Healing the Brain

Right, Left, Right

A note before you begin: this is the story of how movement helped bring me back to life after neurological Lyme disease nearly took it—told with as much laughter as I can muster, because heaven knows I earned the right to laugh about it. If you're fighting to recover from something hard, this one's for you.

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I'd been home from Mexico about eight months when I decided I was finally strong enough to run again. I dusted off my running clothes, marched outside full of optimism, and made it roughly two blocks before I felt exactly like a fish flopping on a dock.

I slowed to a walk, turned the corner, and shuffled about twenty feet off the road—because if I was going to collapse, I at least wanted the decency to do it discreetly, out of everyone's view. I seriously debated calling 911. My whole body hurt. It was as if every single cell was screaming for oxygen. I stayed conscious, barely, and eventually made it home.

A couple of months later, my doctor explained what was happening in a way I've never forgotten: in a healthy body, oxygen passes between cells in about three-quarters of a second. Mine was taking three to four seconds. My immune system, he said, had essentially stopped defending me—I had "no castle walls" left at all, which had let all sorts of opportunistic infections move in and go straight for my organs and brain. It's the reason I'd come a few short breaths from dying more than once in Mexico, with people literally coaching me to breathe.

So. That was my starting line.

The coach who thought I was faking

A few months into all this, I got invited to a fitness group a very decorated natural bodybuilder was running for business owners. The moment I heard this man's résumé, I signed up without a second thought—health history be darned.

He and his wife pulled me aside after the first class and offered to coach me one-on-one, saying they saw real potential in me. I just wanted to be alive. But I could tell he had a winning mentality I desperately needed, and that he'd shape not just my body but my spirit.

There was a catch: I was also seeing one of the top Lyme doctors in the state, and I couldn't afford both. Fitness, or the Lyme expert? I prayed and prayed—and kept feeling an unmistakable pull toward the coach. I had no idea at the time that exercise would turn out to be one of the most powerful things a body like mine could do. But God knew, and He was quietly steering me exactly where I needed to be.

Here's the humbling part: when we started, I could not do a single push-up. Not from weakness—my brain simply would not send the signal to my arms to bend. I'd kneel there, trembling, visualizing the movement, tears rolling, until my body finally answered. I'd get on the stair-stepper and discover I couldn't walk and talk at the same time. My hands would shake too hard to unclip a piece of equipment—and when my coach reached over to help, I'd stubbornly say "No," and stay locked on that one clip until I'd conquered it myself.

For a while, honestly, he thought I was faking it or just not trying. Eventually he decided I was the hardest-working person he'd ever trained. (He did add "besides myself." I let him have that one.)

Learning to dance again (and not flip anyone off)

Over the course of a year, we tweaked my diet, ramped up the movement, and—slowly, unbelievably—I got back to dancing.

And oh, the comedy of it. My body and my brain were not always on speaking terms. I'd feel like I was doing one thing, glance in the mirror, and find I was doing something else entirely. The all-time best: I'd become convinced my hand was making a very rude gesture at the other dancers. I'd panic, whip my head toward the mirror to check, and—nope. Perfectly polite fingers. Crisis averted. Every single time.

I'd forget choreography the instant I learned it, like a mischievous gremlin wiped the whiteboard of my brain every night. Girls half my age would dance beside me while I frantically copied their feet, and no one could quite believe I'd once danced professionally. It was humbling and embarrassing and hard.

But eight months later, I performed. Forty pounds lighter, brain and body nearly back online. And the week before the show, I finally felt the small muscles in my foot again that helped me bevel my foot —a tiny victory that felt like the whole sun coming out.

The thing I didn't expect to be the hero

Here's what surprised me most, and what I want you to walk away with: the thing that did the most to rebuild my brain wasn't a supplement or a special diet, as much as I love those. It was movement.

I've since watched this play out everywhere. An architect I was working with, recovering from a car accident that injured his brain, told me about exercises that helped reopen and heal the neural pathways he'd lost. A brain-training program my relatives and my doctor both used turned out to hinge more on the exercises than even the diet changes. When my son struggled with an eye-focusing issue, his doctor prescribed physical exercises to strengthen the connection between eye and brain.

For years, a dear friend of mine—a bit of a fitness legend, the kind of guy who'd perch on a stationary bike beside a highway billboard just to dare passersby to move a little—and I would happily argue over what mattered more for healing: what you eat, or how you move. After everything I've lived, my honest answer is both. But for healing the brain specifically, movement turned out to matter more than I ever realized—not just to build new pathways, but to keep the lymphatic system flowing. A wise naturopath once told me that the moment it's hardest to exercise is the exact moment we need it most.

Which brings me to the strangest, most stubborn thing I ever did. Before Mexico, my signals were so crossed that I'd put my right foot down and my brain would register it as my left. Right, left, right—all scrambled. I prayed to know what to do, and the answer I got was, of all things: walk twelve miles. Ridiculous, I know. So I'd grip the treadmill rails to hold myself upright and cry as the belt dragged my legs forward while my brain misfired like a broken string of Christmas lights. But slowly—one confused step at a time—those pathways healed. Eventually I could just... walk. Normally. Right, left, right.

Before you lace up

Now, please hear me, because I care about you: I am not your doctor, and I nearly called an ambulance on my own sidewalk. If you're recovering from something serious, talk to your doctor first, start gentler than you think you need to, and listen to your body. The goal is to come back to life, not to prove a point. Even twenty seconds of movement counts. Truly—start there if that's all you've got.

But when you're able, and when in doubt: move. One foot, then the other. Cry through it if you have to; I did. Those small, stubborn steps have a way of healing things we can't even see.

Right, left, right. Keep going. You're doing better than you know.

Lots of love,

Steffanie