Everyone is fighting their own battles.

Millions and millions of people around the world struggle with anxiety and depression – in fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 301 million people worldwide experienced an anxiety disorder in 2019. This number also unfortunately results in about 8 million deaths per year.

Still I Run aims to support, inspire, and unite individuals of all backgrounds and experiences in their journey to better mental health.

A handful of runners at Grandma’s Marathon are still running, despite hardships, because running is a great way to mentally release and everyone’s reason is different.

“It just gives you that meditative state to be like, oh, okay, we’re okay. We’re just focused on breathing, just focusing on one more mile, one foot in front of the other,” said Michele Krimmel.

“I just remember crying. I had to stop and just allow myself to feel what I had been hiding or holding back for so long,” said Liberty Reyes. That’s when I realized, wow, this is really something that I need, I need to keep this in my life, because it’s not just chasing a goal of running a marathon or going on a long run or whatever, it’s actually helping me heal.”

“I’m not quite sure what it is that I’m doing out there, but it is a different place and it is calming to me. I find immense satisfaction in doing it,” said Brian Shannon.

“My mind runs 100 miles a minute most of the time,” said Brenda Linton. “So when I’m running is the only time that there’s actually any peace and quiet in my head. Everything else just kind of goes away and I worry about breathing and not dying on the middle of the road.”

Running is just as much of a physical exercise as it is a mental exercise. For these Still I Run runners, it’s become a safe place for them.

“Before I started this, I would just spiral down that rabbit hole of, I’d get anxious,” shared Barbara Waters. “‘Oh, my goodness, I’m anxious. What do I do?’ Which would just kind of get me more anxious. Now I know, ok, I’m getting anxious. I don’t know why I’m anxious. I got to get out.”

The logo version of Still I Run replaces the “I” with a semicolon.

Best summed up by Project Semicolon’s original founder: “A semicolon is used when an author could have chosen to end their sentence but chose not to. You are the author, the sentence is your life.”

What people can do to make these sentences longer is break the stigma, according to Brian Shannon.

“I think this is an issue that touches so many people. I love the line “erase the stigma”, because I think that’s really important and that we are able to not necessarily personalize this and have to talk about how it’s affecting us personally, but just in general, that people should feel that we take care of our minds and our mental state as well as our physical state.”