Meet Nolan

Rebekah

My name is Nolan,and I’m from Virginia Beach, Virginia.

At this time the dystonia will effect just about anything that I do, but my one true passion is running.

I became a runner, full time runner so to speak, about two years ago, shortly after my diagnosis with dystonia. I needed something to do to occupy my mind so I didn’t think about it so much and go down a spiral that I know that people can do when they get diagnosed with some disease. So I just started running, it was a mile here, a mile there and eventually it turned into 5k, 10k, do a half marathon, and it’s now become the one thing I do besides take care of my two kids.

Well I’m not going to lie, I did go through depression for a while there and it hurt a lot of part of my life, many parts of it, many aspects of it. After some time had gone by, I don’t know when it happened, but there as something that just clicked in my head where I stopped feeling like a victim and became more of an advocate for myself, because there was just no… sitting on the couch thinking about the dystonia day-in and day-out. I needed to do something about it and the running started and I changed my attitude about it, it became more of living with my dystonia rather than trying to figure it out or get away from or run away from it. It was a difficult exercise for sure. I’m working through that, trying to fix the one thing that matters to me most right now and again, that’s my kids.

I have two daughters, they are seven and five, their names are Lyra Mae and Kyla Mae, and they are the joy of my life they make everything funny even when it’s sad and they make me sad even when they’re happy. It’s a strange thing. But they’re my only reason for doing everything that I do. And I run as much as I do to not only heal myself, but to make sure I stay around long enough to watch them grow up because that’s all that matters to me.