Katherine & Jay Wolf
Benefitting the Hope Heals
There was no warning nor symptoms when 25-year-old Katherine Wolf had a massive brain stem stroke that nearly took her life. Newly married and a mother to a 6-month old, Katherine could no longer do basic things like walk, talk, stand or eat. But with the enduring support of her husband Jay, together they co-created a new life full of love, meaning, community and purpose.
In This Episode, We talk about:
When Jay and Katherine first met and the early days of their relationship.
The day Katherine experienced a massive brainstem stroke from both perspectives.
Katherine’s 40 days in a coma-like-state
Regaining her abilities and what the next chapter looks like after the hospital.
Finding strength and hope during recovery.
Having their miracle baby, John.
Leveraging their unique abilities and starting Camp Hope Heals.
Wise Words
He just for some reason felt really deeply moved to help her. I was holding our baby and talking to him, and I think he just couldn’t get the baby out of his mind either, he has said, and he wanted to give this mom a second chance.
So, he took her to surgery that would be about eight hours to hopefully stop the bleeding and figure out what was going on and see if he could even do anything.
I was so panicked that they would think that my personality, my memories were all gone, so I would type, “I’m the same on the inside,” over and over so that they would know that I had not changed, it’s just I could no longer speak or eat or walk or see, but that everything on the inside was exactly the same.
I absolutely believe that the breaking of my heart just gave me this new heart
I’m a big advocate that if you have a pulse, you have a purpose. I say that constantly to other people whose bodies are broken, they still have something to offer the world, they’re here for a reason, and there’s purpose in their story.
Your heart can break and it can then kind of heal back all callused and smaller and brittle, or you can through your heartbreak allow your heart to expand wider and see the world differently and see other humans differently in their struggles, and see how your own struggle might be a part of their healing as well.
Just in general, understanding what it means to be disabled in the world was a pretty tough pill to swallow. That was nothing that had ever been in our experience or our family’s experience. We just didn’t understand what that meant to all of a sudden have this world that at one point was your oyster to then be a world that wasn’t made for you. That was a pretty deep experience.
How often do we overlook the miracles right in front of us?
For our marriage, I think the main loss was just losing some of the dreams that we had. In so many ways, it was a loss of expectation. Yet the gain was this gain of reality.
Really, in terms of our marriage, there was this opportunity to relearn to love somebody new and find each other again on the other side of this total upending of our life and this unexpected tragedy.
So much of our ability to see ourselves as beautiful is about walking away from the shame that we have internalized in our stories. It’s walking away from all the hurt associated with our story of our own beauty.
People with disabilities are the largest minority group in the world, yet there’s the highest rates of suicide, and unemployment, and depression, and divorce, and homelessness just because this group is so often under-resourced.
LINKS
Website: www.hopeheals.com
Podcast: Suffer Strong Podcast
Instagram: @hopeheals , @sufferstrong
Book: Suffer Strong
Charity Donation: Hope Heals