Sarah Lima doesn’t want her kids to attend her alma mater.
She feels that the conservative Christian college 15 minutes out from Asheville, North Carolina was a stifling environment, one where she didn’t feel welcome to explore her sexuality.
Sarah ended up marrying a man and having two children, coming out as a lesbian later in her life.
Now she and her partner Lauren Peterson will be celebrating their third anniversary at the Chicago Marathon.
Sarah credits running - which she was reintroduced by Lauren after running in high school and college - as something transformative for her body image and mental health.
“It was just like a very much emotional change in what I saw. Because when I saw myself before, there was a synapsis missing, between what I saw in the mirror and how I felt about it,” Sarah said. “And after all the running that we were doing, after seeing what I was capable of, I started to realize when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see ‘Oh, I’m skinny and I’m pretty and I’m better’, or whatever, I saw ‘I’m strong and I’m capable, and I’m so much more than I thought I was.’ And with that came a very, very different confidence as well.”
Sarah and Lauren are active members in Night Runners WPB, an LGBTQ-friendly running group that meets twice a week in downtown West Palm Beach.
“If you can be committed to yourself in this regard, then there’s nothing you can’t do. It doesn’t mean you have to run a marathon to be doing something special for yourself,” Sarah said. “If you went from sitting on the couch every night to walking a mile at night three times a week, that’s already so much more than whatever you were doing before, and you’ll see so much improvement in yourself, whether it be body changes or mood changes or how you view yourself. It’s a wonderful hobby.”
Sarah is currently training for the upcoming Chicago Marathon - sometimes lacing up her shoes and getting out the door before the sun is up.
“If you can talk yourself into a two-hour run or a 15 mile run at five o’clock in the morning, you can pretty much talk yourself into doing the craziest or most daunting task in your life out there, work wise or anything else that’s more intimidating,” Sarah said.
Sarah Lima is 34 years old. She graduated with a bachelor’s in business administration with a dual concentration in management & sports management from Montreat College. She is currently working on her Online MBA through FAU.
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This story is for OutFAU, our student publication covering Florida Atlantic University. To see more from OutFAU click here.
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