Nancy Strahl’s life changed in the span of an afternoon.
It began like any ordinary day in her small town in Oregon.
She dropped her husband and son off at the airport, waved them off for their fishing trip to Alaska, and drove home to settle into what she expected to be a quiet weekend alone.
But somewhere along the drive, something didn’t feel right.
It started as a queasy sensation in her stomach, the kind of thing you might brush off as food poisoning or maybe just a long day catching up with her.
She laid down when she got home, thinking it would pass.
It didn’t.
By nightfall, she was in the emergency room, where a doctor delivered words that would split her life into two parts: before and after.
Nancy was having a stroke.
By the next morning, she woke to find she couldn’t move her legs.
The doctors told her the thing no one wants to hear: she might never walk again.
Nancy was 51.
She had a son about to start his life, a husband she’d built a home with, and dreams she hadn’t yet let herself admit out loud.
To think all of that could be put on hold—or taken away entirely—was something her mind couldn’t make sense of.
In the weeks that followed, she did the only thing she could: she showed up.
She went through the motions of the physical therapy routine they gave her at the hospital.
When she was discharged, they sent her home with a pile of papers detailing exercises she needed to do on her own.
It wasn’t enough.
Her world shrank to the four walls of her home.
Each day stretched long and lonely.
She was trying, but trying wasn’t always enough.
Depression settled in.
And then came the night she stumbled upon a strange little program on the internet.
It was called Recovery Rapids.
It wasn’t like anything else she’d been handed before.
A video game, they called it, where you’d "kayak" through whitewater rapids, picking up trash as you went.
But the real purpose was in the movements it required—motions designed to mimic physical therapy exercises.
It was experimental, the kind of thing you might look at twice before trusting.
Nancy didn’t hesitate. What did she have to lose?
She started slow, sitting down in her living room, holding the game controller.
The first session asked her to do small things—stretch here, move there.
It didn’t feel like work, not the way her other exercises had. It felt... fun.
Something began to shift.
For the first time in months, Nancy looked forward to her "workouts."
She’d get up every day, her virtual kayak ready to tackle another rapid, another level.
The movements she’d once dreaded became second nature.
Days passed, then weeks.
Slowly, the strength returned to her legs.
And then, one day, Nancy walked.
It wasn’t perfect at first. Nothing ever is. But it was progress—real, measurable progress.
With time, she moved beyond the video game.
She bought a real kayak and took it out on the water.
She rebuilt her life, not just piece by piece, but with new pieces she hadn’t imagined before.
She danced at her son’s wedding. She babysat her grandkids. She did the kinds of things doctors had once told her she’d never do again.
Here’s what Nancy’s story is about:
Not just persistence, though that’s a part of it.
Not just hope, though she had plenty of that, too.
Nancy’s story is about learning how to find joy in the process, even when the process seems impossible.
It’s about figuring out a way to make the hard work feel like something you get to do, not something you have to endure.
Because sometimes, when you’re in the middle of your own storm, what you really need isn’t to fight the current.
You just need a way to paddle through.
This post was inspired by Charles Duhigg's interview with Katy Milkman.
