Cami Ostman grew up in a chaotic family. The craziness of her childhood drove her to look for solidity and structure outside of her family which she at first found in fundamentalist religion. But religion that was once a place of structure and safety, proved to be a patriarchal institution that led her to a dutiful marriage and ultimately left her unsure of who she was and what she believed. For many years she hid, closing her mind to questions that bubbled under the surface of her religious smile.
In an attempt to answer her questions, she went to graduate school and became a psychotherapist. Through working with her clients and holding their grief and their stories with deep respect, she eventually began to ask herself some of the most difficult questions of her own life: What did she want? What was she, as a woman, allowed to want? Who could she be if she were free from the structure of her religious beliefs? The collision of her personal and professional journeys culminated in a divorce, the discovery of running as a great teacher, and, ultimately, a new perspective on life that she now shares with others in her work as a therapist and a writing coach.
She now uses her therapeutic skills and the lessons she’s learned through running long distances to work with many populations of people looking for healing and growth.
Cami is the founder of The Narrative Project, a program that supports writers in getting their books done. She is the author of the memoir, Second Wind: One Woman’s Midlife Quest to Run Seven Marathons on Seven Continents and co-editor of several anthologies including, Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religion (Seal Press). While Cami began running to catch her breath, she now continues to run forty miles a week as part of her own commitment to self-discovery. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
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