Category: Reflections in the Rearview
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What the Ocean Gave Me
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There are places to go when language runs out. When answers stop helping and silence feels more honest than explanation. After my diagnosis, after the surgeries, after the blur of medical decisions, I didn’t know what to do – so I went to the water. It’s ironic – that healing…
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Leaving Before You’ve Proven Yourself
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What happens when illness derails a new job — and how to let yourself go anyway. Five months into a new job, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.One month after that, I learned I had Li-Fraumeni Syndrome — a rare genetic condition that increases the risk of developing multiple types…
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What Reconstruction Really Means – Body, Mind, and Beyond
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When we talk about breast reconstruction, it’s easy to think of it as a purely physical process – a series of surgeries, procedures, and eventually, healing that result in a new version of what was once there. For me, it was a way to restore a sense of wholeness after…
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Good Morning & Good Night, San Diego
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The drive from El Paso to San Diego is exactly what you’d expect – long, punishing, and relentlessly hot. Even at 9pm, the temperature stubbornly clings to triple digits. Somewhere along this infernal stretch of highway I hear a sound that only be described as someone dragging an oversized piece…
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Detours, Disasters, & Desert Kindness
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As distracted as I was, I have to say that the drive from Texas to California delivered much more than the monotony of the previous 18 hours. The landscape shifted dramatically, as if the travel itself was trying to pull me out of my own mind. Fields gave way to…
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Cross Country Move
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Driving West 2,533 miles. 37 hours. 4 days. This is how far and for how long my mind was allowed to wander. I gave myself this time. If driving across the United States does one thing, its remind you of how vast the world is – and how small your…