Hello all. I’m diving in, no edits.

In August I had a major health crisis. It was discovered by accident since I had no symptoms. I had 58 tests in 18 days, then went into treatment. For three months my care team couldn’t tell me if I was terminal, if I would live another year.

I went upside down. Catastrophic thinking, expecting the absolute worst. I couldn’t find my feet or the ground. My closest friends cocooned me, came with me to MRI’s and scans and blood work and more blood work. My therapist was on call.

What would it mean to not be on Earth anymore? What would it mean to die? Did I need to start putting post-its on my things for who would get what?

What would happen to my work? My art? Should I have a fire sale? Should I put all my energy into hustling one particular project?

I have a large storage unit. Who will have to clean this out? Should I start clearing my closets of things I no longer want or need or will have any meaning to anyone else?

I live alone and am single. What will happen if I get really sick? All of it was unfathomable. Inconceivable. Yet very possibly real.

I started having panic attacks. I was on a deadline with a play I was writing, THE GREAT SILENCE. Writing was the only time I cleared my head and dropped into my body. The play is a comedy set in a makeshift astronomy lab and is about a black hole. When the astrophysicists find something near the black hole it sends them into their own abyss. I started research the science for this play about two years ago. But with this sudden diagnosis, there was something almost prescient about this play. It was asking big questions about uncertainty, impermanence, what is our place in the universe? I was asking questions like this, too.

While in the thick of all the tests I started having panic attacks. During one at 5:00 AM my phone dinged. A close friend was awake. “Want to talk?” It felt like a moment of grace and I started to keep a grace log. The doctor I wanted, a renowned specialist who people come from all over the world to see, wasn’t available for 7 weeks. I didn’t want to wait. Yet the next morning I got call seeing if I could come in right then. More grace.

The tests started showing better and better news. I couldn’t take it in. Then, while I was getting a brain MRI - head in a cage, blocks holding my head in place, I was inside a tight tube with banging and clanging going on around my head for 45 minutes - I nearly started laughing. The sonic landscape in my play is really important. It includes sounds from space. And there was tone I was searching for everywhere, from NASA on down, but couldn’t find. I knew I’d know it when I heard it. There, in a brain MRI tube, was the tone. It wasn’t just the magic of this. It was that I was able to be open enough to hear it. And I was open because I felt loved.

The results of the brain MRI came in. I was all clear, perfectly normal. It meant treatment would be easier. But my care team still couldn’t tell me if I was terminal. We had to see if the treatment worked.

I was powerless over what was happening. It would come down to science and my body. Many people got kicked off the treatment because of how their bodies reacted to it. The side effects were brutal, but some could be fatal. There were days I couldn’t get off the couch. I kept writing, kept speaking to friends. I was clear with friends that I needed to know what was happening in their lives. I needed normal. They obliged. I watched a lot of crap. But I couldn’t let go of the terror. What would it mean to die? My therapist found the perfect words that finally penetrated the noise in my head. “Life is random.” People lose children, get sick, houses burn down (one of my best friends lost her house in the LA fires). But there’s just as much a chance, if not more, of good things happening. We don’t know how it’s going to go even when we are positive it’s going to go a certain way. My play is very much about this. It’s a play about trust.

I’m self-employed, self-made. It hasn’t been the easiest run living in NYC, living off my wits. My art career had a bit of success, but this world crashed in 2008 and changed when it came back to life. (Though a large drawing of mine went up at Sotheby’s this year from a really good collection and it sold. Not for a lot, but there was a small bidding war. I am grateful and relieved because a lot of work from artists with careers like mine goes for pennies at auction or doesn’t sell.)

With my writing career, I look good on paper. I’ve been hired here and there to write, I’ve gotten fellowships and residencies, I’ve been on selection committees and more. Financially, though, I have periods where I have to be very careful to live within my means. I’ve gone full on into theater and playwriting (I still draw) and there’s no money in it. I have a horror movie bouncing around that’s low budget and a potential franchise, and though it keeps getting interest there’s nothing permanent happening.

For much of my adult life I’ve looked at where I’m going and what I hope to achieve. Where I’m at or what I’ve accomplished so far was never quite enough. It’s meant that on some deep level I’ve never been enough because I haven’t had that big hit or big paycheck. Yet walking through my apartment considering who would get what when I died, I saw who I am. Books, art I’ve collected for the last 20 years, friend’s art, their music, their books - a close friend, Cynthia Weiner, wrote ‘A Gorgeous Excitement,’ a favorite book of mine (the paperback comes out any day) - my stuff told a story of the very rich life I’ve built over the last few decades. For the first time I began to wonder, what if I am enough?

During all this I submitted my play to a bunch of opportunities. I recently found out I’m a semi-finalist for a major development opportunity. It’s huge. When I got the email with the good news my first thought wasn’t how great this was for my resume or ego. I was excited that I may have an opportunity to collaborate. To be part of a creative community. And, it was thrilling to see that the selection committee understood my play. This new play is wild, a risk for me.

A little over a month ago I got the good news that the treatment is working. Most likely I’ll be here another 10-20 years. I even got a second opinion because I needed to hear it twice. (My doctor is amazing. She’s a big giant brain with a heart to match. She helped me get a second opinion.) Yet having to face my mortality changed me. I’ve never been this tender and vulnerable, and I’ve never been more sure of who I am and what I want. I’ve never had this much gratitude. I can’t express how much love I feel for my friends. They, with an aunt, truly are my family.

2025 was the hardest year ever. But in ways it was also the best. This diagnosis had so many poorly wrapped gifts in it that I often feel awe as I move through the world. I love, and I am loved. This play felt like a gift; at times I got out of the way and let the words organize themselves on the page. Going upside down let me find myself in a way I’ve been trying to my whole life. I wouldn’t wish a health crisis on anyone. But for 2026, may something jostle you enough to let you find even more self-acceptance, more self love.

I meant to find a website designer this fall because the software this site is built is starting to fail. I hope to get on this soon. It means I hope you’ll get this post. I say it every year, but I love the emails and comments I get from you. We’re a community. This year drove home all the ways community is everything. Thank you so much for being part of mine.