So yes, the room is dark. And I don’t like the dark. It makes everything worse. It makes my thoughts louder. My chest tighter. I don’t trust the dark. It’s where the sad things grow. And I guess that’s what this is. Sadness. Or sickness. Or both. I don’t know anymore.

We often speak about leadership in terms of resilience, output, and strategy. Rarely do we speak about wholeness. Yet no one can pour from an empty nervous system. No one can outrun biology with ambition.

I am learning the girl I once was. Her face, her hands, her voice appear in old photographs, in journals with ink bleeding like bruises. She startles me. Her mania hangs in the air like smoke; her suffering is sharp, unyielding. I read her pages and shiver at the clarity of her terror and courage.

2317 days ago, I woke up from a drug induced coma to the face of an unknown woman with crystal blue eyes, brassy yellow hair and gray roots. I don’t remember speaking to her. I don’t think I could. But I vividly remember the shock in her face when she looked down at me after she adjusted something over my head. She gasped and then exclaimed, “Oh thank goodness honey. We didn’t think you were going to make it.”