Not Your Average Run Club

Grief is isolating.

- By Emily Laurence

Running is healing.

A new type of running group aims to fix the former with the latter by helping women navigate loss one stride at a time.

Myra Sack looked around the circle at the other people geared up for their weekly Sunday morning run.They started as they always did, by saying a name. Each name represented a loved one who'd died—the reason why each person was there at E-Motion, a Boston-based movement community for people grieving. When it was Sack's turn, she said the name of her daughter, Havi, who died in 2021 when she was a little over 2 years old.

The group then set out on a slow jog. The first mile is always a quiet one. Along the way, Sack kept her eye out for flashes of lavender, which she thought of as Havi’s color, the hue that seemed to have made her baby girl feel most relaxed, calming the spasms and seizures that were so disrupting. She reflected on her daughter’s short, impactful life, consciously running to remember her, not to forget her.

After the first mile, the runners naturally broke up into small groups, with easy conversation flowing among them. Some were training for a marathon at a quick clip. Others were walking. But everyone was there for the common purpose of moving through their pain one step at a time.

Sack, a lifelong exerciser, says running became her lifeline after Havi was diagnosed at 15 months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a neurodegenerative disorder. After Havi died, Sack started a very informal running group for other people grieving a death. Soon, word spread, and the group of 18 committed to training for a half-marathon for 10 weeks together. “After the 10 weeks, we wanted to keep running together, and E-Motion was born,” Sack says. The run club, which is specifically for people grieving the death of a loved one, currently has communities in 25 cities across the country.