I Read NieNie
Photo: Cheryl Evans, copyright The Arizona Republic
I first heard of Stephanie Nielson and her blog, the NieNie Dialogues, when I was living in Tempe, Arizona, not far from where she lived with her husband and four children. (This woman had four children by the time she was 28 and still dresses cute - that alone blows my mind.) I started reading her blog regularly last fall after she was the subject of a beautifully-written profile by the Arizona Republic's Jaimee Rose.
In August 2008, the plane Stephanie and her husband Christian were flying crashed. Christian's flight instructor was killed instantly, and both Nielsons were seriously injured. Especially Stephanie. She was burned over 80 percent of her body. Doctors didn't think she was going to live. The pain was bad enough that on the rare moments when she awoke from her medically-induced coma, she prayed that she wouldn't.
But she did. The accident changed her life - she looks different now, and everything is harder, and she still isn't done with pain and surgeries and hospital rooms. But she is choosing, each day, to get up, to take care of her children, to be creative, to love her family, and to accept the gift of life in whatever form it takes. It's clear from her blog that some days are very, very hard. But she is still funny, and she still gets excited over cupcakes and cute shoes. She's redefined for me what it means to choose your response to life. She's changed the way I think about gratitude.
When I read Jaimee's story I went back and looked at old posts from Stephanie's blog, the ones she wrote in the weeks right before the accident that changed everything. There are posts about Christian getting his pilot's license that make me want to cry "Don't get in the plane!" the way you yell at the screen at horror movies. And there is a portrait she posted of her family, all smiles, all beautiful, with an accompanying essay on how much she loves her life just the way it is.
Read and listen to this slideshow of Stephanie in her own words to see how profoundly her life changed.
None of us can know how close we are to a moment that changes everything. But there are two things that transcend the randomness of an often cruel world - the ability to appreciate a good thing while you've got it, and the ability to love a new life, even when it's very different from the one you anticipated. Thank you, Stephanie, for your determination, your joyful embrace of life, and for taking the time to share it with the rest of us. You are a truly beautiful woman, in every definition of the word.
Posted on Tuesday, Mar 16, 2010
