Rising Hearts April Blog Updates
Spring has Sprung! Happy Spring Equinox! Can you believe we are 4 months into 2025!? We can’t believe it either. We are gearing up for so many events, programs and of course COMMUNITY in Quarter 2 and we can not wait for you to join us. We have some big action events coming up so make sure your notifications are set and on! With how this year is going we are really relying on community more than ever. COMMUNITY keeps us safe. You got us and Rising Hearts gots you! <3
We have our year jammed packed with some fun and amazing community events and runs! We are so excited and grateful to get to know community, create community, create awareness, and help give back to the heart work that is having profound impacts. We are all part of that, together!
NEXT AWARENESS + ACTION EVENTS:
+ Earth Day 5k | 4/19/25 - 4/22/25
+ Running For Justice | 5/3/25 - 5/10/25
AREAS OF FOCUS:
Running With Purpose Athlete Advocate Collective:
We are prioritizing our Running With Purpose Athlete Advocate Collective through our own fundraising and partnerships, to support our athletes in their running and advocacy. This has led to hosting panels, virtual panels and workshops, a handful of athletes sharing their voice and and experiences on podcasts and other media platforms, a special book project with one of our athletes and this collective, supporting their initiatives, providing gear, shoes, and stipends. All possible through our fundraisers and partnerships within the running/outdoor industry. To learn more about our athletes and to be part of it, visit www.risinghearts.org/runningwithpurpose.
Running On Native Lands Initiative:
Our Running On Native Lands Initiative is in constant growth. We are updating the toolkit and will be creating a more formalized process in becoming a partner. We had 16 consultations in 2024, with 5 that became partners and collaborators. We hope to have more consultations coming for 2025, as we raise more funds and submit for more grant funding, we will be able to expand and grow our partnerships more feasibly. Through more funds, we will have more opportunities to present and teach about going beyond a land acknowledgement, allowing us to meet more of community, help educate, and learn from community while being able to utilize our skills and connections to support land back efforts as well. So, we are looking forward to our annual virtual/in person Running On Native Lands community gatherings! Learn more at www.risinghearts.org/nativelands.
Rising Hearts Stories:
Storytelling is incredibly important to us and we hope to elevate as many voices from community as we can. Currently, we are working on our 4th short documentary, in post production, and hoping to have an early spring premiere, stay tuned! In parallel to what we do in helping to tell stories, we help find them, consult on them, and brings people together to make it work. Narrative Shift, a new production company co-founded by Jordan of Rising Hearts, hopes to utilize the resources, tools and connections to support Rising Hearts stories. More to share soon! Learn more at www.risinghearts.org/stories.
Run For Rising Hearts:
We have 2 opportunities for YOU, to run for Rising Hearts and raise funds to support the heart work. Our first option is to get 10 charity runners for Rising Hearts through our The Wander Project partnership for 2025. We were able to raise nearly $15,000 for Rising Hearts in 2024. The second option is to use any race you registered for or want to register for and dedicate it to Rising Hearts and get up to 20 runners. We have some special perks to support runners along the way and help provide you a fundraising link. So if you’d like to run for us through either path, reach out or visit www.risinghearts.org/charity-bib-runners.
You Are Loved Community Grant Initiative:
We are heavily involved in advocacy for the families of missing and murdered loved ones, the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous Women and Peoples, survivors of violence and community organizations and advocates. This program came about with Jordan, using her running to run in prayer for loved ones, raising funds personally and through the annual Rising Hearts Running For Justice 5k/10k/Half Marathon since 2019 to donate to families and advocacy organizations, intersecting with the advocacy and passion of Kali Reis (Seaconke Wampanoag, Cape Verde, Actor (True Detective), World Boxing Champion), coming together to run the 2025 Boston Marathon and launching this initiative and fundraising effort to make funds available to families, survivors, advocates and organizations to apply for to support a variety of needs in their efforts for justice for their loved ones. To learn more and donate to help us reach our goal, visit www.risinghearts.org/youareloved.
Kinship with sister organization:
ReNew Earth Running (RER) is a family organization to us, a sister in the heart work we do as much of their mission intersects with what we do as well. With Jordan as Board Chair of RER, we have been able to share some of our resources, connections and funding with the RER #LegsForLandBack runners as well, as a handful of runners are RWP Athlete Advocates. We look forward growing our kinship!
We are up to so much! And we hope to apply for more funding and we will keep raising funds as we go to keep us running in all ways. Wopila tanka, many thanks, to all of you for your support, and we look forward to our hearts moving forward together.
- Rising Hearts
BOSTON MARATHON
Boston Marathon | Rising Hearts Meet + Greet
Rising Hearts will be at the Boston Marathon again this year!! We are hosting a community Meet and Greet in kinship with @on ! Everyone is welcome 🫶🏽
Join us for a special community event to bring people together, whether you’re running in the marathon, the 5k, spectating, or just living in the area!
Our spotlight will be the @wings_of_america Indigenous youth runners who will be running the 5K. Opportunities to learn about what’s going on locally. And an opportunity to meet some of the Rising Hearts runners and RH Charity Runners! Our hope for this event is to be in community, new friendships, potential collaborations, and show the next generations of runners they belong.
+ Food + Drinks Provided
+ Fun Giveaways
+ Blessing of Runners
+ Presentations
+ Music
Date: Saturday 4/19
Time: 9:30-11:30am
Lyrick
400 Newbury St
Boston, MA 02115
UPCOMING RUNS
VIRTUAL OPTION:
Upload your times & photos on 4/20 - 4/27
IN-PERSON OPTION/S:
April 20 8AM CST / San Antonio TX
Run Leads: Sara Zapata, RH Athlete Advocate with In The Loop Group Run
Location: Meets in the gravel lot at the corner of Appler St and N Alamo St.
April 20 10AM MST / Golden CO
Run Leads: Candace Gonzales, Profidia Beuke, Becca Jay
Location: 1300 10th St. Golden, CO 80401 (Lyons Park, 10th and Maple St)
April 22 6PM PST / Los Angeles, CA
Run Lead: Alexis Saenz
Location: Los Angeles - Griffith park (where we hosted our other runs - Rattlesnake Trailhead / Steamers dirt lots)
Distance Options: 5K / 1 Mile
April 22 6:15PM MST / Albuquerque, NM
Run Lead /Run Group: Rosie’s Run Club (RRC)
Founder - Ro and Team Captains - Adrian, Stesha, & Cate
Location: Tractor Brewing, Nob Hill (118 Tulane Ave., Albuquerque, NM 87106)
April 24 6PM PST / Santa Cruz, CA
Run Leads: Jade Moore, Haley Feuerbacher | Run Group: The NliveN Movement
Location: Spring St Trail, Santa Cruz, Any Distance, 1hr of fun!
April 27 8AM EST / Harrisonburg, VA | Plogging Challenge
Run Lead: Jordan Whetstone, Rising Hearts
Meetup: Farmer's Market
Distances: 5K - 5 Miles, 1 Mile Walk (we will have trash bags for runners, let's win the challenge and collect the most trash!)
Community: Then we can celebrate and be in community with some Farmer's Market fun, get breakfast sandwiches, and have a picnic
Location: Tucson, AZ
MORE TBD SOON!
Run Leads: Sergio Avila, and TBD
Dates: April 20-27th
Virtual 5k Price: $15 (general)
Plogging Group Challenge: $25 (for group run/walks in person, pick up trash while doing it)
Plogging Individual Challenge: $25 (run/walk, pick up trash while doing it)
+ Options to only Donate
+ Create your own virtual team
+ Host your own group / community run/walk (Create a Virtual Team as well for participants to join you)
+ Add the Indigenous lands you're on to your BIB
+ Registration isn't required, you can download our digital bib too!
ALL Virtual & In-Person Participants can upload times & photos May 2 - May 6
In Person Group Run/Walk to Be Added
+ When you register and join team Rising Hearts, up to 10 of you could win a free Rising Hearts shirt!
+ When you register with an extra donation, up to 15 of you could win a free pair of running shoes!
+ Running For Justice shirts are still available via Rising Hearts - get your red and wear throughout the year! http://www.risinghearts.org/shop-heartwork
Rising Hearts is honored and grateful to bring the community together to honor, uplift, and send prayers for missing and murdered Indigenous relatives, their families, and for the advocates within these spaces - their dedication and their heart work to support the families, communities, the advocacy and finding solutions to end this epidemic.
In 2021, we were able to raise $75,000+! This is all thanks to the many participants that supported this event and campaign for awareness, and our Indigenous communities. We were able to donate over $30k to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, $16k to Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains, as well as nearly a dozen $1500 - $600 donations to multiple MMIR families, advocates, survivors and organizations, doing the heart work to fight for justice and end this violence. In 2022, we were able to donate just over $21k to NIWRC, Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, Sovereign Bodies Institute and more. Let’s do that again this year and reach our big fundraising goal to give back! And in 2023, we raised $18,000 that we were able to give back to the heart work to.
We have many voices doing this heart work to advocate and fight for a better future for our next generations. We continue to educate, advocate, create content, uplift, and build community to work towards that future together. This epidemic of violence has impacted our communities, across colonial borders, and is impacting so many families, whose stolen relatives have been erased, who are invisible (outside of Indigenous communities), families and relatives who experience racism on so many levels, and continue to not get the platform and space to be seen, heard, and fought for. We can change that. Be in community with us! Join us for this run/walk/event and be sure to join us in all the virtual events that are being organized for the week of action that you can participate in and learn from.
We have a big goal – to give back in a big way!
Join us in this virtual run and events to help us raise $20,000 to give back to the communities in this work so that we can end the violence and systemic barriers that are happening and to run for justice and healing.
Run in solidarity! Wear red and uplift this movement and the heart work.
- Join a team or create a team
- Purchase stickers
- Sponsor a relative/donate an entry
- Options to just donate
Let's continue to build community. Let's show up in whatever way we can to amplify and be part of a mobilized movement and call for change. Let's support those in this work and the families. Let's find solutions to ending this epidemic.
RUN REFLECTIONS
Charity Bib Runner, Kevin Maher
I couldn’t sleep the night before the marathon. If I counted it would be somewhere around an hour. I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve. Nothing was going to stop me though.
The start of the race was quite easy because there was an infectious energy in the air and everyone was magnetic. Inspiration was literally everywhere. My husband surprised me with a collection of voice notes from friends & family so about half way through I was driven by the voices of those I love.
Around mile 20 it all hit me. My headphones died, I hit a wall and the magnetic energy was fading. The most fit people were falling apart. I started asking my ancestors, my friends & family from beyond and those can’t physically run for help. I thought about Rising Hearts and how the land I’m running on is scared. Strangers started giving me energy. I saw people with signs running for the greater good. People were helping each other in the coolest ways.
My perspective shifted, my spirit lifted and I made it. It was surreal to say the least.
I have not stopped thanking my body since.
I will never forget this moment and hope that anyone who feels called to try it, WILL make it!
Charity Bib Runner, Derek Thunder Hawk
The 40th running of The City of Los Angeles Marathon was phenomenal, from the sights, the cheers of the crowds, to the fellow runners encouraging each other to keep pushing forward.
It’s a difficult hilly course but very rewarding to say you ran the LA Marathon.
This has been my 4th year continuous running LA making me an LA Loyal runner but my 6th appearance running LAM as I ran it in my teen years and making this my overall 19th marathon completion.
This year I moved up in Corral placement into D corral making me apart of the top 7,300 out of 26,000 runners for LAM
I run with an Eagle Feather in each of the marathons I run in to inspire hope or the will to finish the run as the feather flies.
I represent the Oglala Lakota Nation when I run, I hope it inspires others to get out there and do it cause I too am that Rez kid who dreamed of one day representing their people in a positive way.
Charity Bib Runner, Jose Sanchez RUNNING THIS WEEKEND!
Hi, I'm Josue Sanchez. I have lived a life masking and pretending to be someone I'm not. Shame of where I came from, had me growing up trying to blend in and try to be white. Looking back, I wish I could tell my 10 year old self to be proud of your skin and be proud of your tongue. Be proud of yourself and ask about our ancestors. But sadly I cannot and instead I grew up with a fear of being handcuffed and sent back to a land I did not know. Instead I grew up trying to run from who I was and a depression and anxiety grew deep within me for decades. I coped and masked my sadness by becoming a class clown. Making people laugh and think I was an idiot was better than letting them see my tears and weakness. So I kept it going. However, late in my education, I grew tired of people thinking I was dumb and challenged myself academically. Math and science came naturally to me and liked the challenges. Thank goodness because it was that one math teacher that noticed that in me that challenged me to run a marathon. Me - a 17 year old brown kid who never felt accomplished. I took him up on that challenge and raised it. I started with a 30k, then a marathon, and then a 50k. Running was my release. It was a way to make myself feel at peace, and I don't know any other way to describe it but when out there breathing heavily and running, I felt more alive and somehow my breath was synced with the air, with the earth, with nature. I continued onto college but a lack of discipline and negative connotations of myself led to self sabotage. The lingering thoughts of not belonging came back and although the dream act helped, I stopped believing in myself. I went a long time without running, started bad eating habits, and continued working a job that I despised. The job was trucking and all the bad diet and lack of movement threw my body into a rapid decline. I was hospitalized and staged in an ICU for a disorder that sparked a nasty episode of acute pancreatitis with necrosis. My body was killing itself and I was in the worst pain of my entire existence. After a few days of fighting in the ICU and my survival chance declining down to 30%, I was being readied to be helicopter away for emergency surgery. However in the last minutes, my body vitals turned around and I was given a second chance. I turned my life around but that's a big but... I was hospitalized again 2 years later for the same thing. It was on the 2nd visit that we discovered it was genetic and that I no longer had the luxury to shortcut my health. I then dedicated my life to a new path. One that I, and my children, could be proud of. I was going to eat healthier, exercise more, and work and provide for my family without jeopardizing my health. I remember the challenges my math teacher back in high school gave me and one of them was to one day, I could run the Western States 100 endurance race. It's a bold challenge but I keep it in a dream jar and tell myself all the time that I will one day run a 100 mile race and finish. Heck, I even gave myself a bigger goal of one day running the BadWater 135! So what does running mean to me? It means feeling alive and being grateful. It means a way to get to know myself and love myself. It gives me a reason to keep going. All in all, I want my children to never have to go through any challenges I went through and I want to show them hard things can be done. I want them to be themselves and never be afraid of what they can do. I run for them, I run to know myself. And if i can run and inspire others going through hard mental thoughts, I'll run for them too.
FUNDRAISE FOR RISING HEARTS
We had 11 runners in 2024, turning their passion into purpose! We came close to $15,000 for 2024! Here’s a chance to support our heart work through a different means - running! We hope to find 10 runners for 2025!
2025 RACES ARE OPEN!
WANT TO RACE FOR RISING HEARTS OUTSIDE OF THESE WE HAVE SELECTED?
Not seeing a race you want to run in this list? Check out all of the Wander Project events and choose the “Your Choice” option. They will reach out to learn more about your charity of choice and once you let them know that you’ll be running for Rising Hearts, they will make sure your funds come to support our mission!”
Athletes who want to support Rising Hearts for a race that is not listed, can sign up for any of the events on The Wander Project calendar: https://www.wanderproject.org/event-partners/ and pick 'Your Choice' for charity and then fill out the form to indicate they want to support Rising Hearts: (FAQ page here: https://www.wanderproject.org/athletes/frequently-asked-questions/)
Reach out to us via email, info@rising-hearts.org. Share with us your plans, then we’ll set you up with the link!
Want to run for Rising Hearts?
This is more new for us! We have a givelively link specifically for runners/individuals, who want to raise funds for the heart work we do! If it’s not through our partnership with The Wander Project, or our other partners at CIM or Boston, you can run for Rising Hearts at any race you choose and bring more fun and purpose to your why and the run.
We hope to get 20 Rising Hearts runners!
Suggested fundraising limits:
RH Athletes / Community = $500
Open to Community = minimum $800
Perks: RH Singlet, merch, stickers, fuel, and if shoes are needed, we can help you!
PODCASTS
The Trail Network
Episode 51: Nicole Ver Kuilen - Adaptive Athlete, Disability Rights Advocate and Cancer Survivor
Disability rights advocate, cancer survivor, and social impact leader Nicole Ver Kuilen joins host Katie Asmuth for a powerful conversation about turning personal adversity into purposeful action. Nicole is the campaign lead for So Everybody Can Move and the founder of Forrest Stumps, a nonprofit driving policy change and awareness for equitable access to prosthetic technology. In this episode, Nicole shares her journey as an adaptive athlete, from founding Forrest Stumps to winning the Paralympic Championships. She and Katie dive into the importance of community and support in adaptive sports, the legislative progress being made for amputees, and Nicole’s mission to create inclusive trail spaces for all. Nicole’s story is bold, inspiring, and a true reminder of the power of advocacy.
LISTEN HERE: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Hjd4skY3Y7yUvO5jwLxez?si=FBJVqzPoTKSZ-qIxfpn1qg&nd=1&dlsi=a0764d6344f2420d