Fourteen years ago today, I was coming out of a twelve-hour surgery.
A double mastectomy. Reconstruction. BRCA positive.
My family was holding their breath, my sister was posting updates, and I was apparently winking at Joe before I fully woke up.
It feels like a lifetime ago because it was.
What I didn’t know then was that the surgery wasn’t the hard thing. It was just the beginning of a long stretch of becoming.
Two years later, I decided I wanted to be healthy. Not in a dramatic way. Not as a transformation story. I started going to a gym for the first time in my life. I joined Tribe and began lifting weights with friends. I remember I couldn’t even do one sit-up without my trainer holding my feet down. I just kept showing up. Little by little, I learned how to move my body again and how to take care of it. I’m stronger now.
Two years after that, I became a real estate agent. A decision that looked practical on the outside, but underneath it was about rebuilding confidence, purpose, and identity after everything my body and heart had been through. I had no idea what I was doing, and yet it changed our family in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Even more surprising has been the number of people I’ve been able to walk alongside, guide, and connect with along the way.
Then life shifted again.
One of my children went through an incredible crisis. The kind that rearranges your nervous system and your priorities. The kind that teaches you very quickly what matters and what doesn’t.
Two years later, we moved. Not because it was easy or exciting, but because it was what was best for one of our children. It was hard on all of our kids, a huge change for our family. They were too young to fully understand why we were uprooting their lives. What they did know, even if only instinctively, was that we were pulling together. That we protect one of our own. I hope as they grow into adults, they look back and see that this is who we are as a family.
And then, like it did for everyone, COVID came. The world shut down. Everything slowed, stopped, and changed. Again.
When I look back, I don’t see a straight line. I see a series of hard seasons stacked back to back. Surgery. Recovery. Reinvention. Crisis. Relocation. Global uncertainty.
Life is really hard.
And here’s the thing I want to say out loud, because I think we don’t say it enough: going through hard things doesn’t make you special or strong in some shiny, polished way. It makes you tired. It makes you tender. It makes you human.
But it also does something else.
It teaches you how to take the next right step, even when you don’t know where the road is headed. When I’ve faced hard decisions, my mom always told me to place my hand over my heart and listen. To be still long enough to hear what I was supposed to do next.
I didn’t survive the last fourteen years because I had a master plan. I survived because I kept taking the next step that was in front of me. I asked for help. I listened when my body and my family told me something wasn’t working anymore. I learned that starting over doesn’t mean you failed. It usually means you were paying attention.
If you’re in a hard season right now, I won’t tell you everything happens for a reason. I won’t rush you to the lesson. I won’t minimize the grief.
But I will say this: you are not behind. You are not broken. And this season will not be the only chapter of your story.
Fourteen years ago, I was under bright lights in an operating room, being taken apart and put back together, rid of the parts of my body that were going to potentially kill me. I was being held together by other people’s hands.
Today, I’m still here. Changed. Wiser. A little scarred. Still choosing to show up.
Sometimes that’s the bravest thing we do.
