally are overwhelming, and getting my feelings out has change into my outlet,” she says. “I’m prepared for an excellent cry and craving the joy to get there.”
Trickett is remembered by his children and Foley as an unbelievable man, born to be a dad. “I at all times share tales of him with the youngsters and attempt to weave his affect into their upbringing nonetheless I can,” says Foley. “This race means a lot to me; I need to present our daughters that we are able to do onerous issues within the face of trauma and loss.”
In the event you’d prefer to assist Foley’s Ottawa Race Weekend fundraiser for Playful Mindset, you are able to do so right here.
