In the 75 days leading up to my birthday last November, I’d quietly gone through a private typing challenge, which I interchangeably referred to as the #75daysoftyping and #75daysofmovement challenge. 

The criteria were simple: commit to two-handed typing practice for at least five minutes a day, record myself doing it, and take notes on what I was learning.

The trap, for me, though, is biting off more than I can chew.

The thing was, I’d finally gotten myself re-enrolled in neuro-PT and OT over the late summer and into the late fall, and I was barreling ahead within the structure given me by external organizations without checking in with myself on what it was I deeply needed for it all to be sustainable on my nervous system.

Additionally, I’d finally created an Instagram account for this blog, which I didn’t feel ready to launch publicly until I’d created more content and gotten a feel for how I wanted to use the account. (It’s still not open for public viewing.)

So even though my typing challenge was inherently a very private and low-key one, I turned it into this huge project — capturing daily video footage of myself typing, uploading it to the ’gram, posting daily reflections and often Stories to the account reflecting on what I’d experienced in the world of rehab.

This was fine for a good long stretch, but eventually toward the end I found myself too tired to complete my self-imposed content, opting to post placeholders to get around to again later (I’m noticing now that the final few posts are all placeholders, which is initially frustrating, but I’m choosing compassion for that part of me that always wants to do more, more, and then burns out).

The good news is, though, that I did type daily with both hands for 75+ days.

My intention was to continue my typing practice on a daily basis without posting about it, but evidently this only lasted till 4 December and then I eventually forgot about the practice almost entirely.

Today when I sat down to write this post, I set a five-minute timer so I could start out writing this 500-ish-word post with both hands for five minutes and then continue on with my right hand —

but without getting into the nittiest-grittiest details of what’s going on right now, I’m not in my most physically optimal state at the moment . . . after about four minutes, my left hand had hit the point of neuro-fatigue. Which feels disheartening, but again —

the move is self-compassion.

Self-compassion over self-flagellation, always.

If you looked over the long history of this blog (which I began in 2008), you’d see that I’ve consistently gone through stretches of starting and stopping for long stretches. I used to be really, really hard on myself for this — but now I see it for what it is: a lifelong pattern of overriding my actual underlying needs.

I’m sure this theme will crop up again and again in my future posts, as it’s a HUGE one I’ve been working with in this season. As with anything else re: the nervous system, it is likely many of you have experienced a similar pattern.

My intention & prayer is that these 500-word posts I write will seed some awareness that you find supportive, transformative, and (importantly!!) digestible. Something I am learning over and over and over (and over . . .) again is that information is useless without metabolizing/integration of it, leading to a different embodiment.

With love,

Pamela

PS. I’m keeping this practice as bare-bones and simple as possible today, so just getting this post published is a win. I may (likely) one day decide to “make it pretty,” but that day is not today.

I’m finally back from my 16 days in SoCal — it feels to me like I was gone for far longer because of the energetic toll that hit me in body, mind, spirit. It also feels like I’ve slept about 20 hours a day since I’ve been back.

The re-entry process back into regular life when I no longer feel like a “regular me” has always been a tricky one. As a policy, I never book flights immediately before or after out-of-state live events like most do; I know my body well enough to know that I require some serious aftercare to come back down to Earth.

It’s not because I’m a diva or because I’m rolling in mega-riches — it’s because I’ve developed a relationship to my body of respect and love. What that means is when I haven’t taken care to make sure I’ve got the space I need after going really hard, I would end up paying for it.

Can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve absentmindedly lost something valuable (a passport, a purse, about four different iPods) or got physically lost because my brain was offline and I didn’t realize it. And this isn’t just a post-stroke symptom; it’s just become about 1500% amplified since the injury.

To deny that this shit happens only guarantees that it will happen in fuller force. It’s a part of me, and I’m getting better with it all the time, but denying it definitely wasn’t helping.

Can you love the body you’ve got as it already is, now?

Like, not just “warts and all,” but for serious — warts, rolls, freckles, moles, grey hairs, wrinkles, whatever — plus all its other “defects”? How about all its ways it tries to get your attention?

A lot of those “defects” can feel like wasted time in the moment to try and prevent, but can I just point out how much time, money, energy is spent trying to recover from losing track of important stuff/things/people etc. after the fact?

Although beauty is important, this goes way beyond aesthetics. This touches everything about you and your experience. So you’ve had a stroke; maybe one side of your body, like mine, feels a little “behind.”

Can you let that be okay? Can you, despite any impatience around how slow progress may feel, still hug yourself and send love to yourself, let your body know that you see it’s been hurt somewhere very profound — because it has been! — and that it’s okay as it is, right now?

I remember the first time I ever sent loving energy to my left arm. I released tears I didn’t even know I’d been holding onto for a decade. The experience changed my life.

Try it for five minutes today.

And five minutes tomorrow.

The relationship to your body takes time and nurturing to build — and if you can do it (I know you can), it will change your life for the better.

This will be hard if you have never given yourself permission to give yourself what you need, and all you know is to fight that you have any needs at all.

How has that been working for you?

You know what to do. Incorporate, comment, share. Because I care about you, and you do too.

Warmly,

Pamela

I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT HAVING MY SITE BACK!!!

We always love an excuse to renovate, right?

And, you know, these things take time. Thank you for bearing with me as I attempt to piece back all things old and new here. Wade through my chaotic backend & clean up/recreate those systems. (Pardon the dust, so to speak. There’s quite the learning curve, and scheduling around here can be complex. #techmovesfastandimoveslow)

Yay!

Love,

Pamela

You guys, I loved going live yesterday. I was a #hotdangmess — furreal, my surroundings looked like they’d exploded and the only presentable place I could find to record myself was in front of my white curtains, and then I was over 10 minutes late to the redo after I had to delete the abruptly ended broadcast I originally did — and since I had to do it twice, I got to watch a whole lot of me rambling to see what worked and what didn’t.

This was me leaning into my own yes: Inspiration had hit on my way home in the snowstorm to doing a livestream instead of writing a post, and though going live is always intimidating, I knew that challenging myself to do so would change things up in an interesting way and build up a muscle that I’d like to develop.

I’m extraverted by nature and loooved performing as a child and young adult. But because I began to hide from the world post-stroke, mainly because for a long time having had the stroke was a source of shame for me, I really stopped doing a lot of things I actually loved. It wasn’t necessarily conscious, of course, but I stopped dancing, theatre, sports. Stopped wearing things I wanted to wear so that I could feel safer walking around or safer being seen.

So doing a live broadcast is actually exciting for me. There’s no one making me do it, but it’s aligned with the way I enjoy expressing myself. That’s where my yes lay.

Hiding out is no fun. It feels . . . flat, uneventful. Like I’ve purchased a front-row seat to someone else’s show, someone else’s life. I don’t get to participate, be an active creator in what’s going on.

To be sure, hiding is a useful tool at times. Hiding out from the Inquisition in 1500s Spain when you’re secretly a Jew? Probably an actual lifesaver. But hiding who I really am from the world when there are people who need to hear some truth told to them in the way I deliver it? Who’s that in service to? My inner scaredy cat, and no one else.

Part of this yes naturally comes with a sense of danger, of thrill. There was no real voice of resistance, other than, “I don’t want to have to do this every single week. I know how you are.”

Ha. By the way, did I forget to mention that the voice of resistance (i.e., the ego) is very tricky, and VERY clever? Of course she is. She’s you, designed to protect you by holding you back — and if she weren’t a tricky trickster, you’d get the best of her every time.

Give thanks to her. Acknowledge her for trying to protect you, and then work with her to find a win/win.

So I’ll address the elephant in the room: Am I going to do FB Lives on the regular now that I’ve had this win? Now that I’ve done two in one day(!)?

I don’t know yet. I still need to have a chat with my Resistance, but I can’t say for sure. I’ll keep you posted.

Happy New Year!

Some things:

1. My word of 2019 is “lighthouse.” I’ll be experimenting with broadcasting in fun, fresh new ways, more often.

2. Since that is my intention, the content is not always going to be as long-form as some of my past posts. I’d like there to be a variety of long and short creations in my “portfolio,” as it were.

3. None of this will always look very polished. I’ve been honing my writing chops for 2/3 of my life and am very comfortable hiding behind the written word — but by committing to becoming a lighthouse and experimenting with creative license, there’s gotta be some room for me to put out content that’s done, but not perfect. Be prepared for a little ghetto fabulosity.

A note on new beginnings, and incidentally, the piece for today’s Forgiveness Friday:

Today coincidentally is my eight-year anniversary with my partner, and over the years, we’ve been steadily building a foundation of shared values as we uplevel our relationship. As this has happened, I have found myself unconsciously “testing” him and myself because there is some old junk from our pasts that hasn’t yet been fully resolved or cleared out of the way.

This is super normal in any close relationship that has withstood a long time. Even with people who are so like-minded that everything generally feels easy peasy, closeness always comes with checkpoints where “stuff” needs examination. I’m the first person to say that relationship duration is only one factor in relationship strength; I’ve had superclose besties that I became that close to in the span of a couple months, and acquaintances of several several years whose life aspirations and preferences I couldn’t even begin to tell you.

Intimacy is always evolving, and it’s a practice. It’s a commitment to self-care, so that you can show up energized and generous with others, and vice-versa.

You know why resentments build up between people whose lives are very close, but lack emotional intimacy? Because one or both (usually the case) of the people is holding on to baggage from the past and carrying that baggage from year to year. They aren’t clearing what’s preventing them from being as generous and loving as they’d like to be, and they’re allowing that resentment to build a case for not being giving and not loving that person.

And if you’re doing this with another person — your partner, your friend, your family member — then, chances are, you’re doing it with yourself, too. (Even if that’s a lack of forgiveness for a post-stroke condition.)

I descend from a line of impossible perfectionists. The levels of toxicity that would build up in my body holding grudges against myself or others who didn’t meet my (often completely unreasonable) expectations kept me so blocked off from true closeness with others that I’m actually astonished I had any friends prior to 2015. Yup. That recently.

A lot can change in a really short time, even if it feels like transformation can take forever. Hint: It goes faster when you’re willing.

I wasn’t truly willing to take the chance to ask for what I needed, which suddenly increased in a huge way after having had the stroke. Obviously.

It felt like too much to ask, to ask for anyone to slow down as they walked beside me, or to give me more time to physically do things.

Instead of empowering myself to voice these things, I just hoped for the best. Hoped friends would intuitively know how much time I needed to go from A to B, hoped men I dated would read my mind.

I got lucky sometimes, and other times I lost people because I didn’t know how to talk to them about these new things I needed. (We definitely don’t need to go into how the mind-reading thing went in my love life!)

Part of it was that I was only 19, part of it was that I wasn’t raised with modeling of effective communication, part of it was a lack of discussing any of this in therapy at post-stroke rehab. Regardless, I hope that my 15 years of practice in powerful communication and developing self-trust models some valuable tools for you.

So the first practice of 2019 I’d like to leave you with today is the practice of getting to know what your needs are. Your needs can be practical (“I need a full week to pack a suitcase before I travel anywhere,” “I need my phone to be fully charged at the start of the day”), they can be basic (“I must be fully fed before I start my workday,” “I need eight hours of sleep a night”) — in fact, I encourage you to start there, and they can be emotional (“I need to ask for five minutes to vent before I can move forward”). The last area often feels the hardest to ask for, in our emotionally constipated society, but it is KEY.

Just blindly going through your life not even knowing what your needs are is a great way to not get them met. It’s a great way to add to the baggage everyone’s carrying around year after year (especially you), and that’s frickin’ exhausting. Right?! Stop the madness!!

You have to name it to claim it, and that’s the first step to letting it go and creating more space and less conflict in your life and internal experience.

Don’t get caught up in creating a list that consumes you. If you’re a recovering perfectionist like me, you could go on forever with a list of grievances/demands. If that’s you, start with a list of five things only, and know that even if only one of those needs started getting consistently met that would be a huge improvement from where you were before.

If you find yourself consumed with despair at how many unmet needs you may have right now, there’s a part two to this exercise. Balance this list with a second list — a list of appreciation. Flood your mind (and ideally, your heart) with everything and everyone that you do have in your life that you truly are grateful for and remind yourself there is no lack in your life. Let that list be as long as possible. Really let it into your heart and mind and bathe in that feeling.

Take a deep breath. Know that you’ve taken an essential first step to taking ownership of your own personal power, and that that’s something to celebrate!

Questions? Comments? Share what comes up for you below, and share with someone you know. I would love to hear how the exercise adds to your life!

To new beginnings and renewed aliveness,

Pamela

[Editor’s Note: Revisiting this post in April 2025 — 10 years later! — this post is super cringe. There are a lot of broken promises in this post, but I am committed to backposting for posterity and embracing my cringe until it transmutes into self-compassion.]

Every year, my “strokiversary” rolls around as though it were a ninja — swiftly, quietly. Behind the scenes.

The one exception to this is a couple of years ago when I anticipated the big one-oh and signed up for The Color Run: I was happy to hear that the event was open to walkers as well as runners, and I rented a GoPro and strapped it onto Anthony’s forehead so I could document the experience.

The good news is I’ve recently succeeded in reaching a self-imposed consistency challenge goal: releasing weekly Style Tip Tuesday videos for my jewelry biz — which means I’ve somewhat undergone a crash course in video editing. So I’m working on a video for you in honor of my strokiversary, and I would love to complete it soon.

I have a confession to make. In 2008, I started my memoir. When I began this blog two years later, I really wanted to offer a resource for survivor-thrivers where they could look for ideas and therapies, and most importantly, find community to lift each other’s spirits up in a way only we can.

But in order to do so, I had to make myself more visible. So that the Rehab Revolution movement could truly take off and reach the people who needed it most, I had to become seen. (I’m going to explore the concept of “being seen” in more detail.) I’m sure any stroke survivor reading my words right now can relate to the fears that often accompany physically being seen by the world — as well as emotionally — and it’s important not to forget that I’m right there beside you.

Some of you reading these words right now may have just had a stroke a month ago, or a year ago, or perhaps more time ago, or less. I simultaneously want you to know that a) you’re not alone in your experience, and b) now that it’s been 12 years, I’ve had a lot of time and opportunity to give me the “street cred” to guide you along the way. I’m living the reality of surviving from a debilitating stroke that ground my life to a screeching halt at the age of 19, and because I know I’m bigger than some brain injury, and because I’m blessed with an expressive voice, I’m willing to hold myself up to a new standard, and to help advocate for those who come after me.

This new standard means I’d like to step up in a greater way so I can serve you. I want to inspire those who experience the total upheaval and intensity of a stroke so that they know that life doesn’t end there. Those who came before me (like Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor) have given me the same gift, and I want to provide that for those who came beside me, and those of you who will come after me.

Here’s a surprise for you. I’ve hinted at this on my Facebook page — so if you were anxious to find out what’s coming, here’s the Official Announcement:

I’m not super techy, so I don’t know how long it will take me to transfer everything over to the new address, but I’m hiring some people who know what they’re doing.

The new website should be under construction for a little bit, but in the meantime, you can still contact me on the Facebook page (I’m changing the name on there, but the address will stay the same) or e-mail me at revolution.rehab@gmail.com. (That address will remain dedicated to my oldest, loyalest readers.) I’m not super certain whether my original content will remain at this URL, though. (I’ll make sure to get the right team of people to get the answers to any of your questions.)

I’m working diligently to come up with a plan for how I can better serve you in the near, near future — there are a lot of ideas, and I’m bubbling over in excitement. You can expect a multimedia experience, from a stronger social media presence, to regular blog content, to videos, to podcasts, livestreams, and more!

Tomorrow I begin a six-week blog challenge, so you’ll definitely see much more of me very, very soon. Looks like year 12 is a pivotal one for me! I’m declaring a #StrokiversaryWeek, so we can explore the mixed emotions, feelings, memories, and experiences that often come together on this date.

What do you usually do on your strokiversary? Leave it in a comment!

To our healing,

Pamela