This morning, the dog got tired before I did.
He brought me his rope ball, wanted to play tug, and we played until he decided he was done. Then he dropped the toy, walked away, and went to lie down in the shade.
I was left standing there holding the ball.
That could have been the end of it.
Instead, it became a lesson.
Last year, I lost the use of my hands.
This year, my focus has been restoring them to full function and better.
I have always had strong hands. I was told more than once that I should have been a massage therapist. So losing that capacity was not just inconvenient. It was disorienting.
Restoring it has required patience.
Piano helped my fingers move again.
Landscaping helped rebuild grip.
Moving rocks strengthened my forearms.
Pulling weeds rebuilt pinching, grasping, endurance, and control.
I have been rebuilding my entire muscular system while waiting for my nervous system, bones, and body chemistry to stabilize.
One of the indicators I have been watching closely is my hair.
Not because hair is vanity.
Because hair tells the truth.
When my stress was high and my body was depleted, my hair showed it.
Now it is growing back fuller. Softer. More alive. Even the gray is different. What used to feel harsh and wiry is blending into honey and silver. It moves naturally. It catches the summer light. It looks like it belongs to me.
At 48, I am learning to appreciate something I spent years trying to cover.
That matters.
Before the dog brought me the ball, I had just finished my stone circuit.
We built that path over Memorial Day weekend, and one of the reasons I wanted it was physical therapy.
Dirty Dancing style.
Every Gen X girl I know remembers Jennifer Grey practicing on those summer steps. We copied what we saw. We learned through repetition.
Now I have my own version.
One yoga pose per stone.
Twenty-two stones.
Linear movement from one end to the other.
The transition from one foot to the next is controlled like walking a tightrope. If I can move across those stones without looking down, then I know my alignment, balance, breath, and skeletal control are getting stronger.
It is not a quick dance.
It is a circuit.
Every transfer matters.
Every pebble under my foot matters.
Every nerve signal in my toes matters.
Every breath through transition matters.
The sandstone itself becomes part of the practice. Some stones are flat. Some are plateaued. Some have circular patterns. Some have straight lines. Some look like they hold fossilized plants inside them.
Eventually, I would love to add water along that path. A fountain would be ideal. A birdbath would work too.
Someday, if we hold workshops here, I can imagine subtle placards in the yard with line illustrations showing each movement at each stone.
A physical practice.
A visual practice.
A thinking practice.
A way to train the body back into trust.
After that circuit, I was standing there with coffee in one hand and the dog’s rope ball in the other.
That is when I thought of Brad Stetson.
Brad was my manager when I learned to bartend.
He became my friend later, but at the time, he was the manager who took a risk moving me behind the bar.
I was not the obvious choice.
I was not the bubbly, happy-go-lucky bartender girl.
I was grittier than that. More analytical. More intellectually inclined. Great for precision. Not always great for flair.
I could do controlled freestyle bounce pours.
But throwing a full glass bottle of liquor into the air and catching it behind my back?
Not a chance.
Until Brad.
Brad was also a math teacher, and that mattered.
He did not teach through ego.
He taught through method.
He broke the skill down. He slowed it down. He showed me how to trust the motion before speeding it up. He could see when I was getting in my own way.
He would tell me:
“Michelle, trust your mind.”
“Trust your hand.”
“Trust that your body knows what to do.”
That is a rare kind of manager.
He understood how to develop the human being in front of him.
If someone was willing to learn, Brad was willing to go great lengths to teach.
That is one of the things I have always admired about him.
Standing in the yard this morning, holding a rope ball instead of a glass bottle, I wondered whether any of that muscle memory was still there.
So I set up my phone.
Stepped in front of the camera.
Held up the ball.
And said:
“This is called Thank You, Brad.”
Then I paused.
“Actually, maybe we’ll call it The Stetson.”
I tossed the ball.
Caught it by the tail.
Not bad.
Then I tried again.
This time, I threw it behind me.
My arm reached back.
The ball landed clean.
I did not see it.
I felt it.
I heard that perfect plop in my hand.
Then my hand closed around the rope exactly the way Brad had taught me to trust it would.
I stopped and laughed.
“Wait a second.”
“That actually looked like a Stetson.”
The catch was not the whole accomplishment.
The accomplishment was the restoration.
The piano.
The rocks.
The weeds.
The stones.
The breath.
The waiting.
The repetition.
The willingness to return to an old skill without being ashamed of needing to relearn it.
That is scientific thinking in motion.
What do I expect will happen?
What actually happened?
What did I learn?
Brad may not have called it that, but he taught that way. He coached through experiment, observation, adjustment, and trust.
That is art and science together.
It is also resilience.
People often describe resilience as toughness.
Endurance.
Surviving hard things.
I think resilience is more active than that.
Resilience is adaptability.
It is looking at the situation in front of you and asking:
“What can I do with what I have right now?”
The dog walked away.
I was left holding the ball.
That was not a problem.
It was an opportunity.
The same thing happens in organizations.
A project stalls.
A customer leaves.
A team member resigns.
Technology changes.
AI changes the rules.
The ball gets dropped in your lap.
Then comes the important question:
What do you do next?
Do you complain about the dog?
Do you stand there wishing things were different?
Or do you create something useful with what is already in your hands?
For me, value has always had three requirements:
- It changes the product, part, or process in a measurable way.
- Someone is willing to pay for it.
- It is done right the first time.
Sometimes value is operational.
Sometimes it is relational.
Sometimes it is reconnecting with a memory, a person, or a lesson that helped shape who you became.
That matters too.
Because when we go back into our own history, we do not only find pain.
We find teachers.
We find allies.
We find old skills.
We find the hero stories that got buried beside the hard ones.
If we trap the grief, we often trap the lessons with it.
If we refuse to look back, we may also lose access to the parts of our story that still know how to help us.
This morning, a rope ball brought back Brad.
It brought back Smokey Bones.
It brought back the math of movement.
It brought back the manager who knew how to coach confidence into a person who was getting in her own way.
And it gave me a way to test my own restoration.
The dog got tired and walked away.
I was left holding the ball.
The question is not whether that happens.
The question is what you create next.
If this resonated with you, consider following along.
These field notes are about leadership, resilience, healing, scientific thinking, creativity, and what happens when ordinary moments become opportunities to create value.
Slingshot Designs 