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Your body can end an argument your ambition has been winning for years.  Nancy Deyo knows that moment intimately. She went from being a hard-driving Silicon Valley CEO to collapsing during a Mount Kilimanjaro climb, then spending years lost in misdiagnosis, chronic pain, and opioid dependence. What followed wasn’t a neat comeback story. It was the messy middle where identity breaks, friendships thin out, and “push through it” turns from a strategy into a threat.

We dig into the myth of endurance and why high performers often believe the body is something to command. Nancy shares what resilience looks like when bouncing back is not on the menu: listening to your body, accepting reality without approving of it, and building momentum through small steps that actually fit your capacity. We talk about disability and the loneliness of a life lived lying down, plus the surprisingly practical choices that helped her move forward, including attending graduate school on a portable cot and learning how to travel and work while managing pain.

If you’re navigating chronic illness, burnout, a health crisis, or the slow collapse of a life you thought you’d have, you’ll hear a steady message you can hold onto: you are not your pain, and there are different versions of you that can emerge from this. Follow Nancy’s writing on Substack, Life Inside Pain, and if this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Connect With Nancy Deyo:

Substack: Life Inside Pain with Nancy Deyo — https://nancydeyo.substack.com
Forthcoming memoir: Perilous Ascent

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