The bravest person I know

Most people who know Traci know the smile.

They know the Disney pictures, or the family get togethers, and the way she can sit on a couch and somehow make the whole room feel lighter. She’s the first to tell me that she comes up with the perfect line just a few minutes too late but she’s always got this quick wit from programmed responses that are genuine because they’re just who she is. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard her say the phrase “it’s ok to have a pity party but you can’t live there”, and there’s absolutely no denying the way she loves her kids and her family with her whole heart.

What most people don’t see is how hard she has to fight just to be in the room at all.

Traci has been handed more than her share of hard chapters. Cancer, again and again. Treatments that leave their own scars. Pain that would send most people to bed for good. Days where walking from the couch to the bedroom feels like a marathon. Mornings where everything in her body says “absolutely not,” but her heart still wants to show up for her people.

It would be so easy to be bitter. To be angry. To look at the cards she’s been dealt and say, “why me?”  She doesn’t. She just keeps moving forward each and every day, with a heart full of joy.  

I’ve said be before if you put her in a fight with a bear, you better damn well pray for that bear. That’s who I married.

This woman has been through a real-life storm that the likes of which most people will thankfully never understand, and somehow her default setting is still unbridled happiness and joy. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve checked in on her, worried, bracing for the worst, and she looks at me and says some version of:

“Why are you asking me that?  I’m good. I’m not depressed. I’m not sad. I’m surrounded by so many people who love me, and I’m thankful.”

That’s how she frames a life that would break most people. 

I get a front-row seat to her courage.

I see the toughest stuff too.  The 4:00 a.m. pain meds when the pain spikes, the exhaustion that doesn’t show up in a Facebook photo. I see the quiet moments where just standing up is an act of bravery.

And here’s the thing: it’s not duty that gets me out of bed for the next round. It’s her.

I chose her on our wedding day, and I would choose her again in every timeline. Every version of my life where Traci exists, I’m finding her and marrying her. No question.  Because despite it all I’ve never met someone in life who shows up in the face of adversity in the way this woman does. 

People tell me all the time, “I think what I’m going through is tough, but then I see what Traci’s going through and my problems feel small.” They’re not saying their lives don’t matter. They’re saying that watching her fight shifts their perspective.

That’s what heroes do. They change the way you see your own story.

Traci inspires me every single day to keep showing up. To keep loving. To keep finding joy in the middle of a situation that is, by any reasonable measure, a complete shit show.

She doesn’t want the medical play-by-play online, and I respect that. This isn’t the place for charts and scans and numbers. She’s protective of our kids, and she’s never wanted her life to turn into “The Cancer Show.”  

So I won’t tell that story here.

This is a different story.

This is about a woman who got handed a brutal deck of cards and still says, “I’m thankful.” This is about the way she lights up when her people walk in the door. The way she still laughs at dumb jokes. The way she makes Disneyland feel like a “Happy Little Hospital” for us, not an escape from reality but a place where we remember who we are.

This is about the way she brings me joy just by existing in the same room, even on the hard days.

Our kids see it. Our family sees it. Our friends see it. And if you’re reading this, I hope you can catch even a tiny glimpse of what I get to see up close.

When I talk about “unbroken joy,” I’m not talking about ignoring pain or pretending everything is fine. I’m talking about exactly this: choosing gratitude and love even when the circumstances don’t deserve it.

I didn’t invent that phrase. I learned it by watching Traci.

She is the bravest person I know.

And I just wanted the world to know that.