Hollister
– Jillian Wilson is a mom with a mission. On top of raising her
two sons and keeping a marriage together, she has been training for
weeks to compete in a marathon this summer and raise money for
cancer research.
Hollister – Jillian Wilson is a mom with a mission. On top of raising her two sons and keeping a marriage together, she has been training for weeks to compete in a marathon this summer and raise money for cancer research.
“I just felt that it’s something important to participate in,” she said.
Wilson, 29, hails from Reno, Nev., though she says her family moved around quite a bit when she was a child. Along with a sister 11 years her junior, Wilson was adopted as a baby, but it had little impact on her childhood.
“I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know that I was adopted,” she said. “It was just a word we used around the house, and was something I gradually came to understand as I got older.”
As a teenager, Wilson determined that Reno was not the greatest place to attend high school, so her parents sent her to boarding school at Robert Louis Stevenson School on the Monterey Bay, though she ended up graduating from Pacific Grove High School. Her family liked the area so much that they moved to Pacific Grove, where they remain to this day.
When she was 18, Wilson decided to contact her birth mother who, she learned, had chosen adoption because she was only 14 years old. Though Wilson had only wanted her birth mother to know she was alive and happy, the two corresponded for years and met when Wilson was in her early twenties.
“I had just wanted to let her know that I was happy, and that she had made the right choice,” said Wilson. “But I wound up meeting her and her great big family, it was pretty neat. And now we’re pretty good friends.”
Today Wilson’s birth mother has several boys and even adopted a baby girl.
After graduating from PGHS, Wilson attended Boston College. It was on a plane to school back east, as a matter of fact, that she met Forest, a Hollister native who was attending the Berklee College of Music, also in Boston.
“We just started chatting and realized we had a lot in common because we were from the same area,” said Wilson.
The two became close and married in 1998, the year Wilson graduated from college. After Forest graduated, the couple moved around quite a bit, from Boston to Santa Rosa to El Paso, Texas, before deciding to return to Hollister and remain near family. Wilson also chose to stay at home with her two sons, Jackson, 4, and Simon, 6.
“I think if you’re able, it’s the best thing you can do for your kids,” she said. “And I consider myself very lucky, even though it can sometimes be a challenge.”
Currently Wilson is training to participate in the Rock and Roll Marathon in San Diego this June, which will benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She considers this her first real foray into athletics, but trains around nine hours a week each and is raising over $2,800 for cancer research.
“I’m really proud to be training with this group,” she said. “They take everybody, even couch potatoes, and train you as long as you’re willing to make a commitment.”
When she isn’t running however, Wilson has another hobby that she shares with her family: a love of all things Star Wars.
“We just hang out and play Star Wars Trivial Pursuit or something like that,” she said. “We’re loud and proud, but we’ve never dressed up or camped out for the movies or anything.”
In the future, Wilson says she and her family are considering living for a few years in Europe, though she admits that might be a few years down the line.
“You get so much more living somewhere than just spending a week or two,” she said. “I just love experiencing new things and places.”
