I Refuse to Sit and Wait

[image error]Scott Graham participates in the SVXC Turkey Chase 5K on Nov. 27, 2025, with service dogs Groot and Rocket, and brother-in-law John. Photo by Rob McGraw / Butler Eagle.

People stared when they saw me pushing a wheelchair down the Turkey Trot route with Groot and Rocket walking beside me. John took their leads at times so I could keep a steady rhythm. That image caught attention long before anyone knew the story behind it.

But the truth is simple. That moment was never about proving anything. It was about refusing to abandon myself.

We were ten hours from my home, visiting family in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving week. The course was cold and crowded, and I had no idea how far my body could go. What I did know was that I needed to be there. I needed to participate, not spectate. I needed to move, even if I moved slowly.

I finished the race.
And the emotion did not hit until later.

Back at my family’s house, Brenda asked how it went. Jessie stepped outside. I opened my mouth to answer and instead found tears.

These were not grief tears. Not even close.

They came from triumph. From relief. From the long stretch between the July 19 injury and this morning. From the fear that something had gone wrong with my femur again. From the frustration of sitting still for so long. From the pressure of so many voices telling me to stay safe and stay small.

A week earlier, I had gone for emergency X-rays because something felt off. The diagnosis was iliotibial band syndrome. Not a fracture. Not a structural setback. That clarity mattered. It meant I could move forward without risking another break.

The Sit and Waiters

Ever since the accident, I have heard the same kind of advice from the same kind of people: the sit-and-waiters. The ones who believe caution is a personality trait. The ones who assume their fear is universal. The ones who sit safely on the sidelines and want you right next to them so they do not have to confront their own choices.

They said:
You should not do the race.
It is too soon.
Why push it?
What are you trying to prove?

They mean well. They are not out to harm. But they cannot imagine doing more than they do, so they cannot imagine why someone else would. They call it wisdom, but it is just fear with polish.

Sit and waiters see danger everywhere. The people who get it see possibility.

I do not live that way. I refuse mediocrity. I refuse passivity. I refuse to become a smaller version of myself to make others comfortable.

The People Who Get It

Some people understand me completely. My friend Stephanie is one of them. She saw all the cautious comments and simply wrote “kick ass.” Two words that cut straight through the fog.

My physical therapist gets it, too. When I started crying on the table while he questioned whether I needed the race, he understood the deeper truth immediately. He did not try to stop me. He switched to planning. He said we could do it safely in a wheelchair and gave me a way forward.

The race organizers understood it as well. When I emailed them about using a hospital wheelchair, they suggested going twenty minutes out and twenty-five back so I could start and finish with everyone. They were not telling me what to do. They were offering possibility.

Brian would have understood perfectly. He once ran a Tough Mudder with a cast on his arm. He knew these events were not stunts. They were rituals. They kept us awake and grounded in who we were.

Equanimity, Not Recklessness

People mistake determination for recklessness because they do not understand equanimity. Equanimity is not indifference. It is not denial. It is not pretending circumstances are different than they are. Equanimity is showing up with full presence, without clinging to any particular outcome.

For this race, I was not attached to completing all 3.1 miles. If I had walked twenty feet and turned back, that would have counted.

The point was not distance. The point was identity.

The point was not abandoning myself.

This was not something I had to prove to other people. It was something I had to honor within myself.

Tears of Triumph

Back at my family’s home, when Brenda and Jessie saw the tears, they assumed it was grief. But it was something else entirely.

It was triumph.
It was relief.
It was a return.

It was the feeling of refusing to become someone who sits and waits. It was the same fire that has carried me through surgeries, setbacks, recoveries, and the death of my husband. It is the fire that keeps me teaching, rescuing animals, showing up for others, and rebuilding a life that still has meaning.

I was not spectating at my own life this morning. I was participating in it, fully and without apology.

I am intentional.
I am aligned.
I am alive.

What This Race Really Was

People will see the newspaper photo and think they know what happened. They will be wrong in every direction.

This was never about mileage. It was not about grit or defiance. It was about staying faithful to who I am while others insisted their fears should shape my choices. It was about refusing to be rewritten by injury or caution or other people’s limitations.

I did it because I do not live in the bleachers.

I do not shrink to fit inside someone else’s comfort zone. I do not surrender the life inside me because someone else is afraid to claim their own.

And it felt fucking awesome.

The Real Lesson

Your life will not wait for you. Your body will not pause until the timing is perfect. Your purpose will not sit quietly while you bargain with fear.

At some point you decide. You move or you stagnate. You engage or you erode. You choose your path or someone else quietly chooses it for you.

The wheelchair did not diminish me. The dogs did not pity me. The race did not care whether I arrived healed or limping. What mattered was one thing only.

I showed up for my own life.

And that is what I want people to hear.

Show up. Stand inside your truth. Take the step that scares you.

Not for applause. Not to silence critics. But because the alternative is slowly becoming a smaller, quieter version of yourself.

You are allowed to want a life that feels alive. You are allowed to reach beyond safety. You are allowed to reject the quiet resignation so many accept without question.

Because the real mistake is not limping or struggling or adapting. The real mistake is surrendering your aliveness one cautious choice at a time until you barely recognize yourself.