Elisa Hays & Lisa Coronado

00:04 Hi, I'm Lisa Coronado. I am an actress and a writer and a student, and I have lived with a disability for the last seven years. I am currently writing a book right now, my first fiction book about the healing powers of art and how it affects teenagers.

00:26 And I am Elisa Hayes. I am a professional speaker, chaplain, and person with disabilities for the last ten years. I am also a certified Ada coordinator. I don't know that I have anything more profound to say than that. It's good to see you.

00:57 I know. It's been. I was trying to think. I think we took an acting workshop together eleven years ago, maybe 20. I took my first one in 2012 and then did it through 2017. But I did it with you there early, I think.

01:13 Right. A long time ago. I was trying to remember how far back that even goes.

01:23 It was a scene with you and your husband, and you guys were both prisoners tied up, trying to get out of a cave. So I remember the scene.

01:31 Oh, that was hilarious.

01:33 That was so funny. You guys were a hoot.

01:37 Oh, my gosh. And then after the accident, were you there when I went back in my wheelchair? Yep.

01:47 I was in that class.

01:48 Yep.

01:49 It was so inspiring.

01:51 It was. It was. It was wild that. That I was given this scene to. To play a woman who had become disabled and wanted her husband to leave her because he did not sign up for this.

02:11 Oh, that's right.

02:12 And my husband was sitting there in the room watching this, and my daughter, our youngest, it was intense. You know, I told Stephen, I'll do anything, but it was not that I had wanted my husband to leave me at any point, but I absolutely felt, wow, you did not sign up for this. I am a lot now.

02:47 Well, can you just, if you're comfortable, just take it back to what happened?

02:53 Yeah. So on March 1, 2014, I was hit by a semi truck that was going 65 miles an hour on cruise control. The driver never touched the brake.

03:09 Oh, lord.

03:09 And he hit my body outside of a vehicle while I was on the run, trying to get out of the way. Yeah. How I got there, of course. You know, I had this audience participation children's theater company that toured all over North America. So I had left my home, what, two days before that with one of my employees, and we picked up the second employee in Wichita just an hour before the accident. Like, worst first day of work ever.

03:49 Oh, my God. Oh, my God. How traumatic for just everybody.

03:53 Right, right. And both these young women were 21 years old at the time. Right.

03:59 And were they hit? Struck at all?

04:02 No. The most extraordinary thing is that. So we were on this two lane highway and just driving along, listening to an audiobook, rich dad, poor dad, talking to them about saving money, you know, trying to be a mom. And we. It was. It was snowing, but it was fine. And then, or I thought so. And then apparently, we hit black ice. The trailer slid. We slid, jackknifed, stuck, slammed into this guardrail on the highway. And I saw the headlights of the semi truck barreling down on us. I knew that it was going to hit us, so I screamed at these two young women to get out and run. And they were on the highway side, but it was Ford F 250, so the young woman sitting in the back seat had to have somebody in the front seat let her out because Ford F 250 has suicide doors. And I knew she would be trapped there if she wasn't let out. So the first woman jumped out and she did let the woman in the backseat out, but she slipped and fell on the ice. So when that semi truck he had actually. That was the first vehicle there was the whole series of them. He was the first. And he had actually managed to slow down and pull as far over to the right as he could. And he hit the trailer, but it shoved the truck around so that this young woman rolled over on the asphalt and was looking at the undercarriage of an f 250 with wheels on either side of her.

06:03 Wow.

06:05 Right.

06:06 Geez.

06:08 Horrific. And she managed to scramble quickly out of there and lay it on the, on the, the side of the road. The shoulder there, I guess, is what I'm told. I don't remember that. But the other woman who was in the back seat, she managed to get out totally unharmed. So the first woman, she had no serious injuries. She had some terrible bruising of her tailbone and couldn't really move, is what I understand. But then somewhere as all that was happening, an suv with a family of four, with kids about the same age as my kids, which was awful, slammed into the. About where the hitch is on the truck and the trailer and separated those. And then in the middle of that somewhere, I was trying to get out of the truck and this last vehicle, the semi, he just changed lanes. He didn't even slow down or anything. And later in depositions, because, of course, this was a long, drawn out, horrible process, he said that he saw something glance off the front of his truck.

07:45 And that something was you.

07:46 Yes.

07:47 Oh, my goodness.

07:49 Yeah. So, yeah, the EMTs found me about 90ft away, impaled on a cable guardrail.

08:00 Impaled?

08:01 Yes. Impaled. Was the. When I read that in the police report, it was just horrifying. That word has such.

08:10 What are you, a vampire?

08:11 I know. I was impaired. I was impaled. Yeah, it was. And apparently, I was still conscious. The woman who was in the backseat was there with me in this freezing cold weather. But, of course, she's wearing a cute little skirt and, like, an adorable little pair of uggs because she was 21 and it was freezing cold outside. But she was with me. She told me that I was swearing up a storm, and I said, well, could you blame me? I mean, right?

08:51 Good Lord. Terrifying.

08:54 Horrible. But at some point, thankfully, I lost consciousness, but.

09:02 And then woke up in the hospital.

09:04 Right, right. I had to be. I couldn't be airlifted because of the storm. And so I was taken by ambulance 65 miles back through the same ice storm. And there was this EMT named Jennifer who I've met, and I was her first trauma case.

09:27 Oh, goodness.

09:29 My first case. Right. And my first x ray has Jennifer's hand in it because she had her hand trying to stem the bleeding. And. And so my. My pelvis had been folded in half like a book.

09:50 Oh, good God.

09:52 Right? So horrible. It was.

09:55 How do you survive that?

09:57 You don't. This is the crazy thing is, I have done so much research trying to make sense out of what happened to me, and I can find articles and research done on people with these kinds of pelvic fractures. And at the severity that I had, I can't find anybody who survived. I mean, you're the first, maybe. But I keep thinking this does not make sense, because people bleed to death because of your pelvic bones have a lot of blood in them. And then, of course, I had all kinds of crazy internal injuries that, you know, it was. It was a mess. And when I had arrived at. At the emergency room, I was essentially a dead Jane Doe. I mean, I had all the signs of brain death. Pupils fixed, dilated. They couldn't find a pulse on me. I had a very weak heart rate. At one point, I read in one of my medical records that I had a heart rate of six. Whoa, six.

11:19 Did they shock. Did they have to shock you back?

11:22 I was under. So they didn't paddle. They used epinephrine shocks. And so under constant resuscitation for, I think, the first 24 hours, they just kept shocking my heart to start, I guess.

11:43 Oh, my gosh. And did your young assistants go with you to the hospital?

11:48 No. So the woman who had injured her tailbone, she was taken to the nearest local hospital, where I was first taken with her in the ambulance, and she was kept overnight to be checked out and have all kinds of x rays and everything. And then she was released. I think the other woman, I think her boyfriend drove down from Wichita and picked her up. But the extraordinary thing is they both went back to work from my company.

12:30 Did they know where you were?

12:33 No. And nobody. Actually, there was a phone calls flying everywhere, trying to find me and to let my family know.

12:42 Oh, that's so stressful.

12:44 And they were on the phone in communication with friends of mine who were already in Houston because we were headed to Houston livestock show and rodeo to do our thing there. So I had friends there who knew before my family did what had happened. And everybody is calling hospitals trying to find me. My husband had a. The first thing he heard is he had actually gotten a call from a friend of a friend of this person who was there saying there had been an accident, but I was fine. And then he found me at a hospital, like, no, no, she's not even remotely fine.

13:25 Oh, my goodness.

13:26 Right.

13:28 And how long were you in that hospital?

13:31 That was seven weeks in the ICU in another state? Yes, in Wichita. Right. So my husband managed to get there, and my mom came two days later. And, you know, it was terrible. I had surgery. I had over 20 major surgeries in the first month. But when I woke up in the ICU and my husband was there and my mom was there, and, you know, they say that nobody's going to remember. They had told my family, okay, we're going to take her out of sedation. She won't remember this, but I absolutely remember. And I was laying there on all these. I mean, just total life support. Couldn't talk, you know, the whole thing. And that moment when you realize, oh, my God, my life is never going to be the same. What has just happened to me? And I didn't even know what had happened, but I just knew. This is. This is enormous, right? And then I started. The first thing I thought of was, am I paralyzed?

14:57 Mm hmm. Did you try, like, moving your feet?

14:59 I did. I tried moving my fingers, and I could. I could kind of move my fingers sort of, because I had broken things, you know, I had, like, head to toe injuries, but I could. I could feel my. My right foot, but I couldn't feel my left foot. And so I had this very cogent thought of. Well, that doesn't make sense for a spinal cord injury. I don't really understand what that's about, but I couldn't communicate any of this. Nobody had any idea how much brain function I had or anything. So it was weird to become disabled and fall into this bizarre category of, kind of, category of one. Like, there's not an association of people who've had their pelvis folded in half.

15:43 Right. A support group of one. You support yourself.

15:50 It's kind of a weird thing. There's. Yeah, so it's kind of crazy. And when I was finally discharged out of the hospital after three and a half months, they just sent me home with a walker. Like, I've had a. All of the gluteal muscles on the left side were removed.

16:14 Oh, my God. They didn't give you a wheelchair?

16:17 No, it was like, well, she's learned to walk a little short distance in the hospital. Good luck.

16:26 How could you miss that? How could you not prepare somebody to leave with what they need?

16:34 It was wild. There was. It was wild how they just didn't. I don't know, it's like they were like, well, you're alive with no real thought of, how are you going to live your life now?

16:51 So you got flown back to. Because this just popped up in my facebook memory. I shared a GoFundme that was to, I think, to lifelight you or meta light you back home to Seattle. You were trying so. Or not Seattle, but Washington. Yeah, get back there.

17:05 Yeah. Because my husband was on unpaid leave at that point, and my kids were being taken care of by my dad, which was horrible. He would cry every day and, you know, became like my 8th grader's job to try and comfort her grandfather. You know, it was just awful. And the way the health insurance system works, our insurance thought that my husband should keep living in a hotel across the street from the hospital.

17:34 Oh, my gosh.

17:35 They wouldn't pay to fly me back to Seattle. I couldn't exactly just be, you know, put on a delta flight or something. And so a medijet is a $30,000 flight that they wouldn't cover.

17:55 That's horrible.

17:56 And as you said, friends told my family, you need to put up a GoFundme. People want to help. And it was unreal. I. I get chills. I can still remember. I mean, in two weeks, over $54,000 was raised. Yeah, in two weeks. And I. I remember laying in the hospital bed and Steve, I got. I can still picture it. It is. Could make me cry of him looking at me and saying, we're going home today, baby. We're going home.

18:37 Oh, the relief. I just.

18:41 It was, it was. And. And to know, because he had told me about this GoFundme, and to know that so many people were helping me and my company had continued because friends had flown in from out of state to make my shows happen, and they had begged, borrowed, and built things because my trailer full of stuff was destroyed. My client had had said to all of my friends, if you can make this happen, we were good. We're good. So all of these people had come together to protect my income and to get me home, to pay, to get me home to my kids. And there were people all around the world who were praying for me. There were women in the prison in Jordan. No, I might have the country wrong in the Middle east who were praying for me, because missionaries there had heard about me, and they told these women who were in prison about, they're in prison. It was so humbling.

20:12 Isn't that the, like, it's so hard when you go through something so catastrophic or traumatic, but then on the flip side, you get shown how great humanity can be and how cared for you are, which we don't see usually. It takes something like this to be so blown away by people's kindness and that people really do when they see something so horrific. And your first instinct is like, how can I help? Please give me a way to help. And then gofundmes and prayer groups and stuff like this becomes this great unifier to be able to help somebody. And it. It's just. It gives me goosebumps just to hear, you know, your story.

20:53 Yeah, it gives me goosebumps. It's, you know. And here my whole big fear was coming back to what you were talking about with the acting class. My whole big fear was, well, now Steve's going to have to take care of me. And this is the worst possible thing, right?

21:06 Because losing your independence is just horrible, especially when you're young.

21:12 And my dad thought the worst possible thing was that I would be confined to a wheelchair. And he actually saw, while he was praying for me, he saw a woman at the y at the YMCA come out of the y in her wheelchair, and she has a spinal cord injury. She transferred into the car seat, quickly whipped the wheels off the chair, tossing them over her head into the back of the car, tossed the frame of the chair into the back of the car. And my dad stood there watching her. And he went up and talked to her and told her about how I was in the hospital and what his fears were. And she told this total stranger, was comforting him, saying, she's going to be okay. It's okay. She's going to be all right. And he has never seen her again at the y. And he goes all the time, and he calls her his angel that.

22:14 Oh, my mom calls those. She just calls them hugs from God. That's her, like, you know, little hug. Oh. And something unexplainable and angel like happens in your life, and she just feels like she's been given a big old hug from the universe.

22:31 Right. It was like that. It was. It was. I think my dad really needed that hug. You know, it's. It's a. So it completely changed my whole worldview. I remember the moment when I was laying in the bed in the ICU and looking at photos of my kids that were taped to the wall that my family had done because they wanted all the hospital staff to see me as a person, right, to understand who I was, because I looked nothing like me. You know, I'm all horrible. Everything was awful. So there were photos of my kids and photos of me performing my shows and doing my thing, you know.

23:26 And.

23:27 I looked at particularly the pictures of me doing my shows, and I built my identity a lot around owning my business and being highly capable, performing a one woman show. And I built my whole identity around what I could do, all the things that I was capable of doing. And I had even said, you know, in the cosmic justice, I had said this out loud, that the worst possible thing that could happen to me would be to become physically disabled.

24:18 Yep.

24:19 Because I, you know, I climbed mountains, I drove big trucks. You know, I'm so capable.

24:27 I think about that, and I'm, like, in my own disabilities, and I'm like, why did I have to be given such a fiery spirit stuck in an incapable body? This is not fair. I'm like, why can't I just be introverted and be happy being home all the time and, like, you know, but I'm not. It's torture. It's so hard sometimes to, like, reconcile with your physical limitations when your whole being wants to be active.

24:55 Yeah. And how do you. How do you. How do you do that? I think a lot of people during.

25:04 COVID Yes, I felt understood. Understood. During COVID for the first time ever, I was like, oh, everybody's on my level now, and I don't feel like massive fomo 24 hours a day. Like, I feel like everything slowed down, and we're together, and it's not go, go, and I'm just not able to keep up, and it just, you know, and then people that developed long Covid which is very similar to what I have started talking. That conversation just became much bigger, and it was like, oh, my gosh. Like, maybe this will actually help bring research to the people that have been suffering this, like, post viral Lyme disease, chronic fatigue syndrome type stuff.

25:48 Right.

25:49 And it just was so. I had such a different experience, I think, because I had already had so much experience being knocked down, you know? And I don't know if that speaks to, like, what does your disability look like now with your disability?

26:02 You know, I. Over the ten years since this happened, I've. I've repeatedly gotten knocked back down again because I. I'm a fall risk. I'll fall. I'll break things. I fell once and broke both of my elbows at the same time. I don't recommend that.

26:21 God, I hit my elbow, and I want to cry. I can't imagine breaking it.

26:27 And then everything stops when something like that happens. Or I get sick because I've had a kidney transplant, I take immunosuppressive meds, which puts me at high risk and probably more just functionally in life. It just means that if I get sick, it takes me a really long time to heal. Like, right now, my voice is still trying to get over being sick from two weeks ago.

26:56 Yeah.

26:59 Because everything slows down, and I don't have as much energy because everything just takes more effort.

27:09 Can you walk or walk?

27:10 I can. I can, but walking takes a lot of effort, and I mostly I move my left leg with my abdominal muscles.

27:17 Oh, okay, right, because that's the glute that got removed.

27:22 Right? Because I'm missing all the glutes on the left side, making me the half ass chaplin.

27:29 I told my mom that, and she laughed so hard. My dad was at that hospital his whole end of life stuff. So at first when you said you worked there, I was like, maybe you were there at the same time. That would have been so neat.

27:42 Oh, my gosh.

27:43 I told her because of that connection, and she thought that that was so funny, your story.

27:49 And I. Sometimes I tell that to patients. It makes them laugh and, you know, helps them know. Okay. It's gonna be okay.

27:57 Yes. I love that kind of, like, darken funny humor. You know, any way you can really survive?

28:02 Oh, absolutely.

28:03 Terrible.

28:03 Absolutely. I know. I. What? The first month I started a seminary, I got sick and had actually had a small bowel obstruction where, because I have a lot of internal scar tissue and whatnot. So the EMTs came into my house, which is now a wheelchair accessible house that I designed all the ydev accessibility in it. And I laid there in my bed in excruciating pain in my ground floor master bedroom, the emts come rolling in with the gurney, and my response. You talk about humor instead of just screaming or whatever. I was like, oh, good to see that my house works.

28:50 You were like, yes. I did it.

28:53 I did it. It wins, you know? Will that be gurney in here? Great. You know, you just. You have to laugh your way through these things. And you were talking about not being able to keep up, and I was thinking, it's so funny you would say that, because I was thinking about this yesterday. I was a really fast walker because I'm tall and I have long legs, and I walked really fast all the time. And I would. My kids would be running behind me going, mom, slow down. And I was like, just get those little legs moving. Come on. Keep up.

29:30 Keep up.

29:31 Right? And I went through all of life like that, like, at high speed, and couldn't understand, like, why can't people keep up? And now I can't do that. And I have days when I'm just tired, and I. Sometimes I call those titanic days, where I just need to lay in bed and watch titanic and cry.

29:58 Yes, it is. It's so hard. I don't know if you get this, but when I get really bad, because I have Lyme disease, so, like, right now, I'm actually a pretty gnarly flare that's starting, and I'm just like, oh, okay. I don't know how long this is gonna last. It could be two weeks. It could be six weeks. It could. I'm not sure. But when it gets really bad, I just panic, and I'm like, I don't want to be stuck like this. And it's taken seven years for me to finally be like, this is cyclical. You know how to rest. It may be a month of not, you know, being able to do what you want to do, but you just got to rest, and it's. It'll. You'll come out of it, and then, you know, and then I'll feel better. And it's so hard for me not to, like, still full on a full throttle before I did, before I was sick, and I can't do that anymore. Otherwise I get sick again. It's like a balancing act for me. And because people can't see my illness, it gets exhausting explaining it constantly because people are like, oh, you look fine. Oh, you're doing better. You look, you know, you went to dinner with your husband, and I'm like, that was a treat. I don't leave very often, you know, and so it's a hard with medical professionals especially, to explain that I'm sick. Cause they can't see it. And then with your disability, I mean, if I was looking at you just now, I would never know unless you came in, in a wheelchair or a walker or whatnot. Have you had any barriers with like, the health?

31:29 Absolutely. So I use the wheelchair, but that's just one of a whole list of disabilities because I had a traumatic brain injury when I got out of the hospital. I couldn't remember how to cook food, I couldn't do basic math at all, even with a calculator. Had to relearn how to read. Couldn't do that.

31:51 Oh, wow.

31:52 Right. So one of the hardest things, though, is that being an extrovert type and an actor, I could pretend to be fine.

32:05 Yes.

32:06 Right.

32:06 Like right now I'm pretending very much that I'm fine, even though I feel pretty terrible.

32:11 And you can put on the smile and you know how to turn on the charm and. And be fine.

32:17 Yes. Oh, my gosh. Have you let people see you at your worst? Is it hard?

32:23 It's very hard.

32:24 It's my heart and my kids and that's about it.

32:27 Yes. I live with them, my husband and my kids. One time I was at a conference, thankfully with. These are long time old friends, and I had a real pain flare up because I have nerve pain in my left leg, a lot of nerve damage, and sometimes for reasons unknown, it will flare up. And it is. Nerve pain is the worst.

32:52 Oh, God.

32:55 It is the weirdest, most excruciating pain.

32:58 Is it like electric. It's electric shocks for me. Like I'm being shocked and noises, like my nervous system goes into overdrive.

33:05 Yes. So. And I also, I have PTSD, you know, great big shock from. And I've done lots and lots of therapy, but loud noises, I can have something that will be a trigger and then I'll be hyper vigilant for. Could be days.

33:24 Yep.

33:25 And I've done a lot of work with spiritual practices and meditation, have done EMDR and all sorts of things, but it doesn't just go away entirely.

33:38 And when you have it, like pain, it's not like an isolated incident. You're constantly re experiencing your injuries to some extent. And so for me, I have to tell people, I'm like, I have PTSD, I have an adjustment disorder, which is what we figured out. I just have a really hard time adjusting to this illness because it's so unpredictable, and I never get away from it. So every time I get sick, it's like being re traumatized over and over again. And how do you move through that? It's. It's. It's hard. Like, I feel like that's one of.

34:13 The hardest things, and that makes absolute, complete sense. One of the things that I used to say a lot is that I constantly felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

34:23 Yeah. Yes. And you don't ever want to go back to what you experienced because it was so in the beginning, like, the first, like, with your accident and your hospitalization, my five weeks of hospitalizations and how sick I was. Like, I'm so terrified of going back to that that you. And then living in fear is bad because that's inflammatory and it stops you from living and living. Right. And it's so hard. I mean, I imagine that you experienced that, too, with trying not to break your elbow or, you know, having to just be careful not to injure yourself.

35:00 Right, right. And I think the hardest part is it develops this inner narrative of I'm fragile.

35:11 Yeah.

35:12 I'm fragile. I can't do things right. And.

35:17 And it sucks.

35:18 Yeah.

35:19 Especially when you want to do all the things right. I don't want to be limited.

35:23 And.

35:24 And.

35:24 And so when I need to go see doctors, um, and talk to them, for one thing, when you have something going on that's not. That's outside the norm.

35:34 Yeah.

35:35 You know, outside your kind of usual, um. You know, Lyme disease is really actually outside the norm.

35:43 Oh, yeah, it is.

35:44 Right.

35:45 Most. A lot of doctors are just like, we don't know how to treat that. Go find somebody else.

35:49 Right, right. So they often don't know what to do. And what I find is that that part doesn't even bother me as much. What bothers me is that they don't know how to ask good questions.

36:07 Right, right.

36:11 Because what I have found is that people who have disabilities, chronic illnesses get to know your body really, really well. And, you know, when something doesn't feel right or you can feel like something's. Something's going on. And I think most doctors, they're trained to look at lab results and don't factor in the patient's story about, okay, here's where I've been. Here's what I'm going through. This is what this feels like now. Here's what's happening. And they don't factor that in as data.

37:04 Right.

37:06 It's more like they factor it in as listening to the patient, because if they do that, and frankly, I just don't go back to doctors that don't really listen to me anymore. If they don't listen, I'm like, I'll fire you.

37:22 It's just. So that's why I had to switch over to a naturopathic doctor, because they gave me an hour appointment, and they listened, and they finally. I finally got a diagnosis after two years of allopathic doctors who were like, we know you're sick. We don't know what you have. We're sorry. You know, try therapy. I got that a lot. And I was like, look, if I could think myself out of this disease, I would. I don't want to be here.

37:49 Right.

37:50 You know? I don't want to be here. And it's just. It's been so incredibly eye opening when you do get a good doctor, that how important that is and how. How much that is for your mental health, too, just feeling believed and supported, and that you've got someone on your side that wants to see you get better.

38:12 And the connection between your mental health and your physical health is well documented.

38:18 Yes.

38:19 This is part of why I work in spiritual care. The connection between the care of the spirit of a person and their actual medical outcomes is well documented. And one of the things that I am able, just because of all of my experiences, that I can bring into the room with me, besides my really cool chair named Wilhelmina.

38:50 Love it.

38:54 And my spectacular sense of humor, you know, but I can bring empathy in a way that a lot of other people can't. And, like, I had a patient talking to me about nerve pain. He was talking about being in pain. And so I said, well, I'm kind of a connoisseur. What kind of pain are we talking about? And he said, well. And he wasn't really opening up to me. He just said, ed, it's nerve pain. You wouldn't understand. And I said, oh, okay. So are you getting pins, needles, electric shocks, cattle prod, hot, cold, pressure, vise, grip? What kind of nerve pain are we talking about? And his eyes shot up as he looked at me, goes, oh, you get it? He goes, nobody understands nerve pain if they haven't had it. And I said, yep, I get it. You want to tell me about it? But then he went on to talk to me about his fears and what he was worried about with this illness and about his relationships and how his relationships and his health were intertwined. And just for someone to be able to be seen and heard and feel understood improves their health outcomes.

40:31 It does. I felt so isolated for so long because nobody knew what was going on with me. And everybody around me was healthy, still had kids at home. And I just. It was so awful that I found a support group online. Most of the people were in England. They thought I had mono at first because I tested positive for it, but just never went away. And so I joined a support group, and we just. It was so great to be able to talk to other people, going through similar things just online, just chatting. And it. And it's funny you talk about spiritual practices, because acting in the arts was my spiritual connection. And when I lost that, I felt like I lost part of myself. And I was like, I can't let this go. I have to do it in some way within my limitations. Like, what does this look like? How do I do this? In the pandemic, I was able to do an online improv D and d show with actor friends every week. And my health could accommodate it because I could just sit here, and if I didn't feel good, it was okay. Just a couple hours on camera here. And it helped my mental health so much to be able to touch back into that. And then since then, it's, like, morphed into writing, and I love writing. It almost gives me the same feeling, just creating. Have you been able to still keep in touch with that artistic part of yourself throughout this?

42:03 I'm working on it. You know, art is absolutely a spiritual practice, you know?

42:09 Yeah.

42:12 And when I get to speak to organizations, that's art. I operate in the world of storytelling and craft, and there's a lot of craft that goes into that. Getting to do things like design my own wheelchair accessible house.

42:36 That's so creative. Yeah.

42:38 Right. And to set it all up in a way that looks good, that's art. But I want to get back to writing more.

42:57 Would you write your story? Have people asked you about that?

43:00 Yes, and I've done some writing. I wrote one small book because I did a lot of mentoring of young women in my company. I had this thought shortly after I got out of the hospital. Who would have taught at the time, I was thinking specifically about my youngest daughter, who was in the 8th grade when the accident happened and really struggling. Who would taught. Have taught her how to be a self confident and strong young woman who didn't cave to all of the cultural pressures that women receive about how you should be. So I wrote a book, a small book called letters to my daughter. And it started out as a podcast, a series of episodes talking about I mean, everything from lessons in finance, which women are woefully undereducated in, frankly, to telling the story of a phenomenal black african american Olympic athlete, Wilma Rudolph, and how she was a disabled person from childhood and became this spectacular Olympic athlete and went on to do some phenomenal things. But what I haven't written is a memoir of kind of the story and my internal experience in all of this. And that's what I want to start working on, that. Well, I didn't. I hadn't. I couldn't write it. I've done parts of it, but I kept telling people I can't write it because I don't know how it ends. I don't know where the story is going.

45:04 That's what I keep saying. People keep telling me to write a book, and I'm like, I'm still in it. I don't have 2020 yet. Like, I don't.

45:11 It's taken ten years. So the most amazing thing is I spent the ten year anniversary of the wreck. I flew with my whole family. We flew to Breckenridge, Colorado, to see my brother lives there. And my sister also flew in and went sit skiing on the mountain, kind of thumbing my nose at disability. Sit ski. Oh, so fun. So fun. Although falling less fun, but it was just awesome. And all of this internal noise about what you can't do, finding joy in what you can do, and not just, and this was the thing, sit skiing. It was not a sad substitute for stand up skiing. It wasn't that kind of can. It was, oh, no, this is just another way to ski, to enjoy being on the mountain and have a ball. So I'm going to keep working at that. That was great. So that was ten years. And I took time away from my day job working as a chaplain at the hospital to go do that. And I had. I spent some time reflecting on all of this. In fact, my sister gave me this little necklace with the roman numeral ten.

46:33 X. I love that.

46:37 And spent some time thinking about, like, wow. Yeah, I think I know where the story goes now. I get it. Because coming back to all those people who were helping with the GoFundMe, all the people praying for me, all the doctors and nurses and my brother's kidney and all of. I wouldn't be alive without any of it, right? And the therapists and my husband, my whole family, my kids, everybody who takes care of me and does so many things around my house doesn't complain, like, why aren't you doing more laundry and vacuuming you know, but just. It's like we're a team. We're gonna be a team. And I. Where I missed the boat so all those years ago and where I realized in the hospital, I had this very clear thought of thinking, oh, my gosh, what a house of cards I have built. And it has all come just crumbling down on me. And that house of cards was just this idea that I could be independently capable and strong. And if it was only if I worked hard enough, if I put in the time, if I did these things, it's not that I didn't care about people. I cared about people very, very much. But my. My sense of what it means to be successful and thriving in life, to get to win at being human.

48:33 Yeah.

48:34 You know, was. Was somehow an individual effort, and that is so radically wrong. Yeah. So even when I go into the hospital as a chaplain, I don't go rolling in, because I've got some sort of. I've got my superhero cape on, and I am. I am here to heal you spiritually. It's not even. You know, I mean, it's so comical. It's stupid. I can only compare it to a constant spiritual practice that I'm with people and they're teaching me, and I'm trying to stand in the gap with them in this hard space of whatever's going on in their life. And we're in it together. That's what. That's what winning it, being human is. We're in it together.

49:41 We are. We are. It's such a. I think, you know, being an actor, you have empathy, and then you go through something like this, and it just deepens it to a point where you. For me, I'm like, I've got to use it. Somehow. I've got to use this. I got to take this bad card I was dealt and turn it into something purposeful. Like, that's how I really felt about it. And I feel like that's what you've done. You've. You've just turned it around when it would have been so easy to become bitter.

50:17 Well, you know, and I'm happier. I'm genuinely happier.

50:23 Yeah.

50:24 My. It. Life is better. Really?

50:27 Yeah.

50:27 Which is crazy. It's so wild and weird that the most excruciatingly painful, traumatic, awful thing that I live with every single day is also the same thing that without it, I couldn't be as happy as I am.

50:51 Yeah. That's amazing. I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

51:00 I love getting to talk to you.

51:03 I know. Maybe we'll end up in a class together again someday.

51:06 I think that would be awesome. It would be so fun. And so much of what we did in that acting class, I'd sent. I don't know if I ever told you this. I sentence a lengthy message to Steven Anderson, telling him how much he helped me stay alive.

51:26 That workshop was spiritual for me. It was life changing.

51:33 Absolutely spiritual. And when you spend a lot of time in the hospital, you have a lot of time to think.

51:41 Yes.

51:41 Right? And I spent a lot of time thinking about that, focusing on being present in this moment. Because if I try and think too far into the future, definitely if I think about the past, that's not safe territory. So I'm gonna stay right here in the present. But because I'd had all this workshop and all this practice about how to be present for art, and art is life, and life is arthem.

52:13 And his. His advice of any state of being is the perfect state of being. And that makes. That has helped me so give myself permission to be sick if I need to be. That's okay. I can sit in this moment and get through it. And it's just so that healing properties of art is just. That's why I'm writing a book about it. I was like, I have to share, you know? And Steven's in it. He's. He's in the book. He plays a drama teacher. You know, it's like, it's just made such a difference.

52:50 This is a fiction book that you're writing?

52:52 Yeah. Yep, yep. Almost done. I'll have it done this summer.

52:55 Oh, really? Oh, that's spectacular. Yeah, I want to read it.

52:59 I'll send it.

53:00 Yes. I need some readers.

53:02 I need some beta readers. So I'll send it to you.

53:04 Absolutely. That would be great. How fun. I know.

53:10 Well, I wish you all the luck with everything.

53:13 And you, too.

53:15 You just have inspired me to know in today, like, I'm just walking away. So inspired.

53:22 Oh, thank you. And I just thank you for sharing parts of your experience and the. And just the struggles with that, because.

53:41 Yep.

53:42 I look forward to seeing how you decide the story is editing so you can write it.

53:48 Me too.

53:49 Hopefully someday, maybe three more years. Wait, you said you're seven years. Yeah.

53:57 Oh.

53:59 Oh. Is this the part where we say goodbye?

54:03 I don't know. Do we say goodbye? We say goodbye. Goodbye, everybody. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.