After the Stroke, Life Had to Slow Down

On March 14, 2016, I had a massive stroke. I'm a stroke survivor, a filmmaker and a slow traveler, and I live in Arizona in a three-generation household. This is the story I can tell so far about what changed, at home as much as on the trail.

I can share this story where it is relevant. It is not a makeover.

What I can already say

I spent a month in the hospital and a year in outpatient recovery. I relearned to walk, to see, and to make my voice resonate. I give credit for that to my family and to the medical team who stayed with the work. Recovery also meant relearning a lot of ordinary things I had never thought about, including how to manage fatigue. Some of what I lost never fully came back. My balance isn't what it was, and my body doesn't handle heat the way it used to. I also live with trigeminal neuralgia.

That is the spine of what I've already written, and it is still true. I still travel with Joanna. We just do it at my pace. I still live a full life at home. I do it at that same pace.

What changed at home, not only on the trail

Most of what I've written about the stroke so far has been in the service of a trip: how to walk a pilgrimage route, how to handle heat, how to see a place without turning the day into a test. Those guides still live on Travel at My Pace and Japan at My Pace. This site is about the other six days of the week.

A slower pace is not only a way to get through an airport. It is how I cook, how I run an errand, how I walk, how I sit down and how I decide what a day can hold. Fatigue is not a character flaw. Heat in Arizona is not a challenge to tough out. Balance is not something I can talk myself into having back.

After the stroke, the house became the place where the limits showed up first. You can plan a careful trip and still pretend, a little, that you are only pacing yourself "for now." At home there is no audience and no itinerary. There is a kitchen, a calendar, a hot afternoon and a full house. That is why this story belongs here. The stroke taught a slower pace. That pace now shapes the household, the kitchen and how we travel.

Two years later, we still went

In April 2018, about two years after the stroke, Joanna and I spent about a month in Japan: Tokyo in cherry blossom season, Kyoto, Osaka, and then the part I was most nervous about, walking the Kumano Kodo. We didn't do it the hard way. We walked short stages, sent our bags ahead, used trekking poles, took buses when it made sense and stayed in a ryokan with a private outdoor bath at the end of it. We got there. We went back for Christmas 2019 and New Year 2020, with Hakone, Tokyo Disney and teamLab.

I include those trips carefully. They can sound like a recovery headline: man has stroke, later walks a pilgrimage trail. That is not the story I am telling. The trail was never a test I had to pass. It was a place I wanted to be. We walked most of it, and we also took the bus, and I would do that again without a second thought. Some of what I lost in 2016 never fully came back. Going anyway, at my pace, is the whole point — not proof that the pace was no longer needed.

If you want the route we actually walked and what I would tell another survivor, that essay is already written: Walking the Kumano Kodo after a stroke. The cooling habits I still think about are in Heat and balance in Japan: a stroke survivor's cooling kit.

Heat, balance and an Arizona day

Arizona is home, and it is a hard place to live if heat is a problem. Since the stroke, my body doesn't handle heat the way it used to. That shows up on trips, and it shows up just as clearly in an ordinary summer at home: shade, early hours, air-conditioning and knowing when not to step outside.

I wrote more about that in Heat, Balance, and a Slower Day.

What I can say without guesswork is the principle I already use when I travel. Official walking times, crowded days and summer hours assume a body that is not mine. I add time. I look for the bench, the shade and the room with air-conditioning. I agree on a turnaround point before I am tired, so "I need to stop" never turns into a debate. That is as useful in a grocery aisle or a parking lot as it is on a mountain trail.

Years later, without a before-and-after

It has been years since March 14, 2016. I am not writing this from the first week, and I am not writing it from a finish line. Living with limits that did not fully come back is just my life now. I also live with trigeminal neuralgia. It is part of the same life, not a subplot.

I don't want this site to sell a transformation. I don't want a photo of who I was "before" and who I am "after," or a recovery timeline I have not lived out loud. Other people's strokes look different anyway. Mine is only mine.

What I do want is for a reader with a slower body — after a stroke, in the heat, with age or with fatigue that does not care what the calendar says — to recognize themselves. You can still have a household. You can still go, sometimes a long way, and you can still come home. You do not have to earn your downtime. Later guides in this section will stay in that lane. None of it is a treatment plan. If you want the trust language in one place, read How I Write About Health.

This is not medical advice

I'm sharing my experience, not medical advice. Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, a prognosis or a recommendation for your care. Talk with your doctor or therapist about what's safe for you, especially with heat, walking, fatigue and long days on your feet.

If a later article on this site cites an official source — heat guidance, for example — it will say so, the way the travel guides already list sources for hours and access. Personal experience will stay labeled as personal experience.

How this shapes the rest of the site

Rhythms are how we make it work at home now. I go to Pilates every day, and so does my mom. Other family members have gone before as well. I wrote about that habit, carefully and without turning it into a treatment, in Pilates, at Our Pace. Fatigue, when it shows up, is a planning problem, not a character flaw; that piece is Fatigue Is a Planning Problem, Not a Character Flaw.

If you want the household this pace is built into, read One Roof, Three Generations. If you want how we eat, start with What I Mean by Eating Well at Home. My mom, Terrilyn Miller, will be writing in that part of the site as well. If you want the travel version of the same idea, I also write at Travel at My Pace, and our Japan trips have their own site, Japan at My Pace.

The pace is the same in all of them. I had to slow down. I am still here, living anyway.

Not medical advice. If you are facing a stroke, recovery or a change in balance, heat tolerance or energy, please work with your own clinicians. This is one person's account of a life already underway.