Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

Alexi Pappas lost her mom to suicide at a young age. She was raised with her brother by her father and a succession of Au Pairs. She sought out other for "help", desiring independent "mothering", but being upset when moms would "force" mothering upon her. She was always a fast runner. However, in high school, her coach wanted her to focus exclusively on running. She didn't want to. This may have helped her to go through puberty more "normally". (She believes that a lot of the training regimes are focussed on men and not so useful for female athletes.) 

She attended Dartmouth, distance running for the school. She acknowledged that there was always some pain when running hard. (However, running while hungover made things much worse.) She also had dreams of writing and filmmaking. However, she decided to go to Oregon instead and run. Eventually, she ran in the olympics (for Greece) and had show sponsorship. However, she hit a low after the olympics and lost most everything before bouncing back with the help of friends and professionals. The rebirth of her running career was coming back and running the Chicago marathon. However, her body was not fully recovered. Rather than drop out, she decided to keep going at a slow pace and finish.

Her focus (with her husband) has now been on filmmaking. She had some bad first reviews, but decided to stick with it. The book ends with a focus on general life experiences. She believes people can achieve big goals with hard work. However, most people have trouble keeping the motivation. (She gives examples of athletes who go for help with injuries, yet don't do all the rehab needed and end up returning again for the same injury.) She also has great respect for the work of single parents and for quality mental health professionals that help treat "illness".  (Her mother has a high achieving computer professional in days when women didn't do that. Alas, friends of her mother also committed suicide.) The book ends with typical advice.