BOSTON — As she struggled to fall asleep, Meghan Zipin started writing notes on her phone of what she remembered from the Boston Marathon bombings and the aftermath of such devastation.
Those notes became prompts she used to write poetry from — a coping mechanism that Zipin turned to along her road to healing.
Zipin crossed the finish line on April 15, 2013, just moments before “the spectacular marathon day” turned Boylston Street into what she described as a “war zone.” Physically, she said, she feels lucky because the bombs didn’t injure her, but the emotional pain and “survivor’s guilt” took a toll.
When Zipin reached 15 poems, she said, it clicked that the collection could turn into a book.
So it did.
Zipin’s first published book, "First Light," is set to be released Saturday, the 10-year anniversary of the bombings. Readers will be walked through the time of the bombings to when Zipin spoke to bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at trial, with the collection of 37 poems highlighting her experiences with PTSD, healing and motherhood.
“It was only once I really took a step back and saw what I had created that I felt so motivated, I would say to share my story, but it’s more so to connect with others,” Zipin told the Herald. “I hope the book serves as a contact point for someone else who needs to know ‘It’s OK not to be OK.’”
The 2013 marathon marked Zipin’s second time running the 26.2-mile race for the Michael Lisnow Respite Center, which is less than a mile away from the course’s starting line in Hopkinton.
Zipin’s goal entering the race: break four hours. She felt inspired when she got to Coolidge Corner in Brookline, where she spotted a clock above what is now a Bank of America.
“I said ‘Oh man, I might break four hours.’ It gave me like this little bit of extra (spring in my step) to finish the race.”
Her enthusiasm to finish the race boosted even more when she turned left onto Boylston Street from Hereford Street.
“I waved to some friends who were waiting for me, and they blew me kisses,” Zipin recounted her vivid memories. “They said, ‘We’re running to the finish,’ and I said, ‘OK.’
“Right as I finished was the first explosion. That caused me to turn around and then was the second explosion. I just knew my friends were in there.”
Zipin crossed the finish line in 4 hours 2 minutes and 54 seconds, but the results took an immediate backseat as the terror of not knowing what was going on became overwhelming.
“If you can imagine the highest high and then crashing into super scary fight or flight; fire, panic, mayhem,” she said. “It’s embedded for me as kind of the same moment.”
Zipin remembers seeing personnel from the medical tent in Copley Square, beyond the finish line, running into the fire. While she got out physically unscathed, she said that wasn’t the case for everyone around her.
“The only reason that shrapnel and metal didn’t hit you was because there was someone else between you and that shrapnel,” Zipin said. “To have two friends running to the finish for me that essentially ran into a bomb and were much more gravely injured, that continues to rest heavy in my heart. It will never be something that I can ever separate from.”
Zipin admits while the bombing didn’t make her and her husband better off, it did change the way they approach life. The married couple and their three young sons — Milo, 5; Percy, 4; and Pimm, 1 — live on a 11-acre property in Hampton Falls, N.H.
The family tries to find joy in the little things.
“It will always be something that happened in our life, but there was a time I thought it was going to define our life, and that is not the case,” Zipin said. “We live a life steeped in gratitude. We let our children experience the world; jump in puddles, make really messy art projects.”
Zipin has stopped running and now works as a yoga therapist.
Flipping through her 86-page book of poems, Zipin takes time reflecting on its preface which includes the victim impact statement she read in court during Tsarnaev’s trial.
“I know one day I will be a better mother and my husband a better father because we will show our children all that is good in the world and all there is to be thankful for,” part of the statement reads.
Looking back at her deepest moments of grief, Zipin acknowledges she “must have known something” telling the bomber what she said.
Zipin and her husband Dan plan on taking their children to One Boston Day next Saturday, when city and state officials will join the public and leaders from the Boston Athletic Association in honoring the 10-year anniversary.
“Just bringing them to show ‘This is something cool, this is the marathon,’” Zipin said. “My hope is as they get older and more in touch with what makes their house a little bit different than a friend’s house, we will be able to have those conversations about how Mama and Dada don’t sweat small things.”
