I’m Sasha.
Sasha grew up shy. She found her voice through her body — first as a competitive gymnast, then as a recruited hurdler at the University of Notre Dame. The way she pushed harder, went further, trained longer was how she spoke.
That language carried her into a life in motion. Backcountry guide, leading people on whitewater, rock and long backpacking trips through the bush of Australia and along the rock faces of the Sierra Nevada. Self-defense instructor at a mixed martial arts gym. Her livelihood and her identity were tightly wrapped up in what her body could do.
Somewhere along the way, she came to believe that being valuable meant being in motion. That if she stopped moving, she might not matter.
The body always whispers before it shouts.
At 29, the whispers came. Cramping in her right hand. Numbness creeping up from her toes. Within five months, an athlete who could not trust her body to carry her across the kitchen. The diagnosis: a giant Schwannoma tumor wrapped around her spinal cord.
The surgery — with Dr. Langston Holly at UCLA — was cancelled at the last moment in the chaos of the COVID hospital system. It was one of the lowest points of her life. And it was where, lying in a hospital bed with all her options gone, something shifted. Not heard, but felt. I have you.
The surgery happened. The recovery took four months in a neck brace, sleeping in a chair in the living room, with cards from friends and family taped to the window. Less than a year after the brace came off, Sasha was on the Pacific Crest Trail, hiking 550 miles in four weeks. She has now hiked over 1,600 miles of it, with Oregon and Washington still to come.
Sasha had spent a lifetime giving — holding, carrying, fixing, keeping it together for everyone around her. What she didn’t know how to do was receive. The tumor formed in the exact place she had spent years holding far more than was hers to carry. Square in the middle of her shoulders, behind her neck, where her body quite literally held her head up.
The story of how she healed isn’t a movie moment. It’s a slow, humbling, deeply ordinary story about a sister catching her in the shower. Cards in a window. A quiet voice that wasn’t a voice. A different kind of resilience — not the kind that forces or fights, but the kind that trusts, adapts, and allows.
That’s what this book is about. Not a slogan. Not a system. A story, written so it might find you in the moments where you most need to remember you’re not alone.
GRIT & GRACE.
Grit is real, and it matters. It’s what gets you to the edge — what has you step forward even when you’re afraid. Grace is what catches you. Resilience is both: the courage to keep moving, and the willingness to let yourself be held.
A few convictions, earned the slow way:
- →The body always whispers before it shouts. Listen earlier.
- →Resilience isn't about being strong all the time. It's the courage to keep moving and the willingness to let yourself be held.
- →Gratitude is one of the purest forms of receiving. It shifts you from striving to allowing.
- →You don't have to hit rock bottom to find this. It can meet you in the smallest moments.
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