I didn’t grow up wanting to help people heal.
I grew up hoping no one would get hurt.
Hoping someone would stay.

We lived in a single-wide trailer on 13 acres of rural Central California scrubland. My parents had tried to build a log cabin before the 1974 oil crisis stopped them in their tracks. What followed wasn’t rustic simplicity—it was survival. At least at first, we had no electricity, no plumbing, no heat. Four kids raising each other while my dad disappeared overseas and my mom worked two jobs and quietly unraveled under the weight of unspoken trauma.

By the time I was seven, I had my first panic attack hiding in the bathroom while my brother chased my sister with a knife. By ten, I knew about abortion, divorce, abuse, and bankruptcy—not from books, but from the back-room murmurings of my family’s desperation. My mom cried often, my sisters were pregnant before sixteen, and our dogs were either poisoned, shot, or run over. Our life was loud, raw, and wild. But we stayed.

Somewhere in there, a friend’s mom told me about a God who would never leave. I didn’t understand theology. I just needed something steady. I didn’t find religion. I found survival-faith. Scrappy. Raw. Reliable.

At fifteen, I dropped out of high school. Took the GED. Started junior college. I met a boy in youth group who also wanted out of his story. We got married, had two kids—and replayed every chaotic note we were trying to escape: addiction, foreclosure, jail. I packed up my kids and left. That was the first time I understood what it meant to make an epic decision. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just knew I couldn’t stay.

So I worked—full time—while on welfare. I brought my infant daughter to college and sat her car seat beside me on the desk while I took notes and listened hard. I studied at night, wrote papers with one hand while feeding her with the other. At 26, seven months pregnant with my son, I walked across the graduation stage and claimed my bachelor’s degree. It wasn’t fancy. But it was mine. And it mattered.

And then—cancer.

A diagnosis I didn’t see coming.
A future I didn’t know how to hold.

I was 31.

Not a gentle diagnosis. A life-imploding, hair-falling-out, chemo-ravaging diagnosis. After years of treatment, my lungs, heart, and liver began to fail. One hospital sent me home on hospice. I was 37.

That’s when Mayo Clinic entered the story. Against all odds, I got in. Their doctors opened my chest, then my lungs—then dismantled everything I thought I knew about my future. I became a case study. I was supposed to die. Two women in nearby rooms—both less sick than I was—did.

But I didn’t.

That was my unseating of the soul—what Jung describes as the moment when your entire compass gets rearranged. And I had to ask:

If I’m still here… why?

The answer didn’t come as lightning. It came in casseroles. In friends paying our mortgage. In church volunteers cleaning our house. In Darin sitting quietly next to me while I sobbed into a hospital pillow. We weren’t rescued—we were carried.

And when I had the strength, I crawled forward.

I got my master’s degree. I became a licensed therapist. I started working in the ICU. Then in private practice. Then I began writing. I built the curriculum I wish I’d had. And that’s when Epic Comeback was born—not as a business, but as a promise.

But I want to say this clearly—my story isn’t unique.
Not really. It’s just mine.

There are people all over the world living through harder things with fewer resources and no safety net. I had privilege. Access. Support. And I don’t take that lightly.

So I don’t share this as someone extraordinary. I share it as someone who finally realized:

Your story doesn’t need to be rare. It just needs to be used. With purpose. With heart. With courage.

And Darin, my husband—he fought a different fight. One in the shadows. While I was clawing my way back from death, he was holding the rest of our life together. Quietly. Fiercely. Even when he didn’t know how. And dammit, he stayed.

Years later, during the pandemic, we asked each other: If the world goes to hell, where do we want to be? Who do we want to be with? And what do we want to be doing? And then we tried our damndest to build that life.

We decided on two things:

1. We’d try to make up for lost time as best we could.

2. We’d live every day like tomorrow may not come—sometimes. Because honestly?
   It’s hard to live like you’re dying all the time.
   So we live like we’re living.

And here’s what’s been circling in my mind as I wrote this:

I’ve had two personal brushes with death—cancer while pregnant, and later, full organ failure from the treatment that saved me. And just recently, while reflecting on this story, I had two more brushes—through others. One was a text from Kayla Redig, a dear friend and the director of the Amazon documentary Vincible. She asked me: “How much should I be preparing for my future self with breast cancer?” Her aunt is dying. Her genes are loud. She’s scared. And she’s trying to plan.

The second was a grief session with a family who had just lost their vibrant 30-year-old daughter to chronic illness. They weren’t just broken. They were undone. They looked at me as if I might have something to offer, and all I could do was sit with them in their pain. No tools. No solutions. Just presence.

With Kayla, I asked her, gently: What would future-you-sick-cancer-girl want from you right now? What would she ask of your time? Your body? Your thoughts? Do that. Love her in advance. That’s where your power is.

And for that grieving family—I didn’t ask anything of them. I didn’t offer tools or insight. They had just been plunged into the deep end, and they hadn’t even learned how to swim. What they needed wasn’t a plan. It was safety. Someone to sit in the cold water with them. Someone to stay.

And it reminded me: This work isn’t about heroism. It’s about bearing witness.

About showing up after the bottom drops out—again and again—and saying: “We’re still here. And we’re not done yet.”

So if you're in the middle of your own unseating—if you're wondering whether you’re allowed to hope again: Let me say it out loud: you are.

So build your life. Rebuild it. Make your comeback your contribution.

I’ve come back. And I’m still coming back—every day. With Darin beside me. With purpose in my chest.

Your story isn’t over. It’s about to get real.