Chronic Pain, Identity Loss + Resiliency with Nancy Deyo (Part 2)

When you’re told “we don’t have anything more for you,” the real question becomes brutally simple: what do you do next? We talk with Nancy about chronic pain, opioid use that kept her alive but did not give her a life, and the moment she realised pushing harder was actually hurting her. What follows is not a neat comeback story. It’s a clear-eyed look at identity loss, grief, and the kind of acceptance that doesn’t excuse what happened but finally stops the war with your own body.

We dig into the idea of the “new normal” and why the phrase can feel like a threat when you were built to achieve, lead, and perform. Nancy shares how her therapist reframed it: you don’t have to give up, you have to give in enough to stop fighting yourself. From there, we explore what redefining resilience really looks like in daily life: noticing limits, staying present with hard feelings, and then pushing on the possibilities that still exist inside those limits.

Nancy also tells the unforgettable story of going back to graduate school even though she couldn’t sit, bringing a portable army cot into the classroom and learning to be seen without apology. We talk disability accommodations, people-pleasing, and the way community can hand you your identity back when you’ve reduced yourself to a diagnosis. Along the way, she shares practical advice for anyone dealing with loss, burnout, illness, or a life disruption that changes everything: treat pain and grief as information, and find your person, even a health advocate, when you’re too tired to fight the system alone.

The Quiet Gift: A Journey of Self Worth and Resilience is now available for download as an audible.  Check it out!

Transcript

Why We Need To Reignite

SPEAKER_01 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, Natalie Davis and Pamela Katz.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

And

Rock Bottom And No More Options

SPEAKER_02 0:42

I landed in the hospital on more opioids than ever before, so incapacitated that I literally lost the ability to walk. And my doctors came in, you know, and said, Nancy, I know this is gonna be really hard to hear, but we've really done our best and we've done everything we can. And we really don't have anything more for you. We can try to help you with the pain, but we're gonna discharge you. And something snapped. I just thought to myself, okay, the medical system has nothing more for me. I'm on my own. This pushing, I think it's hurting me. The way that I'm trying to do this is the wrong way for my body. I mean, I want to respectfully say that that method may work for some people out there and all the power to them. If it does, it just didn't work for me. And I thought, I have got to find a different way. If I want to survive, number one, and if I want to have any kind of a life, which at this point I had completely let go. And I think that was an important factor. Let go of who you were, because that's not gonna happen. But maybe, maybe you can find a different way forward if you can focus on the things that you still can do instead of the things that I couldn't control, like the fact that I really couldn't sit and that I was still in really bad pain, and find a different way, maybe a third way, you know, to move forward.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Yeah.

Acceptance And The New Normal

SPEAKER_02 2:21

So it was a letting go of who you were. Yes, and that, oh my gosh, that kind of I think, you know, I think of the word acceptance, which a lot of people I'm sure can relate to. And I I remember I had engaged with a really wonderful psychotherapist after Mayo Clinic when I was at Rock Bottom, and she kept floating this idea of the new normal. Maybe you've heard that term before. And to me, that was like my horizontal, disabled, monochromatic self and not who I was. And I remember saying to her, Susan, I hate the new normal. I just hate it. And she said, you know, you do not have to give up. You just have to give in enough to stop fighting yourself. And of course, she was so wise. She was so wise. She had her own disability that could have incapacitated her, but she found a way to move forward differently. She couldn't lift anything, so she carried everything in a rolling card. I mean, even her books that she had to bring to my sessions in my home. So she was such a role model for me. And I think that when I finally accepted that new normal and let go of who I was, it gave me some energy to try to focus on what I could do and start to rebuild on that base instead of just dwelling on the things that I was no longer going to be able to do. Yeah, because it sounds like you were just fighting it. Like you were fighting it tooth and nail. Like, nope. I was. I just use those same characteristics: fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, push, push, push, push, push. It's a hard lesson to unlearn.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Well, and Nancy, the other piece that's really standing out to me is that for these years that you're really suffering through the pain and you have the pain medication there to aid you through this, it didn't really improve your quality of life at all or much. It wasn't really giving you the relief that you might have hoped for. Was it the hope that you had that it would give you that relief?

SPEAKER_02 4:32

I think everybody who takes an opioid legitimately has this hope that it's going to provide that the next dose or the slightly higher dose is going to provide that kind of relief. And the only thing it did was just enable me to survive lying down, you know, without having any kind of focus or purpose or life activity. I read, which my mind was fine. So I I, you know, I read, I journaled, I binge-watched television, I, you know, I knitted everything I could knit in a square. I mean, it was a really, it was a very limited life.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Absolutely. When I think about, you know, Q4 of life, for me, when I reflect on that, it's like if if the mind stays and the body goes, or if the mind goes and the body stays, like the challenge and the struggle that a person would have. And here you are looking to enter the season of redefining who you are. And it's immediate, right? You've you've lost that ability, but you still have that determination to figure it out as you're fighting through like actual chronic pain. So the healthcare system says, you know what, we've done what we can do. Where are you in that point? Is this a crossroads for you? Are you able to take a turning?

A Creative Way Back To Life

SPEAKER_02 5:52

You know, I think that after the medical system had done its their best and I realized I was on my own, for some reason there was a well of kind of creative problem solving that came up to the surface. I I really can't tell you where it came from, but but I know that somewhere deep within me, I was determined that my life wasn't over. And so I thought, well, what I can't do is sit, but I just have to get back out into the world. I can't live the rest of my life in this bedroom, in this house with my husband as my caretaker, and it's just no life. And I realized my mind was still okay. I realized that I loved to learn. I realized that I was passionate about women and girls still from the days at my company, long at this point, it seemed like a long time ago. And so I applied to graduate school, and I wanted a degree in international studies. I wanted to help women and girls globally do more than put their hands on computers, which is critical. But I cared about things like helping a girl find a doctor when she needs one and helping a woman gain economic independence. And I applied to grad school at a place that was 10 minutes from my house in San Francisco, and I thought I could get there, manage to get there. And I applied and got in, but I thought I can't go because I can't sit. I don't know how I'm gonna go to class, I'll never make it. And then it hit me like I'm I if I wait until I'm normal, quote, normal, I am going to be waiting forever. And so the idea came to go to grad school lying on an army cot that was portable, that I could drag in a little cart just like my therapist did, into a room with an inflatable air mattress, and I could lie down and go to school. And I still remember the first day of orientation, and all my cohort of 40 students who are half my age, by the way. At this point, I'm like 50 and they're 25. They're sitting at round tables in their shorts and their hoodies, and I'm kind of dressed up a little bit, and I'm so nervous. And I'm lying on my cot next to them, and we're all introducing ourselves, and it is my turn, and I remember trying to get up on my elbow and hold my head up. So I'm even maybe at the level of their shoulders lying on my cot. And I said, I'm Nancy, and I had a serious injury climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, and how you see me today is how I'm going to be in class while we're in grad school. And I want you to know that I'm good with it, so you can be too. And I remember trying to voice a confidence I didn't feel because I was terrified. But at the same time, I just wanted them somehow to be comfortable, to realize that I was centered, I was okay, so they could be okay. I'm not sure why I was more worried about them than myself that I was, being the pleaser that I was. But school happened, and I had given myself maybe a 50-50 chance of making it through without a huge setback that would make me have to drop out. But somehow, just the act of going into that classroom, setting up that cot, you know, moving back and forth between my house and school, you know, I was excited and determined to finish. I was back in the world in a completely unconventional way. I remember visiting the ADA people at the university, and they too didn't know really what to do with me because, sure, they have all kinds of fabulous support for people who are in wheelchairs and people who are not as able-bodied as most of the rest of the students for one reason or another, be it their mind or their bodies, and accommodate them. And accommodating me was a big question mark. But they were welcoming the COT, and my professors and the students were lovely. And I'll just tell you one more quick story, then I'll stop on grad school. I remember

Who You Are And Who You Are Not

SPEAKER_02 10:19

one day my peace and conflict professor was talking about the identity of women refugees. And it was a very intense discussion. He said, I want to stop for a moment, and I'd like each of you to think about who you are and who you're not. And then we're gonna go around the room and talk about it. And mine was painful, but so easy to write. I remember just whipping it out in my composition book in about 10 seconds. You know, I used to be a CEO, I used to be a wife, I used to be an athlete, I used to be all these things. Now I'm disabled and I the society isn't ready for a person who has to lie down, and this is me, this is who I am. And when it came time to share, I raised my hand and I shared this, and I barely got this out of my mouth. And my classmates started objecting. And they said, you know what, that is not how we see you at all. And you've got something to contribute. You're very passionate about women and girls. You just happen to do it lying down. That was huge for me. Just so validating. And I thought, okay, I don't have to be identified by this disability. I might be more than this.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

You brought up the people-pleasing piece, Nancy. And that's, you know, I think just how unfortunately how young women or women now were kind of raised at a younger age, right? It's like, be good, but make sure that you say yes. It's the sugar and spice and all things nice. And so as you were saying that, I was thinking, Nancy's the person with the different ability, and she's kind of apologetic. Like, I'm gonna hold space so that you're comfortable. I have the different ability, but I want to make sure that you're comfortable with me being here and being a part of this experience with you. So recognizing that that was still popping up, regardless of what life had coming your way, there was still kind of that, it's the people pleasing, and it's, you know, I I can I can do this, I can be here, you know, I can I can make this work. Did you recognize it in the moment? Is my question for you. Or is this after doing the introspective reflection that you realize that these things popped up?

SPEAKER_02 12:21

You know, I don't think I was so great in the moment at seeing the things I can now see, you know, a few years later, to look back and think, I see how I was behaving and reacting, and I see why I was saying the things that I was. But you know, sometimes the wisdom comes with the distance, time and distance from a crisis and uh coming back. When you're in it, you're surviving it. When you're out of it, you're just you're in the thick of it, and the only way to get through it is just put your head down and do the things you can do. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

And so you get on the other side, and that's when you can look back and have that introspective and what was what came from it that was good and what did you learn?

Letting Go Of Optics

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Nancy, if you got the question today, who were you and who are you now, how would you answer it?

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Oh, well, clearly.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

We don't have to go. Oh, that's a great question.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Clearly, you know, then I was overly focused on optics and perception. And I was first and foremost a leader, an executive, sadly, a wife secondarily, and then everything else. And those priorities have completely shifted. I think today I just have so much empathy for anybody going through loss or pain or illness, or just anything that disrupts our lives, burnout, you name it, divorce. We just lose so much of who we are and how we function in the world. And getting that back is a journey and a half. So, I mean, today I'd like to think that I've reprioritized my life. I know that my life might be smaller in some way than it was back when I was uh trying to champion girls in Silicon Valley. But it is much more real. It's more authentic. I value the people around me and my relationships much more than I ever did, ever, ever, ever did.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

That's beautiful. I think that's a it's a fabulous place to be, right? To to have the ability to be present and and recognize that you weren't there and fully present in those relationships that were most important to you. And now this is your moment to have that, which is tremendously powerful.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

I mean, now I know what matters. I also feel that at some level I have almost a moral responsibility to share the things I learned back with people who are struggling, because we're all struggling one way or another. And if I figured out something over the course of that 15 years, I just feel that I want to share that back. And if for me, I figured out that resilience needed to be redefined and that I needed to think about it differently. If there's somebody out there who resonates with that, then I feel like I'm doing the right work.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Nancy,

Grief As Information Not An Enemy

SPEAKER_00 15:40

what advice do you have or recommendations do you have for individuals that have experienced loss? And I'm gonna use that loss in any form of the word, right? If it's passion or uh career or loved one, ability. What advice do you have for those individuals?

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Yeah, I love that question. You know, the pain that we feel, I mean, yes, there's physical pain, but the grief, the loss, all those things that we experience, they're not the enemy. You know, they are information that most of us, and I would say a lot of women are kind of brought up to shove down in their bodies and ignore. And I think that feeling the feelings is huge to stay present and then to accept what is and then push on the possibilities within those limits.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

I love that. I love that because, like you said, most of us have been taught power through, push through. And if you never address it, never allow your body to feel it, it's gonna keep coming back. It's gonna keep showing up in different spaces, and then it's gonna become bigger and bigger and bigger until yeah, until we're stuck.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

And I have to say that I I think this unlearning pushing through is a process. I mean, sometimes I still find myself in the same old patterns, and I think, what am I doing?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

That's what we do. A little micro test along the way, just to make sure that you learn the lesson.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

It's like, nope, yeah, yeah, but you know, they always say awareness is the first step. So you're very aware of it.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

That's so good. And I I think that's such a big piece, Nancy, when you're like, don't resist it. Like just realize that it's there and and then acknowledge. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Tell us

Memoir, Speaking, And Substack Work

SPEAKER_03 17:46

about some of the work you're doing now for our listeners.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

One of the things that I did last year was I I wrote a memoir about this experience in the hope that it would help people, and because I felt like survival is so often like romanticized, and just getting through it is seen as a triumph. And I want people to understand what it's really like, number one, and number two, that you can get through it. So while that's making its way out into the world, I'm I'm basically focused on writing and speaking about chronic pain and identity loss and redefining resilience. And to the people out there who are experiencing the same kinds of things that all of your community is experiencing. And I hope that it will help some people out there to find that different path. And then, of course, I'm still writing, and I write about this. I have a sub stack that is all about life inside pain. If people want to join me and read more about the journey, so yeah, it's a very different life than a, you know, a Silicon Valley CEO life. My metrics are not the same. You know, they have to feel good and uh do the good work and focus on the right things and not be obsessed with the, you know, the dashboard and the measurements.

SPEAKER_03 19:13

Yeah. I think what I love about your story is because you were a CEO, you were an executive, and how many people out there are dealing with chronic pain that are, you know, at those levels that are ashamed and don't want people to know that they're medicating or they're trying to push through and they're not listening to their body. And I think you make it it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Absolutely. I mean, we need to normalize all this. We really do, and let people recognize that their body doesn't lie. They need to trust it. Even if it's inconvenient, what it's telling you, and even if the medical system can't figure out what it is. You know, we all know our bodies better than we can ever communicate because it's sometimes hard to put into language the words that would help somebody else understand what we're experiencing.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Amazing story and journey. And thank you for what you're doing now to, as Pam mentioned, creating that space for other people to have permission, to recognize and acknowledge where they are and actually identify and redefine resilience. I think that's a that's a key piece. We know that adversity comes in a variety of shapes and forms and sizes, but the resiliency piece, it doesn't have to be the comeback, bounce back. I wrote a book, now here I am. Resiliency with a bow on top, it doesn't always look that way. Yeah. So yes, yes. So thank you for allowing us and and creating that space where we have permission to redefine what resiliency looks like.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Any

Interdependence And Finding Your Person

SPEAKER_00 20:55

final thoughts or words for our listeners, Nancy?

SPEAKER_02 20:58

I guess the only other thing that I would say, because I thought that I could do everything alone, so independent. And we as humans, as we all know, or as I've learned the hard way, we are so interdependent. And I learned this the hard way by being a completely dependent human, needing others for my basic essential care. But now I realize that that is what makes everything work, and we are better as people because we are connected to each other. So I would say if you're struggling, whether it's health or grief or loss, find your person and let them see you and hear you and support you. In my case, I needed a health advocate because I was too weak to advocate for myself. So if you're suffering chronic pain and you can't articulate and advocate and fight for what you need within the system, get somebody to help you do it.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

I love that because I agree. I think so many of us try to just tough it out and do we don't want to burden anybody, especially if you're a people pleaser, you're like, no, I'm fine, I'm fine. But I to be honest, I think that it's one of the most powerful gifts that you can give someone else is to allow them to step in and help you when you need it.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

Yeah. I mean, I have to say that I lost I lost all of my friends during this period except for three who really stood by me. Because I think as a somebody who loves somebody who's going through a really hard time, you're so frightened by what you're seeing in them and you don't know how to help them, and you don't know how to ask them what you can do to help them. And so being so clear that you need other people to get out of where of where you're stuck and be the person that you're hoping you can be is just one of the greatest gifts and one of the greatest learnings that I had to go through.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Nancy, thank you. Thank you, thank you for sharing your story.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Thank you for what you're doing to build this community. It's so important.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Your contribution to that is is well, we're we're the platform. What you're doing is what's important. So thank you. We're just hoping to amplify that message, the voice. We'll make sure

How To Follow And Stay Connected

SPEAKER_00 23:40

that we put your contact information in the show notes as well as a link to your memoir so our listeners can grab a copy of that as well. Available in on Amazon Barnes.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

The memoir is forthcoming, so the best thing to do is to follow Substack right now. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Well, then follow Nancy on Substack, which I have done. And she is a consistent poster, sharer, article, writer, whatever that you, whatever they call it on Substack. Um, there's new terminology on Substack. Thank you for sending this sending those pieces out. And when the memoir is released, Nancy, then we definitely want to have you back so that we can hear about it.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

I will accept that invitation gratefully and we can go deeper. Good. I would love that.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Love that. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much, Nancy. It's been an honor. For our listeners, we will make sure to put Nancy's information in the show notes. And you all know if you're wanting to learn more about what's happening in the world of Reignite Resilience, you can head over to ReigniteResilience.com or follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Until next time, we'll see you all soon.

Subscribe, Share, And Closing

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas to fuel the flames of passion. Please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes, and of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.