The Breaking Point

This is where the story begins. The day my body stopped, my soul began to listen. This chapter introduces the moment that changed everything — and the faith that carried me through.

Intro (for readers):

On January 26, 2019, my life split.

At first, I thought it was just a bad morning — a lingering migraine, a stubborn limb, a rough start. But it wasn’t. It was a stroke.

This is the chapter where everything begins — not with clarity, but confusion. Not with peace, but pressure. I didn’t know this was the day I would begin to unlearn everything I believed about myself, my body, my purpose, and my faith. But it was.

This was the day I broke. And started becoming something new.

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The Breaking Point

I had the worst migraine of my life — one that lasted three days.
By the morning of January 26, 2019, I knew something wasn’t right. But I didn’t know just how wrong it was.

I woke up and couldn’t feel the left side of my body. I was 26 years old.

My boyfriend — now my husband — was already at the gym. I remember being irritated that I couldn’t get up and get ready for work. I kept trying. I kept willing my body to just cooperate. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t walk to the bathroom. Couldn’t feel the floor under me.

I called him. “Can you come help me? I can’t get out of bed. I can’t use my left side. I need to get ready for work.”

He rushed home and helped me to the bathroom. He was worried. But I wasn’t. I brushed it off — this happens sometimes, I told him. It always comes back.

My grandmother and he insisted I go to the ER. I didn’t want to. But I went.

And then came the words: “You’re having a stroke.”

I didn’t believe them. Not really. Not fully. I even texted my boss from the hospital bed:

Hey, I won’t be in today — apparently I’m having a stroke?

I laughed when I typed it. Nervous. Detached. Disbelieving. Because what kind of 26-year-old has a stroke?

Apparently, me.

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The Week I Lost My Old Life

I spent a week in the hospital. A few months in physical therapy and occupational therapy. Months seeing cardiologists and neurologists. My days became doctor’s appointments and tests and more waiting rooms than I can count. And still — no one could explain why it had happened.

Until they could.

The plot twist? There were signs. Many of them. That sentence I kept saying — “this happens sometimes, but on a smaller scale” — that wasn’t nothing. That was everything.

They were TIAs — transient ischemic attacks. Small strokes. My body had been warning me. I just hadn’t known how to listen.

Eventually, I met with a researcher at a state hospital. That’s when I received the official diagnosis:
Moyamoya disease.

A rare, progressive disorder of the blood vessels in the brain. Named after the Japanese word for “puff of smoke” — what the tangled vessels look like on imaging.

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Faith in the Smoke

For months, I walked around with disbelief. The diagnosis didn’t feel real. The stroke didn’t feel real. But the brokenness was real. The fatigue. The weakness. The grief. The subtle shame of being “young and sick.”

And yet, somehow… I wasn’t alone in it.

God never stopped speaking. Not loudly. Not through miracles. But in the quiet. In the discomfort. In the frustration of asking for help. In the humility of not being able to do it all myself anymore. I broke. But I was not discarded. I was being remade.

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Tags:

memoir, stroke survivor, moyamoya, faith, neurological health, trauma and recovery, healing