Fire and Grit: My New Origin Story

To my friends, family, co-workers, and future readers—

You’re probably tired of hearing me go on and on about death.  You might even be thinking, “If she mentions her goddamned heart attacks one more goddamned time, I swear I’m going to rip out my ear bones!”

And honestly?  I don’t blame you.  Hell, I get tired of myself talking about it.

But this is the process.  This is what happens.  There’s a reason people who come back from the dead talk about it so much:  It fucks you up.

Everything you thought you knew—everything you valued—gets flipped on its goddamned head.

So, I write.  I think.  I talk.  I obsess.

It’s why I stand a little differently now.  Why I breathe a little deeper.  Why I write.

Because I came back from the dead with one burning question:  Did my life even matter? And no matter how I turned that question over in my head, I kept landing on the same uneasy truth:  Probably not.

It’s a humbling realization to have when you’re walking through life with an ill-placed defibrillator lodged under your skin.  That rumination took me to some dark places.  But on the other side of that, I came out lit up—burning with the need for meaning in everything I do.  A fire to leave something behind.  Something real.

That fire is what keeps me clanking away at this keyboard.

The more I write, the more I have to write.

The hardest part of post-death life hasn’t been the pain or the trauma—it’s been learning to let go of the things that used to matter.  Titles.  Promotions.  Being the most dependable person in the room.  Feeling pride in a career built on progress and productivity.

Those things still matter in a way—but not like they did.  Not after death.

We all have those moments.  The ones that crush your spirit and grind you into the floor.  The rejections.  The deaths.  The suicides.  Watching someone you love—your child, your best friend—go through something you can’t protect them from.

Those moments drop you to your knees and you think you can’t go on.

But somehow… you do.

You sit.  Then you stand.  Then you fight your way forward.

And those moments—those soul-wrenching, razor-edged experiences—they define you.  They change you.  You come out harder.  Smarter.  More awake.  You don’t even realize it until years later, when you’re looking back with the kind of clarity you only earn the hard way.

I’m living through one of those moments right now—one of those brutal, character-defining reckonings.  After nearly a year of stepping into a leadership role, I was passed over.  Twenty-three years of loyal service, and I found myself standing at a slammed door.  It stung.  It still does.  But that sting burned off the illusion that work would ever be the thing that defined me.

That clarity—combined with what I brought back from the other side—ignited something in me.  That was the morning I stopped giving away my best energy.  I woke up, still burning with creative fire, and made a deliberate choice:  I would keep that fire for me.

In the month since, I’ve written ten chapters of my memoir, a personal essay about riding, a dark fantasy short story that kicks off the Keeper universe, and I’m already charting out the next few projects.  I’m not just writing—I’m building.

So what does that mean for you?

It means this:

Feed your passion.

Find the courage to live unapologetically and authentically.

Live for you.

Stop letting other people set your goals.  They’re looking out for themselves more than they’re looking out for you.

And if I sound like I’m listing things again… well, maybe I am. 😉

But this isn’t just a list.  It’s a pulse.  A beat.  A promise.

I came back.  And I’m just getting started.