The Back of The Ambulance Shifted Everything I Believed About Success

I found myself in the back of an ambulance almost a year ago, with my heart racing in ways it shouldn’t have been. What started as a terrifying episode landed me in the ICU and eventually on the cath lab table. My boyfriend was following behind, texting my girls:
Don’t worry. I have her. I would follow her anywhere.

Even now, I can barely type those words without emotion rising in my throat. Because one of the hardest battles I’ve faced isn’t what most people assume. It hasn’t been surviving childhood sexual abuse. It hasn’t been surviving the emotional wreckage left by a mother who called me ugly and crazy.

The battle has been allowing myself to be fully loved despite it. To let someone see me, care for me, stay, and choose me, even when every part of me still sometimes whispers that I don’t deserve it. That is its own layer of healing I’m still walking through.

But before I get there, I need to tell you what the ambulance taught me.

Because that moment did something I never expected.

The first thing I felt was peace.
Not panic. Not terror.
Peace.

It surprised me. My body was doing things that scared me, yet I knew I couldn’t control it. What would happen next would happen. And oddly enough, I knew my body was issuing a warning, one that could have been fatal. It was as if my body was telling me: you’ve pushed too hard, you’ve tried to wreck me, but here we are. 

But even at that moment, I was calm. Because I knew — whatever was coming, was truly out of my control and I had a radical acceptance that if it was the end, I will have finished well.

Time Is My Most Precious Resource

Laying there, with uncertainty pressing in, I wasn’t thinking about my resume. I wasn’t mentally listing my accomplishments or my income or any version of success I used to chase.

I thought of my daughters and the conversations we still needed to have, the moments I was grateful I’d been present for, and the ones I knew I had missed. I thought of the friendships, the adventures, and the beautiful life I’ve already built and lived.

I thought of second chances and of the man driving behind me, who keeps showing up so well. The one who helps me believe in trust again, who helps me be quietly brave and calm. He’s shown me that it’s possible to step outside the box of "shoulds" and build a life that fits, on our own terms.

Time is the resource we waste until we realize we can’t buy it back. This year, that truth has come close — through my own health, and through the losses of women I love and the death of my mother. Life has a hard stop, and none of us get to choose when that stop comes.

Life and time go on whether you are participating or not.

When you're young, you live like time is unlimited. But eventually, if you're paying attention, you realize the second half of life feels different. The urgency sharpens. The noise fades. What once seemed important begins to lose its weight. The journey itself becomes the reward—not because you "arrived" but because you finally started noticing the treasures you used to walk right past.

And those treasures? They’re not found in applause, money, titles, or “followers.” They’re found in quiet moments of honesty after failure, in hard conversations that grow you, in humility that’s still wrapped in hope.

Every experience that brought me to my knees also opened my eyes.

Now, the question I ask isn’t: How much does this cost?
It’s: Is this where I want to spend my time?

Success That Can’t Be Measured in Dollars

We talk about success like it's something clean and tidy. I hear people say, I just want my kids to be successful. I used to say that, too. But over time, I’ve learned to ask myself what success means.

For years, I thought success was whatever the world could see — the house, the job, the validation. If I could build something impressive enough on the outside, maybe it would fill what was empty inside.

But now I know the greatest success I’ve achieved is breaking generational patterns and building something healthier (not perfect) for my daughters. It's been choosing to heal, even when it terrified me and meant that I “selfishly” chose myself above “what will they think?” 

It’s been facing my failed marriage and my unhealthy patterns, choosing to build new relationships in healthier ways, and reshaping old relationships so they can grow healthier too, different from anything I ever saw growing up.

That kind of success doesn’t pay you back in dollars. It pays you back in peace. In hope. In a quiet confidence that something true is being built.

The trauma I carried used to leave me hollow. But strangely that hollow space taught me to see beauty in others instead of evil long before I ever learned to see beauty in myself. 

That’s been some of my deepest work — finally learning to see the beauty in me. To celebrate it, even when the world told me otherwise. Even when my own mother told me I was ugly. Even when she called me crazy.

That pain shaped me, but it didn’t define me. I made my life beautiful art and that, too, has been my greatest success. I learned to see beauty not because the world was perfect, but because even in its brokenness — even through my own brokenness — beauty still existed. And that became part of my healing.

Extending the Work: Learning to Be Loved

But breaking patterns didn’t stop with my daughters.

I’m learning how to build something different in partnership too — something I never fully understood in my first marriage. I’m learning how to communicate differently, how to see another person with curiosity instead of fear, how to hold space for both of us to grow at the same time. This is also part of breaking cycles.

And if I’m honest, one of the hardest pieces has been allowing myself to be loved fully — by someone who chooses to love me, not out of obligation, but simply because they want to. That’s unfamiliar ground. My instinct is still to question it, to brace for it to leave, to feel like I don’t deserve it. But part of my healing is learning to stand still long enough to receive love without suspicion. To let someone see me fully — the strong, the scared, the messy, the healing — and choose me anyway.

That might be the hardest and final pattern of all to break.

When Life Gets a Vote

But here’s what we don’t like to admit:
We don’t get to control everything.

Life gets a vote. And sometimes life goes undefeated.

The choices of others leave marks you never asked for. Their words, their actions, their pain — all of it spills into your world like an unpredictable tornado. Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes not. But the damage lands either way. And if we’re honest, we’ve done the same. None of us walk through life untouched, and none of us walk through without leaving some bruises behind.

And when the storm finally clears, and you’re standing in the wreckage — your choices tangled with theirs — you still have a choice.

I’ve always wrestled with the phrase: God gives beauty for ashes.
I believe it’s true.
But I also believe we have to participate.

Because beauty doesn’t just fall into your lap. You have to pick up the paintbrush with trembling hands, look at the ashes, and choose to create something beautiful from what’s left — every single time.

And we have to show our children how to do the same. That’s resilience. That’s healing. That’s leadership. That’s legacy.

And This Is What the Ambulance Taught Me

In the back of that ambulance, I didn’t see my resume.
I saw my girls.
I saw the people who stayed.
I saw the work I’ve done to rebuild.
I saw what I’ve carried — and what I’ve finally laid down.
And for the first time in a long time, I am allowing myself to feel the weight of being fully loved.

Because that may be the hardest work of all — allowing people to love you, even when you don’t think you deserve it.

The world may measure success by what you collect.
But I’ve learned: real success is what you’re still able to give.

And that kind of wealth never runs out.