Vivian Tipton, 58
Grateful adventurer, counseling junkie, picture of transformation
By Kylene Yumul
Sixteen years ago, Vivian Tipton got a phone call while on a cruise in the Cayman Islands: Her son, Joseph, had died of an overdose. She felt like she couldn’t move air through her body. For a while, she couldn’t take care of herself or even speak properly.
Her son’s death was only the first of three big losses Tipton would experience: Both her brother and father died of pancreatic cancer. She and her brother were very close. As children, they cut a hole in the closets of their adjoining bedrooms so they could go back and forth to each other’s spaces. They misbehaved in high school together. She was with him when he passed. Now, Tipson says his death hurt differently because that gut shock wasn’t there, just an aching grief.
“The hardest thing for me are those moments when I remember how long forever is. Forever is really long,” Tipton says. “But I don’t live there all the time. I know that love heals all, and I’m not scared to love. I’m not scared to do it again. I have friends who’ve had deep losses and they close. I didn’t want to close.”
“When you’ve touched your deepest sorrow, you understand that deepest joy.”
Vivian Tipton
Tipton started running 5Ks and 10Ks to deal with his loss. Training for a marathon, she would hang out with her brother in her head, talking to him and yelling at him like she always did. Tipton ran her first marathon when she was 50. But around six years ago, she had her right knee replaced, so she switched to bicycling the trails and hired a professional to learn to ride safely.
Tipton is the executive director of Hospice of the Foothills, but when she retires, she plans to make exercise her everyday priority. She had her first child at 19, so she has always fit exercise in around the people at the center of her life. She longs for the day when her body, her vessel, is at the center, and other stuff fits in around that. She’s preparing now.
“What lights me up? The top of any hard effort. The top of the hill,” Tipton says. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m ever so grateful to be here. It’s that one percent when I’m not that keeps me grounded, so I don’t try to fly off the top of the mountain on my bike.”
