The Day Everything Changed

Backstroke & Breakthroughs – Post #14

I don’t talk about it often, but there was a time I wasn’t sure I’d make it.
Not just emotionally. Not metaphorically.
I mean physically. I almost didn’t live.

After college, I moved to Florida full of ambition and sunlight. I was ready to build a career, start fresh, and make my family proud. But what I didn’t expect was the moment my body would give out. A medical emergency—swift, brutal, and out of nowhere—landed me in a hospital bed. And then, for over a year, I was down. Bedridden. Stuck. Quiet.

In those still moments—where even sitting up felt impossible—my mind spiraled. I questioned everything. My body. My worth. My purpose. The world moved on without me. And I began to wonder if I was being erased, little by little, from the life I had just started to build.

But it was in that silence that I found a strange kind of clarity.
Life isn’t promised. Not your next step, not your next breath.
So what do you do with your life? That’s everything.

I didn’t wake up one day. I rebuilt—inch by inch.
I went back to work where it all began: lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons at the YMCA. The irony wasn’t lost on me—coming back to water, the very place I found rhythm as a teen athlete, and using it to save others while slowly saving myself.

This week’s takeaway:
Survival is a sacred thing. But coming back to life? That’s spiritual.

When I say I move with purpose now, it’s because I’ve seen what it means to lose momentum entirely. I’ve felt the edge. I’ve looked at everything I dreamed of and thought, “Maybe I’ll never get there.” And I still chose to try.

So if you’re reading this and you’re in your own stuck season, your own valley—know this:

You are not done. You are still here. And “still here” is powerful.

Reborn in every step,
– J.R.