08/15/2026
Seven years ago today, they opened my skull and removed a brain tumor.
I remember how much of that time was about getting through the next thing. Surgery. Recovery. Waiting for pathology. Learning to trust my body again. Trying to understand what had just happened and what it meant for the life in front of me.
What I couldn’t see then was how much that day would eventually change the way I lived.
It changed what I was willing to tolerate. What I paid attention to. How seriously I took the signals from my body. What mattered enough to get my time and energy. And how much less interested I became in building a life around what everyone else thought I should do.
For a long time, healing was part of the work.
But I didn’t heal just to spend the rest of my life protecting myself from everything that might go wrong.
I healed to live.
And seven years later, that is what feels most important today.
I’m coaching. I’m writing. I’m building Mission Me 2.0. I’m loving my people. I’m still learning, changing, getting things wrong, figuring things out, and becoming more of myself.
And in five days, I’ll step onto a ballroom competition floor for the first time since 2017.
My body is not perfect. Neither is my dancing. There are things I’m rebuilding and things I have to work around.
But I am here.
Seven years ago, I wanted my life.
Today, I’m living it.
