Fire Hydrant to Chapters I Didn't Know I'd Have to Write

I sat down to write this a dozen times over the past months and chickened out every single time. I finally stopped negotiating with myself and just let it come out, a little raw, and a little all-over-the-place.

There's a part of this post-bike-crash journey I was never prepared for. It took a lot of my identity and reformulated new parts of who I am. It also took an enormous amount of energy I don't think I'll ever get back. I feel permanently drained, like there's a void that won't be filled.

This particular part of the journey feels like a forever part of my life. The crash fundamentally changed me, and late 2025 into 2026 it hit me hard. You'd never know it, other than me not writing my blog, stepping back from hard-core building my coaching business, and trying to learn to sit in all of it.

I look fine. I look like I move fine. Most people have no idea how serious the damage is, physical and mental. There are moments I try to articulate it and it feels like I'm making a bigger deal than it is, like I'm being so dramatic. I'm not. But I feel like I'm gaslighting myself, like some part of me needs the lived experience of it to seem smaller than it actually is. Most of the time, I don't know why.

Two years of ongoing emotional therapy work, one for life, one for the bike crash PTSD, is a big reason for the skills I've added to my life toolbox to move through what's happening now: really coming down off shock, adrenaline, and survival of this crash in The After. In 2026, my energy crashed. Not a collapse, nothing dramatic. It felt like a part of my soul just said fuck this, I cannot do this anymore, the way you keep trying to function. I don't feel the same about a lot of things anymore. Parts of me have gone quiet. I'm doing well to not fill that space with nonsense things that do not serve me. I understand what it means to pour from an empty cup, so I will not pour into my cup a bunch of bullshit that gets me everything I do not want.

All of that is a big part of why I haven't been writing, and why I went quiet in ways that weren't like me.

I love this blog, the whole process, brainstorming by keyboard-dumping everything out, then refining it down to something concise, because let's be honest, those of you with my cell number know I can write a long-AF text message, but everyone here gets the professional, edited version. I genuinely enjoy blog writing, outcome aside. If nobody reads it, or I get judged, that's what you sign up for when you put yourself out there. I always want this to resonate with you, but we write for ourselves first. It gets our hearts and souls outside our bodies. Both things are true at once.

So why now? Why rip the band-aid off today? Because I'm ready enough. That's one of the bigger lessons I've learned, sometimes you have to live your way to a point where your soul tells you it's time, and being ready doesn't mean it's easy. It just means I feel enough self-worth and confidence right now to know that if I keep avoiding this, I'm choosing to play small and let fear run the show. And fear left unchecked doesn't stay quiet, it starts writing scripts that feel real even when they're not. I'd rather get off that train of fear at the station called You Are Ready.

Life doesn't wait for you, everyone else keeps moving while you're still in the muck of your own intensity. The first year of The After felt like watching my life happen from outside it. 

I'm over two years out now, and I'm still adapting to physically functioning in life and sport. My highlights on social media are just that: highlights. Not the tears, not the mental health, not the dreams I keep pushing aside, not the days I feel lost in my own life. And my soul told me I am ready to write again, so I'm listening and being actionable, swallowing the fears, digesting them, and pooping them right on out.

If I'm being totally honest, there's safety in staying small after a letdown like this. It feels easy and cozy, until the weight of it becomes too much to avoid and carry. It's always looming overhead, in the peripheral, in the background. I miss, and I am grieving, my body before the crash. I miss an arm and a leg that just works correctly and is not in pain.

A week after I got home from the hospital in 2024, I chopped off all my hair. I couldn't use my arm for way too long, and I wasn't going to make my husband and son my daily stylists, so I made the practical choice. I was in a state of shock, this get-it-done, matter-of-fact woman trying to function like nothing had happened. I think I really BS'd myself into this mindset of being so fully present and understanding of my circumstances, but really, I was in denial about a lot at the time. There were a lot of raw emotions, but I also had to be practical, because life moved on quickly whether I was ready or not. Even in my denial and shock, cutting my hair off was a genuinely practical decision. My husband had to wash, dry, and put my hair up for that first week. With all the love in his heart, he tried, he really did. YouTube tutorials, verbal coaching... and still, I got my hair cut off. Yes, laugh with me, it's pure comedy.

I started growing my hair back out earlier this year, and a month ago I cut it short again. Some things you just don't have the bandwidth to fight, so you pick your battles. Growing hair and that maintenance isn't one of mine right now, I need it easy, so I have room for the things that actually take effort.

Because while I can muscle through it, and some days life demands exactly that, it's not sustainable long-term. And what I'm about to say isn't a pitch for coaching, it's just true: the coaches I've had through this sport taught me more about facing myself than I ever would have figured out alone. My coaches and the sport of triathlon organically forced personal inventory on a level nothing else had. It pulled resilience, courage, and self-worth out of me that were already there but never properly developed, and on a very personal note, it's because of a dysfunctional system from family-of-origin that left me emotionally shelled, immature, and dysregulated in my formative years and well into early adulthood.

When the universe decided triathlon was my new school of life level-up, I didn't pause. I did it. Now I'm facing this chapter with real, healthy tools, and it feels amazingly good knowing this sport was, and always will be, a huge contributing factor to how I got a do-over to grow up and become the person I am today. You do not stick with a community and sport for 13 years, and claw your way back to it after a bike crash, unless it's filling your cup with goodness. I get to keep drawing and growing from it. I'm human, and I'm a woman equipped to manage and navigate life without escaping and numbing, always working to be emotionally mature, regulate my nervous system, able to draw the boundary line when the chaos is too much, hold her own, be authentically herself, socially awkward, and laugh about it.

These past months, I've been trying to understand a moment that changed me permanently. Sitting through it with any intention doesn't mean I've got it figured out. It means I'm learning to sit in the big and very noticeable quiet as the, shock, adrenaline and survival mode finally settle, my chest isn't as tight, my breathing isn't as shallow, and I choose to trust the journey. There are days I just want to give the bird to it, and I do. There are days you just need and should give a big ol' bird to things. It really is okay, and it really is freeing.

Then there is the summer of 2026, coming back to real deal training and racing on top of all that, which might have been a little insane. Let me be clear, I do not regret it at all. What it took to show up at start lines and cross finish lines is still a blur I haven't fully unpacked. I will. I have to. Next blog for sure.

Training has cycles for a reason, specificity, micro, meso, macro, all of it built so you can carry increasing load and intensity without breaking. It is about adaptability. I think life is like that too. Every day is building the foundation for the next, and some days you're carrying more than you planned to. It all fits as you adapt, even the parts that don't feel like it yet.

What I'd Love for You to Take From This

It's 100% okay to not do, to not commit, to rest. To say no. To stop showing up for a life that's changed underneath you when you don't yet know what to do with it. It's okay to go into your cave, breathe slowly and deeply, and quiet the chaos before you try to carry anything else. It is okay to not be busy and to rest your mind, body, and spirit. It is okay to not be okay. The positivity market is making a lot of money convincing us that we've got to be fully functioning, always grateful, always on, always positive. Full Stop. Hard Nope. 

Self-care isn't selfish, and it isn't failing at life because you need to rest, recalibrate, and regroup. That matters to all the cycles of life, giving yourself the real rest your system is asking for. We need rest days in training, that's how you get the most out of yourself instead of the least, how you show up stronger and fully present instead of powering through on guilt and shame for slowing down. Always trying to recover instead of actually resting creates its own burnout cycle and failure mindset, and that's not serving the rest we so often truly need. Learn to listen to that alarm bell saying whoa, slow down and rest, please. It shows up for a reason, and ignoring it doesn't get you the results you actually want and need.

I guess I can call this a major self-care season, one where I took, and will keep taking, the life rest days required to build what I want and need out of these future chapters. I want my life back. But I know I've got a lot of ground left to cover, my life in The Before is not coming back even when my brain is reaching for what it is familiar and safe. This is The After, and even writing this has helped me understand The After better, that I do not have to know what The After looks like today, or tomorrow, or any given future time. Some days I will be flying by the seat of my pants and some days I'll be grounded and centered, and that crazy journey is an amazing gift of life.

Thank you for reading this. It scared the hell out of me to write, there were tears, and at the end of all that, there's an immense amount of pride in facing my fears and sharing it. More silver linings in the Fire Hydrant to Finish Line adventure…

Stay tuned for the 2026 Fire Hydrant to Finish Lines recap: an amazing return to racing. Still unpacking it all.

Hey you, 

Keep SHINING!