SASKATOON — Olivia Chadwick has enjoyed being a mental performance consultant and exercise physiologist for the last 17 years. She never imagined being an author, as she had always considered her sister the one who would have a book published, since she regarded her as a great writer while they were growing up.
She didn’t view herself as a natural storyteller or an exceptionally talented writer, which is why she chose a career as a personal trainer and mental performance consultant. However, life had its way of moulding her into being one, shaped by her experiences and meeting Garnet Morris, who gave her the idea.
“My sister was into poetry and a voracious reader. That doesn't make you a gifted writer by default. For me, it wasn't necessarily something that anyone saw that I was particularly gifted in any way. It's something that I've grown more into, the desire, at least, to communicate through the written word,” Chadwick, who co-wrote 17 Runs with Garnet, told SaskToday.
“Garnet inspired the book. He presented the idea to me, although it was something that I knew had been cooking in his mind for a while. Anyone who knows Garnett knows that he plays a real mentorship role in many people's lives. He would often share wisdom from his hard-earned challenges with people to help them see where they were stuck.”
Chadwick met Morris in 2011, when the Saskatchewan-born entrepreneur was preparing to join a relay team that would take on the 100-mile (about 160 kilometres) Kananaskis Relay. She and Morris do their morning runs at around 5 a.m., and during those sessions, the usual trainer-client small talk later turned into longer conversations.
Their trainer-client relationship later evolved into a friendship after they realized they shared almost the same life experiences, stemming from the pain of losing someone they loved. Both had lost siblings to suicide, and a bond formed between them in their emotional and transformative journey from grief to healing.
Chadwick said losing a sibling shattered her world. Facing her own battle for survival raised questions in her mind, such as “What gives one person the strength to endure, while another loses hope?” She persisted through what she described as an unknown force that gave her the will to rise every morning and move forward.
Morris, being her client, also helped her with the advice they called “Garnettisms,” which are tiny nuggets of wisdom that could have ended up printed on a T-shirt and would make a person laugh, despite being true, or being compiled into a book that could help people who are also struggling in their own lives.
She said that Morris saw that her journey and story could guide others, especially young people, in overcoming their own darkness and passing on the wisdom of fighting hard. So, she began to write, and it wasn’t easy at first, as she had to relive memories she had worked to overcome, such as moments of helplessness when she saw her sibling struggle.
“Our shared experience of the suicide of our siblings brought us closer, and when you have that collective experience, especially when you know the challenges that all siblings face from familial backgrounds, you know that you've had similar challenges that are causing you to feel like you're not coping in life or in multiple different ways,” said Chadwick.
“You realize this ability in you to overcome some of the traumas you've experienced. You're constantly questioning, ‘What is this quality in me that's actually giving me resilience?’ You're trying to make sure that you're living up to that. I think you can only perceive it as a gift that you've been given a quality that's helping you perform in ways that other people weren't able to.”
She said that 17 Runs is not a book filled with clichés or the usual motivational quotes. It is personal, as it explores not only the difficulty of survival, overcoming grief, and turning personal suffering into a tool for growth and moving forward, but also shares her life stories for readers to learn from.
