Where to start? Chronologically? Kind of boring.
Order of importance? It’s difficult to determine importance until after the fact, when you have the space and distance to judge.
We are so much more than the sum of our parts. I could tell you that I have Parkinson’s disease (diagnosed April 14, 2014). I fractured my neck (1984) when I fell down a flight of stairs. I fell on my partner’s boat and shattered the right side of my face, resulting in major reconstructive surgeries, titanium, and the loss of my right eye (December 2016). I have sympathetic ophthalmia, in which my body is rejecting my remaining eye as if it were a foreign object (beginning September 2017), which could yet cause blindness.
But that’s not all of me.
I am preternaturally cheerful. I wake up chatty and ready to smile. Every day. No matter how much (or little, really) sleep I had the night before.
I am a teacher, with degrees and training in speech pathology and audiology, language and learning disabilities, English/language arts, and history/government. Hundreds of students, each valued for their gifts, strengths, and weaknesses.
I have been a corporate project manager. Leading teams of dozens of designers, engineers, scientists, developers, and testers, on projects with multi-million dollar budgets.
I have led educational committees and task forces from local to national levels. I was the director of a state’s educational assessment program for students grades 3-12.
But that’s not all of me.
I am a friend, a sister, a daughter, a mother. I have been a wife and a partner. I have loved and been loved.
I believe that it’s not where you go that matters so much, it’s the people who go with you. The people you love and who love you. That is what lasts.
It takes a village to raise me and keep me alive. My friends who are my sisters – and brothers. My sons. Those who carry a little bit of me in their hearts and whose love I cherish.
Jane Miller 