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One of the big reasons that people spend time outside is that it gives us a chance to think. When we venture outside our doors to hike or run or ride, or just wander and explore, there’s that thing that happens, where we work through the thing we’re dealing with in our lives. Or, in some cases, the things we’re not dealing with. Being out there, it just opens us up.

Pushing ourselves physically in the outdoors can heighten this effect, as many endurance athletes can attest. And the harder you go, the more that can come out.

For today’s episode, producer Lucy Little brings us a story about a man who found that running extremely long distances enabled him to face the pain he suffered as a child, and also, the courage to heal himself. For Lucy, his journey resonated powerfully with her own life experiences.

Please note that this episode discusses child abuse, so may not be appropriate for all listeners.

Dillon Quitugua: And so it was my first legit ultra marathon run that I was doing, it was thirty miles.

And at mile nineteen, I felt so much pain and so much heartache and I felt like I was transported back to when I was five years old and my dad was choking me against the wall. And that that pain at mile nineteen and that pain of me being choked by my dad as a child, they felt one in the same.

Lucy Little: That's ultramarathon runner and endurance athlete Dillon Quitugua during a conversation we had earlier this summer.

Dillon: Yeah, my name is Dillon Quitugua, from Ewa Beach, Hawaii. My lineage is from Guam. I am a Chamorro. Chamorros are the indigenous people of Guam, and Quitugua is from the village of Dededo.

I would go, you know, back and forth between Guam and, and Hawaii with my family, but being Chamorro and representing that, it followed me wherever I went.

Lucy: Over his running career, Dylan has completed three official ultramarathons, including the Moab 240, and, as he puts it, too many unofficial ones to count. Since 2022, he has been sponsored by Janji, the Boston-based running apparel and gear brand. One of his main goals is to advocate for fellow Pacific Islanders, and he is the co-founder of the Tribe Collective, a community of Pacific Islanders empowering one another through adventure.

Dillon: When I go to an ultra marathon race, I maybe see one other Pacific Islander. So just representing my people in those spaces is a huge part of who I am. It really isn't something that is a job for me. It's just, it's embedded into my being. Like, if I was a fish, it's like describing water. It's just a part of me.

Lucy: When Dillon and I first spoke, this is what I thought we'd be talking about. His advocacy, his ultramarathon career, his goal of becoming the first Chamorro to climb Mount Everest, and how, in March 2022, he became the first person to run the entire perimeter of his father's native Guam, a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, almost 4,000 miles west of Hawaii

Lucy: And we did get to all of that, but when I asked him if there was anything specific he wanted to talk about, I wasn't expecting what he said next.

Dillon: Well, for, for me, I think that the thing that I really want to speak on and that I feel very called to speak on is domestic violence and dealing with post traumatic stress disorder, and how I personally have taken negative energy and a negative outlook and turned into a positive one.

Lucy: This is one of the first times Dillon is speaking this openly about his past as a victim of domestic violence at the hands of his father, Gerald, who passed away in 2018. As we talked, I realized that while Dillon's life and mine are quite different in many ways. For one, I'm a city kid from New York who has a love-hate relationship with running. Our stories have some eerie parallels.

My dad passed away in early 2021 of COVID-19, during the height of the Omicron wave. I loved him dearly, but he was also abusive and an alcoholic. What has followed since his death has been a whirlwind of sadness, hurt, confusion, and a growing anger, in which I've been trying to come to terms with some heavy questions: Can I love and forgive someone who has hurt me so badly, and if so, how?

Dillon has also struggled with these questions. And the answers that he's found have partially fueled his ultramarathon career.

Dillon: I've dropped my hate and anger, but it was still a part of my life and it was still something that I had endured. And so it does come up in ways that remind me, like, this is what you've gone through and this is the person who's done it. You may love him now, but that still happened to you.

Lucy: In order to run an ultramarathon, you have to have a lot of endurance. But for Dillon, it's clear that his capacity for endurance developed long before he started running. As we spoke, it quickly became apparent that his story is about so much more than athleticism. Dillon's story is one of survival and resilience, through love and forgiveness.

But isn't there a saying that goes something like a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step? So let's start at mile one.

Dillon grew up in Hawaii, where his mom is from, and where he still lives today.

Dillon: There was 11 of us living in one house with one bathroom and three bedrooms. And we had a big mango tree that we would climb, and we loved to make that our playground. So the outdoors for us growing up was every day.

And we as people from Hawaii, we did a lot of hunting. We would walk the trails and the dogs would do the hunting. And when the dogs found the pig, the boar, we would run anywhere from a mile to three miles to catch up to the dogs and the pig. And so, my first introduction to the outdoors and hiking was hunting.

And so growing up, I used to say, “Oh, I love hunting. It's so fun. I get to be outdoors the entire time, picking guava and picking lilikoi.” 

And then I realized later on, it's like, I actually didn't love hunting. I loved the hike. I love being in nature. I loved being up before the sun and seeing the sun rise over the mountains. And I love the trail run.

Lucy: Dillon appreciated many aspects of his childhood with his dad. He told me his father taught him a lot about Chamorro culture and cooking, and they shared a deep love of Chamorro food, all of which made him proud of his heritage, and excited to visit Guam each summer. But his father was also domineering, and Dillon wouldn't dare disregard him.

Dillon Quitugua: My dad actually made me stop hunting at some point so that I could go to church more often, because we would hunt on Sundays. And my dad said, “No more hunting, you're Catholic. Chamorros are Catholic, you have to go to church now."

I was unhappy about it but you can't say no, I'm going to go hunting instead. I couldn't defy my dad in that way.

My dad was in the military as well as in the police department. So, he was always very strict with my brother, my sister and myself, especially with me since I was the older brother.

A lot of the discipline we received growing up was with a belt, but after that it was hands, it was, you know, being choked, being slapped, things like that.

My dad was a very charismatic person to everyone he met, but also very aggressive toward family and like behind closed doors, very aggressive. So it's like you kind of saw two different people, and growing up, that was really confusing for us because one day he'll be super bubbly, but then like kind of switch on the dime and be very aggressive and mean to my family and myself.

Lucy: I relate to that. My dad was an actor. He wasn't in the military, but I would describe him to people as like Jekyll and Hyde, because that sort of character of like this incredible person in so many ways, especially to people outside of my mom and I.

And he'd also be like this very charismatic, loving person to us, and then change, so it was really confusing.

Dillon: Yeah, we would ride this rollercoaster of really great and really happy then really angry and very scared, I don't think it's very emotionally and mentally healthy to constantly be riding these, these adrenaline highs that, that I was going through as a kid, but that was, that was all I knew growing up was this dichotomy of a person who was my dad.

I believe that he saw nothing wrong with it. And, you know, a lot of times when he was hitting me or beating me up, or right before he was going to hit me, he would often say that your grandpa would do worse to him.

And it was kind of a justification, but also, it was him making me his therapist, and, and it coming out while he's hitting me. As I'm sure you can imagine, it was very confusing and emotionally disturbing to be a part of.

Lucy: Hearing Dillon frame his father's abuse as a sort of twisted therapy session for his dad, that one hit close to home. Even as a young child, no matter how bad of a mood my dad was in, or how scared I was of him in that moment, I remember trying to bury all of the pain in order to try and make him feel better, or, to be his therapist, all so that I could try and get him to stop.

For me, I think that my dad did know that what he was doing was wrong, but his struggles with mental illness and addiction were so strong that even with all of the love that I know he had for us, it wasn't enough for him to change. It's taken years for me to begin to understand this, even if it doesn't excuse any of it.

For Dillon, things got so bad, that at just seventeen, he received an official diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

Dillon: I remember talking to my mom very casually about having these recurring nightmares about my dad killing me or about me killing my dad. I'd have these very vivid dreams of, you know, me, like, beating my dad, or, or him shooting me, and blood everywhere and music just like loud music during the entire dream. This is when I was seventeen. Right after my dad beat me pretty bad, I'd wake up with my heart beating out of my chest, and I was drenched in sweat.

And my mom was very concerned for me and so she had me speak to a therapist, and the therapist said after a couple of sessions, she said, "Dillon you have PTSD." 

And I was confused because I thought that PTSD was something that people in World War II got, or who got in the war. And I, and I felt bad for myself because I didn't deserve that, that disorder because I wasn't experiencing war.

Lucy: Earlier this year, I started working with a trauma therapist myself to try and begin making sense of things that have started to come up for me since my dad died, and I received a related diagnosis of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or C-PTSD. Like Dillon, I struggle to believe that what I've been through was serious enough to warrant it.

For me, I continue to have a hard time accepting that what I have experienced in my life, especially from someone I love, is abuse, and yet I'm coming to terms with the fact that it is. Dillon went through a similar process.

Dillon: It made sense because not only was I having these terrible dreams, but I would, before bed every night, I'd have to put my dresser in front of the door so no one could open the door. Or if I knew my dad was home, I would leave through the roof. I would get on the roof and like, escape off the roof because I was so scared of him.

And so I knew that I was having all of these different triggers and like my, the people in my life were triggering me. So when I got that diagnosis, it was kind of a sigh of relief, but also didn't understand what was going on with me.

Lucy: When you're a child suffering from abuse at the hands of a primary guardian, it's hard not to internalize the belief that you must be bad, a monster even, to be receiving such treatment from someone who is supposed to love you unconditionally. And it feels basically impossible to understand that you're not actually to blame.

And the triggers, like Dillon said, they stay with us. I remember sitting against my door, hoping I could keep my dad from coming in during one of his rages. And to this day, the sound of a door slamming or a bottle opening, it triggers a huge amount of fear and confusion in me.

Dillon: I held a lot of shame in myself, like, “oh, you did it again, or, this is your fault, or, I'm a bad kid.” And, for my dad, his explanation was always, I'm doing this because I love you. 

That was hard. That was hard because it kind of redefined what love meant for me and, and I'm now, I'm redefining it for myself.

Today, I'm trying to change that, that love doesn't have to include hurt and pain and anger and being triggered. And it should be a lot less of a rollercoaster and more of just a straight, stable line.

Lucy: Yeah, and not only for the people that you're in relationship with, but like also with yourself.

Dillon: I never even thought about that. Yeah.

Lucy Little: I mean, you know, that's my journey right now.

Lucy: Domestic violence and abuse can be perpetuated within a family for generations. It's a difficult cycle to break. But Dillon eventually made the choice to try, and that ended up having a very unexpected impact on his running.

Dillon Quitugua: It's one of the biggest challenges I have, I think, for the rest of my life, but it's so it seems so hard and insurmountable that other things in my life don't seem as hard because of it. Like how can something like being, beat your entire childhood compared to running a hundred miles? Like it's so much harder to deal with that. And it's just, it created this contrast for me like, “Oh, if I can do that, if I could have survived this, I can definitely do this."

I know that can sound kind of toxically positive, but I only have two choices. My choices are to, to wallow in it or let it, let it fuel me.

Lucy: We'll be back after a short break.

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Lucy: For Dillon Quitugua, an abusive childhood left him with two options: he could let it lead him down a path where he is abusive to others, or he could seek a way out and break the cycle of violence that existed within his family.

Dillon: I've seen what happens to children of domestic violence. And I've seen what victims of domestic violence can do to themselves. They can, they can go down this, self-injurious path of perpetuating that cycle of abuse.

Lucy: Domestic violence rates in Guam, and across the Pacific Islands, which includes Hawai'i, are quite high. As of 2022, family violence cases were the most common charges brought to Guam's Supreme Court, followed by drug possession. 

Today, domestic violence organizations on the island have all reported a rise in the demand for services from survivors, and yet more than 60 percent of the programs have had their budgets cut.

Dillon knows these statistics all too well.

Dillon: For me, one of my siblings went to jail for a while, he was incarcerated for domestic violence. And then my other sibling deals with a lot of health problems because of drugs.

I felt a lot of pressure to be my best self so that I can also model that for my family. So, for me, I'm just trying my best to sublimate those things and

Lucy: Yeah.

Dillon: and use those as a positive force.

Lucy Little: After his PTSD diagnosis, right before he went to college, he stopped talking to his dad. But, of course, the effects of the abuse stayed with him.

Dillon: The woman that I loved in college, and I wanted to marry her. She broke up with me because she told me that I was emotionally abusive and verbally abusive, and obviously it triggered me thinking about my dad.

And she, for the last four years that we were together, told me that I need to forgive him. And so, when she broke up with me, I was, I felt so much panic, like, "Oh my God, my life is over, I have all this anger and I'm being a terrible person to people I love. What do I do?"

And so I kind of just turned it inward to myself and thought, I don't know what to do, but if forgiving my dad will help me not lose someone again, I'm going to try that.

Lucy: Yeah.

And so, I called my dad after not talking to him for a couple of years and I just told my dad that I wanted to forgive him, that I wanted to have a relationship with him. And he cried and I was crying, and I asked him, I was like, "I just need you to write me an email apologizing for everything." 

And, and he did, he did it. And I could literally feel like my brain starting to heal and like the neurons in my brain connecting. And it just felt like my brain felt super warm and fuzzy inside. Like I knew that something was happening internally for myself. And that was really the power of forgiveness because I allowed myself to just put down everything that hurt me.

Lucy: How were you able to come to a place of love, if that makes sense? And why is that so important to you? Because not everyone can do that.

Dillon: For me, I was lucky enough to forgive my father and my father wanted my forgiveness. A lot of times people who are victims of domestic abuse have to forgive their abuser and they're not going to have a relationship with them.

But for me, I was holding on to so much hate, resentment toward my dad. And I hated him.

I forgave him because I needed to, for my own sake, because if you don't, if you hold on to hate and anger and revenge, it only poisons the person holding it. It doesn't hurt the other person that you're hating.

So for me, forgiveness was survival.

Lucy: Forgiving his dad helped Dylan break out of the cycle that he was a part of. But he still had a lot more work to do. And this is where running comes in.

Dillon: I forgave my dad to be less angry and less abusive towards others, but the real work and healing my inner child happened as I started that ultra marathon.

Dillon (GoPro): Alright, we’ve been running for about twelve hours now. We’re at mile thirty-seven. We’re feeling it. We’re feeling good, feeling tired, sad. We’re feeling all the emotions now. But that’s what happens when you decide to do something that’s really hard. Doesn’t mean you stop going though. We push through that pain. 

Lucy: That's Dillon speaking to a GoPro he was holding during a portion of his run around Guam. At this point, he'd become well acquainted with the range of emotions one goes through during an ultramarathon. But that wasn't always the case.

In 2014, Dillon left Hawaii to go to college at Western Colorado University, where he would discover a love for mountaineering that now has him planning to climb Mount Everest. Shortly before he graduated in 2018, he had a painful breakup with the girlfriend who had accused him of verbal abuse. And then two months after he graduated, his father died of a seizure.

Not long after, Dillon headed to Nepal to serve in the Peace Corps. It was there that he started running as a way to process what he was feeling.

Dillon: Being the only English speaking person in the village was very hard for me and I needed to release energy and stress. And I didn't have my normal coping mechanisms that I usually had in Hawaii. So I turned to running, and I felt a lot of therapy when I was doing it.

COVID had happened, so my Peace Corps mission was cut from twenty-seven months to about nineteen months. And I get back to Hawaii, where I hadn't been in six or seven years, and nothing was open.

I had a lot of time on my hands because of the lockdown. And you're allowed to be outside if you're exercising. And I would spend anywhere from three hours to 18 hours outside running.

Lucy: Which brings us to Dillon's first ultra-marathon, a 30-mile run in Hawaii, where the pain of his physical effort began to blend in with the pain of his past.

Dillon: I realized how much healing I needed to do after that thirty-mile run. I was experiencing the trauma of the run and experiencing reliving my trauma from my childhood. And so at mile nineteen, I felt so much pain and so much heartache and dread cause I knew I had eleven more miles to go. 

I started crying and I said all I could do is think about little Dillon feeling all this dread and being so scared, and feeling like I couldn't live anymore and didn't want to do it. And I knew at that moment that I needed to keep running to heal myself and I needed to keep running for little Dillon.

Lucy: So Dillon kept running. He made it to the finish of that first ultra, then continued training and entering even longer events. The more he ran, the more positive effect it had on every aspect of his life.

Dillon: I was creating a real relationship and acceptance with the pain that I was feeling during a run. That I could also translate into the pain and feelings that I had in my life.

And so I spent the next three years getting better at running, being able to go farther, being able to go faster, but also healing myself.

And it just felt like this very positive thing for me to just keep going up and up and up. And I just felt like a better person. I wasn't as stressed. I wasn't as angry or hurt. I had more love in my heart because every time I ran an ultra marathon, I felt like I was giving little Dillon a hug, and I was able to like really tell him everything's going to be okay.

Lucy Little: In October of 2021, Dillon completed the Moab 240, a brutal 240-mile race through the Utah desert. Less than a year later, he decided to run 100 miles around and across the island of Guam with his friends Johnny Barsano and Brandan Perez.

Dillon: No one has ever run the perimeter of Guam. No one has run a century run in Guam, and it made sense for me to make it relevant for them, the Chamorros, that I went home to Guam and said, "Okay, I'm going to do this here."

I ran 240 miles in Moab. No one's going to understand what that means, people won't even understand what a hundred miles is, but they will understand what the perimeter of Guam is. And if you can do that by foot, they can understand, "wow, this guy who is Chamorro can do this, maybe I can do whatever it is I need to do to be a better version of myself too."

Lucy: Dillon says that his primary goal in running around Guam was to inspire other Pacific Islanders, especially Chamorros. But there was another element that was far more personal.

Dillon: You know, when I think about Guam, I think about my dad. He's the one who instilled in me to be proud of being from Guam and being Chamorro.

And I want to make my dad proud, and so for me running around Guam was a way to represent my village and my clan, the Quitugua clan, and there's so much pride in my last name and, and who we are.

You know, they say in ultramarathon running, you need to have a strong why to finish it. If you have a strong why, you can bear almost any hell. And I have so many whys, I have so many reasons to keep going, to take that next step, and that really makes me I think a very strong runner in that sense because I have such a heart for the things that I believe that I have to do to make myself and make my people shine bright in a place that there's not a lot of light always.

Lucy: Here we are back in Guam, somewhere before mile thirty-five. Dillon spoke a lot about how important family is in the Chamorro culture, and from the start, Dylan's run was basically a huge community and family effort.

Dillon: Everyone knew about this run, and everyone was posting about it on Instagram, on Facebook, it was on the news, newscasters were coming around, and I didn't want to create a sense of urgency and a sense that I need to do it in a certain amount of time.

So I just relaxed. I stopped to talk to a newscaster for like thirty minutes during a run, which isn't a normal thing to do when you want to finish an ultra marathon run. And around mile thirty, my grandma comes up with a big smoothie and I was so happy because Guam is so hot and humid.

I felt like I was running in a literal sauna. And she stops and is like, you want a smoothie? And we like sat down with her on the side of the road and I'm just looking around at my family and enjoying that moment with them.

And my grandma, she'd never experienced anything like that before, but she, she just knew, she knew what I needed before I even asked.

Lucy: Dillon's grandmother was incredibly supportive of his run. But he told me that she hasn't been happy about him opening up about the darker aspects of his childhood.

You mentioned your grandmother struggles with the fact that you are starting to talk about your dad's abuse more openly.

Dillon: My grandma sees me speaking about it as me like airing out dirty laundry, she thinks that I need to respect the dead and let my dad rest, but again, I respect my dad so much and I love him, but it doesn't take away from the fact that it happened. I think my grandma kind of wants me to not think that it happened, wants to only remember the good parts of her son who had passed away. But I believe what I'm doing is respectful and helping other people who have gone through similar things. And a part of the story is the abuse, but also another part of the story is that we forgave and we loved and at the end of his life we loved each other and we had a great last couple months together and, and I'll always remember that.

Lucy: Yeah, that's a gift. I didn't get to have that with my dad. That, that's a huge gift and I'm so glad you have that to hold on to and to share.

Dillon: Before I ran the perimeter Guam, I didn't know what I was going to name it. I ran this race around the time that my dad's birthday was. So I named the run after him, Gerald Quitugua's Marianas 100. At mile six, I passed by his gravesite and I waved at him and said, "hi dad!" And at mile forty-seven, I dedicated it to him cause he passed away at forty-seven years old, and so I dedicated that mile to him as I ran it.

My dad made me who I am. I don't know if I would have been able to run miles in Guam if it wasn't for him. From the first ultramarathon that I ran to that point, it just felt like I was closing this loop, closing this cycle, and I wanted it to remain there. And so it was, it was an ode to him, but it was also out of respect and love for him.

Lucy: It's important to add that not everyone can, should, or wants to have any kind of relationship with the people in their lives who have been abusive.

This was Dillon's way of dealing with the complicated reality that his father was someone that he loved and who instilled a lot of things in him that he's grateful for today.

And this is what was so eerie for me about meeting Dillon. 

See, one of the ways that I actually connected with my dad was through running. He ran varsity track in high school and kept running for most of his life. He taught me how to run when I was a kid, and it was something we did on and off together.

When I became an adult, I ran a bit, but pretty much stopped in the few years leading up to my dad's death. But after he died, I felt compelled to start trying to run again, and I slowly began training my way up to a 10K. It wasn't easy for me–running never is–but like Dillon, I think that I was starting to find a way to address some of the pain and confusion I was feeling.

Similar to Dillon, who ran around Guam right before his dad's birthday, I planned to run my 10K on my dad's birthday and name it after him. I even used the same wording as Dillon, saying it would be an ode to my dad. 

Unfortunately, health issues forced me to stop training.

Now, a couple years later, I'm able to run again. but as time passes since my dad's death, and as I've been in trauma therapy, my anger and confusion has only grown. 

And yet I'm still sitting with so many memories of love and connection with my dad. It doesn't make sense, and honestly I'm not sure what to do with all of it.

So I have one final question, which is partly selfish, which is, for those that are struggling to forgive people in their life who have hurt them, is there a piece of advice or something that you feel you could share?

Dillon: Yeah, forgiveness is a completely selfish thing that you do for yourself. It's not for anyone else. Forgiveness is for your healing, and it's for the healing process that you get to go through. If you hold on to any resentment that you may feel, it only hurts you.

So by forgiving the person who wronged you, you win.

Lucy: As he got to the last 10 miles of his run around Guam, he was exhausted, but happy. All of the hard work he'd done to get to this point to break a powerful cycle of generational violence, it was finally coming together for him, and this time he was surrounded by the thing that matters most to him, his community.

Dillon: I remember at mile ninety-three or four, I was running alone at this point. And I had been running alone for about forty miles because both of my friends had to stop for their own safety and health.

And a car pulls up next to me, and rolls down the window, and it was my grandma, and she's crying. And I'm crying, and we didn't say anything to each other, and she just held her hand out to me, and then I held my hand out to her. And we're just crying together, and she nods at me, and I nod, and then I just keep going. And there was this understanding there, that she knew that I could do it. And I was in so much pain, and I was so proud, and she was so proud of me. And she just, she gave me her blessing without a word, and I just kept going.

I finished a perimeter around mile ninety-eight and we were at the sports complex and it just so happened that the sports complex was designed for runners that if you ran around the sports complex, it was a half mile. So I was like, okay, I got two more miles to go, which means four laps.

And people were just gathering, watching me do these laps.

And my old auntie, who's like, she's like in her seventies, she was able to keep up with me because I was running so slow at that point. And she ran a lap with me. And it was so beautiful.

There's a cultural practitioner in Guam, his name is Roman De La Cruz. I'm at mile ninety-six, and he brought with him these ancestral stones that are sling stones, our huge cultural representation of the people from Guam. It's actually on our flag. And he said, the ancestors are with you and they're following you with this run.

And I was so, so empowered to see the manåmko, my ancestors and the elders, join in with me and run.

I was exhausted. I was tired. I was relieved. I was ready to be done. But more than anything, I used that time when I had finished as a platform to say like Chamorros are here, and we have the power that everyone else does and that we need to rise up to the level that we know that we have the potential of, but we just haven't tapped into that potential.

Dillon (GoPro): Whatever you wanna do in life, you gotta give your full 100%. Put your heart into it. I wanted to run the perimeter of Guam, because I’m Chamorro and I want to teach people that whatever you wanna do in life it requires 100%. Don’t half-ass anything. You put both feet in. Even if you fail, you still have to try.

Lucy: For Dillon, finding long distance running in Nepal and then Hawai'i, realizing that he was, in fact, worthy of forgiveness and love, and closing this loop, as Dillon describes it, on the abusive past with his dad, all of this has helped him down the path towards healing.

Dillon: I'm not saying that the way to stop it is by running ultra marathons. I'm saying, for me, running ultramarathons helped heal me.

I wanted more people from Hawaii and Guam who definitely I know experienced domestic violence to be able to find their way to heal and find their way to love and be a better version of themself. Whether it's running, whatever you feel that really helps you heal, like I want them to do it to the best of their ability.

Lucy: Dillon's next goal is to be the first Chamorro to climb Mount Everest, a dream he hopes to realize in 2024. He is becoming the Chamorro hero he always wished he could have looked up to as a kid, and he hopes his actions will continue to inspire fellow Pacific Islanders.

Dillon: For me, there's a literal mountain that I want to climb, which is Mount Everest, but also everyone has their own mountain and their own journey. I invite them to take that first step, because a lot of people won't take that first step at all. Find the smallest step you can take toward that goal and take it. Make it so easy, make that first step so simple that you can't make any excuse to not do it.

Lucy: Everyone processes grief and trauma differently. And something that works for myself or Dillon, might not work for someone else. I'm still very much at the beginning of my own healing journey, and while I'm not sure of my own answer to the question of how to continue to embrace the love I feel towards my dad while coming to terms with his abuse, meeting Dillon has inspired me to keep taking these first steps towards finding more love for myself, and towards letting go.

Sometimes, these moments of meaningful connection come to us when we least expect them, and maybe when we need them the most. I'm so grateful to Dillon for the reminder that it doesn't matter the mileage or the feat, what matters is the why, putting in everything we've got, and seeing what happens when we come out on the other side.

And so, for me, I'm starting again at mile one.

Lucy (GoPro): Okay I did it. One mile at a ten-minute pace, which is faster than usual for me. It’s a beautiful day, warm. 

Michael: If you’re a minor suffering from abuse, or you know a minor who is, help is available at the Child Help Hotline. Call or text 800-422-4453, or go to childhelphotline.org

To learn more about Dillon Quitugua and to follow his journey to Mount Everest and beyond, find him on social media @dill_daddy. That's D-I-L-L underscore D-A-D-D-Y.

The recordings in this episode from Dillon’s run around Guam are from videographer Maggie Steele; find her @mags.media. That's M-A-G-S DOT M-E-D-I-A

This episode was produced by Lucy Little and edited by me, Michael Roberts. Music by Robbie Carver.

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