There are moments when you suddenly realize that everything you thought your life would be is no longer possible.

The path you thought you would follow isn’t there and is no longer an option.

These moments can happen in a flash. Sometimes in the most mundane ways. Standing at the fridge. Taking a walk. Reading a book. You pause and realize you can no longer stay where you are.

Sometimes those moments are more heightened. You’re standing in a hospital room or a lawyer’s office, and the choice has been taken from you.

It’s as if the path diverges at a Y in the road, but the other option has washed away in the storm and no longer exists.

And for a while you can see the life that would’ve been, walking quietly alongside you. So close you can almost reach out and touch it.

When my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2022, the life we had planned disappeared.
His job, flying helicopters for the Coast Guard, was no longer an option.
Our plans to move back to Alaska next tour were no longer an option.
Our retirement plan of finding a place by the sea and traveling – gone.


The idea that I’d slowly increase my business and build it over the next few years was suddenly gone. I was now the only one who could work.

But the life we could’ve had didn’t just dissipate with the diagnosis. There was no Poof! – now it’s invisible.  

We walked alongside it for a very long while.
Its presence was like a heavy weight. Here, but not here. Visible, but not accessible. As if we could almost reach out and touch it.


I remember those first few months of thinking, if this hadn’t happened, then we would be “here.” Or we would be doing “this.” We’d be moving now. It would be dark in Alaska. We’d  be traveling here and on adventures; we’d be selling the house, and on and on.


This lasted far longer than I thought it would. Looking at the life that wasn’t to be. Seeing it so clearly, but not being able to access it.

It was soul crushing. Waves of grief and loss washing over me.

And yet I'd have to stay present, in the moment, in the place we were because that’s what was real and happening.


It was like waking up from a dream or an alternate reality and realizing that everything we thought we knew, everything we thought we’d do wasn’t going to happen any more.

Eventually, that parallel timeline faded. I rarely think of it anymore.


Mostly, I’ve anchored myself in this timeline. The one where everything is different, but it’s good and hard in different ways. 

I was having coffee with a new acquaintance and was telling him my story and how we ended up in the small town of Scituate. And he took it all in, with a little shock and a lot of understanding. 

He said to me, “It reminds me of this book I got when we first adopted our child. It was called You’ll Dream New Dreams.” I sat there and realized that’s exactly what happened. 

As the old dreams faded and I came to terms with our new reality, new ones took their place. 

Retirement came 20 years early for my husband. By some miracle, we were able to find a little cottage by the sea. We now have coffee and tea on warm mornings while we watch the ocean crash against the seawall and the sea birds  swoop and dive.

Work for me is completely different, but more fulfilling than ever. I’ll never know if I would have landed here without what happened. 

I do know that the diagnosis changed everything. We don’t take things for granted any more. We slow down, spend more time together. We make room to say yes more often. Our travel plans together are on pause, but we are hoping that changes in 2026.

I don’t know that I’ll ever look at this and say it happened for a reason. I don’t believe that. But I do know that, in this moment, I want to choose meaning anyway. I want myself to change, my work to change, so that it all wasn’t for nothing. 

I joke with friends and say that I will probably have more quality time with my husband now, then I ever would’ve had if he’d continued to work 60 hour weeks. 

And maybe that’s the win. Sitting with the person I love in the morning with a cup of tea and just holding their hand watching the waves. 

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