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Months after our return, Kelly and I have lost touch. She doesn’t organize another run. I invite her to come down and speak at the Portland Run for Congo Women finish-line celebration, but she can’t make it. My heart sinks as I read her scant, post-Congo blog entries. In a tailspin of doubt, she has turned in on herself; she’s searching for that perfect soul-place she questioned in me as we stood beneath the Capitol building two years ago. She laments her inability to cleanse the blood out of the oppression-drenched American soil on which she’s built her suburban dream, along with her fruitless attempts to scrub her way out of her white skin. . . .

And then, for ages, nothing. No posts.

She has processed herself into oblivion.

Oh, love. I hardly ever drink. But I want to take her out for a Bloody Mary brunch. We could get fabulously drunk and I might say the right thing to talk her down. But I can’t stand to listen to my own platitudes or truisms anymore. Even buckets of pepper and tomato juice and vodka at noon won’t help me produce any answers for myself, much less for her.

I TRAIN FOR the 30-mile run in only six weeks, a feat made possible because of my new secret weapon: iced coffee. I pound it back at strategic points along the trail and manage my third 30-mile run without incident. At the finish line, I collapse on the park lawn and don’t talk much. I watch my mom run around like mad, coordinating. She could just as easily peel away from the crowd and whimper on the sidelines, “I can’t do it!” as she could camp at the T-shirt table, offering Japanese acupressure tips to injured runners, or telling volunteers about the summer she wandered the Northern California woods, feeling the power of the earth surge through her as she entered the river naked.

No, she isn’t perfect. The decidedly unglamorous details of organizing these fundraising runs have been a Herculean effort for that right-brained lady. But then, I don’t think the thought of perfection has ever crossed her mind, much less slowed her down. She’s been too busy throwing her wild-hearted energy into getting sound permits, making photocopies, and coordinating porta-potties. She’s worked her butt off for Congolese women. Just as she’s been doing for years.

Despite all the fits and rages and screams of “I want out,” she’s still here.

I’m sure she does it because she wants to support me, but if that were all, the mother-daughter tension would have sent her packing years ago. She is still here simply because, in a strikingly personal way, she loves Congolese women and believes herself connected to them. Looking at my mom across the park lawn in my post-run daze, I burst into a smile, which is tempered only by my embarrassment over how long it’s taken me to get how wonderful she is.

Actually, my two-person staff—Mom and me—has become the bottleneck. It’s time for Run for Congo Women to grow beyond our limited capacity. Women for Women is ready to take it over so they can help it grow with fully funded staff that operates from checklists based on a proper development strategy and will never miss an email. They will handle the logistics, while I continue my role as spokesperson and founder on the volunteer basis with which we have built up the project.

The network interest in my footage is lukewarm. I never make a documentary. I knew while sitting on the little airplane next to Alice and Zainab that I wasn’t walking away from Congo with a film. I turn over the footage to Women for Women, who hand it off to an editor to make a web video of me and my trip. A male movie-trailer voice booms, “While watching an episode of Oprah, Lisa Shannon learned that four million people. . . .” I find it unbearable. When I see it, I want to climb under the table and stay there.

The blank space in my life grows cavernous in the absence of fourteen-hour workdays, even though I’m interrupted by the occasional conference call or speaking engagement.

I KEEP D ON HAND the way one keeps good wine in the cellar. I bury