Both Versions Are Me

Let me tell you who I am, so we start in the right place.

I am the wild child. I am the party. I'm the one throwing Jell-O shots as people walk in, rapping every word to 90s hip hop, and staying until the lights come on. I was "crazy Kristen" — and I was Miss Souza, standing on chairs teaching kids with learning disabilities how to read by rapping and dancing, because that's what worked and I didn't have time for boring.

Both of those people are me. Hold onto that.

Here's what nobody tells you about getting sick: the illness doesn't just take your body. It takes your identity. Or at least, it tries to.

Now most of the world sees me as "a sick person." Medically complicated. Chronically ill. A patient. I've essentially self-taught a nursing-level understanding of my conditions, and I've been told more than once by doctors — good ones, the unicorn kind who actually want to help — "You are the most medically literate patient I have ever met."

I find that flattering. I also find it wildly telling about the state of patient care.

Being underestimated is half the fun.

I am impulsive, sarcastic, funny — and I feel things deeply. All the way down. My emotional intelligence is, at times, genuinely inconvenient. It is also completely, entirely me.

Being sick has humbled me in ways I would never trade. I am a better human for it. I can read a room before most people have made eye contact. I have rebuilt my life more times than I care to count, and I am still — somehow — the most emotionally stable person I know. That is not nothing.

I graduated first in my class, summa cum laude, from a graduate program nobody expected me to finish. When I am passionate and I believe in something, I am unstoppable.

Which is exactly why I've been so frustrated that this blog isn't five years old already — with books written, and a community of people I've helped, or at the very least made laugh.

But here's where I've landed: I wasn't late. I was still becoming.

Crazy Kristen didn't go anywhere. Miss Souza didn't disappear. The sick person is real, and she is also the most resilient human I have ever had the displeasure of being.

All of it is me. I refuse to erase any of it.

I am determined to create what I wish existed these last 15 years — health and wellness coaching, caregiver support and education, a community for the people holding it all together and the ones being held. You can build a life you love — it will be different, and it will not be easy. But I have to believe I was given these mountains to show you that they in fact can be moved.

Five years late, exactly on time — welcome to the blog.