No warm-up. No gentle lead-in. Just the message.

Then he suggested I get a top hat to match.

Which felt aggressive. But also… not entirely wrong.

I laughed it off. Made a joke. Probably changed the subject. Because owning it, really owning it, felt like a bigger ask than learning how to walk with it.

It’s one thing to depend on a cane. It’s another to be seen using it. It’s something else to own it.

Not long after I committed to using the cane, Glenn approached me at my son’s baseball game. He introduced himself and said he had read Bedtime Stories for the Living. He had broad shoulders like a former football player, a hat pulled low, and sunglasses on like he was hiding from someone. Or maybe from something.

Glenn told me he had recently been diagnosed with ataxia. And was struggling. Then he said something that caught me off guard: seeing me use a cane in public had inspired him.

I told him I didn’t think it was inspiring. I was just tired of ending up in the ER.

If I’m honest, my ego still wants to pretend I don’t need the cane. Or the rollator. Or my wife’s hand when my balance goes sideways. It wants me to move faster than I can. It wants me to blend in when my life clearly has other plans. It wants the old version of me to still be in charge.

And I catch myself doing it sometimes. Performing strength instead of practicing honesty.

But letting go of that ego is where something begins to shift.

Not all at once. More gradually. More subtly. Kind of like warming up to the idea of wearing a top hat.

Most people spend their lives being evaluated by others and slowly mistake those opinions for truth.

Grades. Performance reviews. Followers. Productivity. Compliments. Criticism. The look someone gives you when you walk slowly through a parking lot holding a cane like it personally disappointed them.

At some point, you have to ask yourself: Can I tell the truth about my life without turning it into a tragedy or a fantasy?

That’s harder than it sounds.

Because many of us lose the ability to accurately assess ourselves. We either inflate our abilities out of ego or underestimate them out of fear. And disability makes that tension even sharper.

Once your life stops matching the image you had of yourself, self-evaluation becomes emotional fast. I’ve had to relearn myself in real time. I’ve had to admit that some things are harder now, while also refusing to believe that harder means hopeless.

So the work becomes small, steady decisions. Like owning your shit.

Because part of owning it is learning to trust your own read on your life. To know what you can do, what you can’t, and what actually helps. Not guessing. Not performing. Not outsourcing that judgment to whoever happens to be watching.

And, I suspect, there’s real freedom in that.

When you don’t own it, you spend enormous energy managing appearances instead of dealing with reality. You start performing instead of living.

And I’ll admit, I’ve done that. Still do. But I’m learning.

Owning my disability isn’t giving up. It’s how I take back some control. It’s how I stop fighting myself long enough to actually live my life.

The most important skill isn’t domination. Or confidence. Or toughness.

It’s the ability to see yourself clearly enough to live truthfully.

Lately, I’ve been realizing how much certain quotes stay with me. Not the motivational poster kind. The ones that follow you around for years and quietly change how you see your life.

So for the next few pieces, I’m taking lines from books I love and writing about how they collide with disability, identity, ego, resilience, and all the strange negotiations that come with this life.

Basically, literary analysis with more canes, curse words, and coffee.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

I see Mary Ellen once a week at the grocery store. Same lane. Same timing. We’ve graduated from polite nods to what I’d call “mildly invasive small talk.” The kind that says: I don’t know your last name but I will absolutely comment on your life choices.

This week, it was cottage cheese.

She held up the container like it was evidence in a trial. Looked at me, then back at it, and said, “Who eats this?”

“I do,” I said. “Cottage cheese, eggs, steak.”

She blinked.

“You know… to stay trim.”

That part was for me. A little joke to soften the reality that my routine is less about beach season and more about keeping things together.

Mary Ellen didn’t laugh. She gave me a full scan and said, “This stuff is gross.”

Clean. Efficient. Devastating.

I didn’t argue.

Not because she was right (debatable), but because I realized something standing there between the conveyor belt and my dignity: everyone is evaluating something. Your food. Your body. Your choices. Your life.

And, let’s be honest, our shopping cart is personal. We choose it. Guard it. And fill it with what we want, what we need, what gets us through the week. So when someone judges your cart, in a small but real way, they’re judging you.

It’s a little like when you have a disability. People watch how you move, what you eat, how you show up, and they build a story about you. Sometimes they say it out loud. Sometimes it’s just a look.

Mary Ellen just says it out loud.

But the lesson wasn’t her comment. It was my reaction.

I didn’t defend my breakfast or explain the protein math. I just stood there and thought: I know why I’m doing this.

And maybe that’s the skill.

Not the eating. Not the explaining. The knowing. As Ryan Holiday writes, “One’s ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill there is.”

Because when your body changes, when your capabilities shift, when the world starts measuring you in ways you didn’t ask for, you can either outsource your self-assessment or you can trust yourself.

That doesn’t mean ignoring reality. It means becoming the most reliable narrator of your own life. I know what I can do. I know what helps and what hurts. I know when I’m pushing too hard and when I’m playing it too safe. And yeah, maybe my breakfast won’t win any popularity contests. But it works for me.

Living with a disability forces this lesson on you whether you’re ready or not. You get a lot of opinions. Some well-meaning. Some as blunt as Mary Ellen’s.

If you don’t develop your own internal compass, you end up spinning every time someone asks, “Who eats this?”

So now I treat those moments differently. Less like criticism, more like background noise. Because being part of life means making decisions from the inside out.

I’ll be back next week. Same lane. Same cottage cheese. Mary Ellen will probably have notes and questions.

Yet I’ll still be the one deciding what stays in my cart.

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Lately, I’ve been realizing how much certain quotes stay with me. Not the motivational poster kind. The ones that follow you around for years and quietly change how you see your life.

So for the next few pieces, I’m taking lines from books I love and writing about how they collide with disability, identity, ego, resilience, and all the strange negotiations that come with this life.

Basically, literary analysis with more canes, curse words, and coffee.

Share

Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

On a good day, they feel like a book club I didn’t know I needed. We’re all reading from the same messy, dog-eared story—symptoms, setbacks, the occasional plot twist nobody asked for—but the conversations are honest, generous, and sometimes even funny in that “if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry and then cancel plans” kind of way. A real sense of community.

You hear someone describe a feeling you’ve never quite been able to name, and suddenly you’re nodding like, yes…that’s the sentence I’ve been trying to write for years.

There’s real power in that seeing struggle from a new angle, being understood without a long explanation, not having to translate your life.

But on other days, it feels like a book club where everyone agrees the story is terrible. The frustration, anger, and bitterness sit heavy, like that bowl of brown guacamole nobody’s touching.

And look, I get it. The disease sucks. Some chapters are brutal. I’m 46 and feel like I’m 76. I notice the stares I get when I’m shuffling with Mellow Yellow. I don’t like playing both hero and victim in the same afternoon. And I struggle with the fact that this isn’t the life I imagined for me or my family.

But sometimes it feels like we’ve confused acknowledging the pain with quitting on a story that feels recycled. Like we’ve decided the book is over while we’re still reading it.

That’s usually when I know it’s time, at least in my own head, to step out of the room and come back to simpler questions: What’s still original? What’s actually mine?

Not impressive things. Not productivity-hack, optimized-life, Instagram-caption things. Just mine.

Writing something that feels true. Cooking a meal that tastes like home. Pedaling a stationary bike in my garage, going absolutely nowhere, while 90s music convinces me, for three minutes at a time, that I might just go back.

These aren’t small things. They’re anchors.

And I’ve had to learn—not gracefully, not quickly—to not compare my “things” to someone else’s. Because meaning isn’t a competition. It’s a construction project. Personal. A little uneven, but still standing.

I’ve been thinking about this while reading Train Dreams. It’s about a man who endures a heartbreaking loss and spends the rest of his life trying to make sense of it, not in some grand, cinematic way, but in the slow, ordinary way most of us actually live.

He doesn’t fix everything. He doesn’t get a clean resolution.

He just keeps going. Keeps working. Keeps remembering. Keeps building a life around what can’t be undone.

“With plenty of small chores to distract him, he forgot he was a sad man. When the hymns began, he remembered.” — Denis Johnson, Train Dreams

That, to me, feels more honest than most happy endings.

Because the truth is, you can still grow a meaningful life inside a story you never would’ve chosen. Not by pretending it’s a better story, but by refusing to stop reading. By adding your own sentences where you can. By underlining the parts that still matter.

And maybe even, on a good day, laughing at a line or two that has no business being funny, but somehow is.

I still show up to the book club.

I just don’t let anyone convince me to close the book early.

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I’m on a stationary bike. In my garage.

Which, as the name gently reminds you, goes absolutely nowhere.

This wasn’t always the plan. My brain has other ideas now. Cerebellar atrophy, knee issues, ankle injuries—my mobility has entered the chat, and my body has basically unionized and is negotiating aggressively. The deal we landed on: I pedal in place, next to a rake I haven’t touched in years and a box labeled “Misc. Christmas.”

But here’s what I’m learning: you can go nowhere and still make progress.

Not my favorite lesson. But apparently, we’re here now.

While the world outside is blooming and jogging and posting filtered proof of their “quick 5 miles,” I’m inside, sweating to the oldies—Soul Asylum, Bush, Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine.

Which means at any given moment I am:

🙏 spiritually 16
👴 physically 76
and emotionally somewhere between a mosh pit and a park bench

There’s something about ’90s rock that tricks a stationary bike into feeling less… stationary. The second “Runaway Train” or “Killing in the Name” kicks in, I’m not just a guy in a garage. I’m moving. I’m somewhere. I’m alive.

My bike is a kind of time machine. I’m back to a version of me that didn’t think about balance. Back to legs that didn’t need a warm-up just to handle the stairs. Back to when energy wasn’t something I spent.

Now it is. Now it’s something I budget. Like rent.

And speaking of time machines, my life feels a little like Back to the Future.

Except instead of a DeLorean, I’ve got a slightly squeaky bike. Instead of 88 miles per hour, I’ve got consistent effort. And instead of changing the past, I’m borrowing from it—taking a little music, a little memory, and dragging it into the present.

Because progress doesn’t always look like forward motion. Sometimes it looks like showing up anyway. Sometimes it looks like doing what you can instead of obsessing over what you can’t. Sometimes it looks like a grown man in a garage, pedaling to the Beastie Boys, trying not to “Sabotage” the dismount and…mostly succeeding.

Pride, it turns out, doesn’t need a big stage. It shows up in smaller places than I expected. That’s where The Ancient Art of Taking Action (free download below 👇) came from—the idea that action doesn’t have to be impressive. It just has to be real. It just has to be yours.

Some days, action is a mile run. Some days, it’s opening the mail. And some days, it’s getting on a bike that doesn’t move… and moving anyway.

I have to remember that you can still make progress without going anywhere. That progress is often more internal than external.

And maybe that’s the kind of progress that actually sticks.

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The Ancient Art of Taking Action: A Simple List

50 Small Things You Can Do When Everything Feels Heavy

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

To prepare, I did what any calm, medically responsible adult would do, I went to a bar and ordered a 24-ounce dark German beer with a 12% alcohol content. Because hydration is important.

When I finished, I staggered back to the hospital, lay down on the MRI table, and passed out like a man fully committed to avoiding his own thoughts.

Sometime later, a small Indian man flicked on the lights and announced it was over. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and asked, “Was I snoring?”

His face broke into a smile, his eyes lighting up like a birthday cake. “Very much.”

At the time, I considered the whole thing a win—no anxiety, no overthinking, no spiraling thoughts about what they might find. Just unconsciousness. I told myself I had outsmarted fear, when really, I had just stepped out of the room.

But, I have learned, you can’t numb your way to hope. You can dull the fear, quiet the noise, take the edge off the waiting—but you also dim everything else. Hope included. It doesn’t show up when you’re checked out. It doesn’t tap you on the shoulder while you’re half-present, scrolling, sipping, avoiding. It’s quieter than that, and more stubborn. It asks something of you.

Hope is more like one of those seek-and-find puzzles you did as a kid, probably in a doctor’s waiting room—crowded, chaotic, easy to overlook. The shapes are there, but only if you slow down enough to really look. Only if you stay. And staying, it turns out, is a skill I had been quietly avoiding. I used to think relief and hope were the same thing. They’re not. Relief lets you escape for a moment. Hope asks you to remain.

I don’t drink much anymore. Only on special occasions like when the Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl, or when I’m sitting by a campfire listening to Blink-182 with an old friend who knew me long before the disease, back when my body and I were still on speaking terms.

Because numbing might get you through a moment, but it won’t build anything you can stand on. Somewhere along the way, I realized I didn’t want to just get through my life. I wanted to be there for it.

Hope doesn’t come from wishing. It doesn’t come from escaping. Or being nostalgic. It grows from doing. From showing up. From looking hard at life’s details.

My friend Matt LaFleur, who lives with Friedrich’s Ataxia, wrote something recently that stuck with me: “Sometimes it [hope] slips quietly back into your life… That quiet return doesn’t erase the disappointment I felt this year. But it does remind me that looking forward is still possible.”

That’s what hope actually looks like. Not a breakthrough. Not a lightning bolt. More like a quiet return. A subtle shift. A reminder that the future hasn’t closed its doors on you yet. But you don’t notice it if you’re numb. You don’t catch it if you’re checked out. You don’t find it if you’re not looking.

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50 Small Things You Can Do When Everything Feels Heavy

He wrote about the importance of living with what he called “irrational knowledge.”

It was a phrase he arrived at after observing Russian peasants. People without formal education, without theories, and who somehow still knew how to keep going.

They had faith and hope and worked toward something, even if they couldn’t fully explain why.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Because most of my life doesn’t run on certainty anymore. It runs on something closer to what Tolstoy discovered.

I have doctors. Tests. Diagnoses. Charts that try to explain what’s happening in my body. They’re helpful. Necessary. Required, even, if I want my insurance company to stay on speaking terms with me.

But they don’t answer the question that actually matters:

How do I live inside this?

There’s no clean data for that. No graph that tells me how to wake up on a day when everything feels a little heavier. No study that explains how to carry a version of yourself that keeps changing.

That part feels irrational. And yet, it’s the most rational thing I know.

Somewhere along the way, without fully deciding to, I picked up a belief: that telling my story matters.

I can’t prove it. There’s no metric that fully captures it. No lab result that comes back and says, “Yes, this helped someone.”

And still—I believe it.

Not because it’s logical, but because it feels true in a place logic doesn’t quite reach. Because every once in a while, someone reads something I wrote and says, “That’s exactly how it feels.”

In Bedtime Stories for the Living, I wrote a letter to my daughter Haley about the night I read an essay she had written about me. My eyes filled with tears. Not just because I was proud, but because she captured that strange, irrational bond between writer and reader. You know, that moment when someone puts into words what you’ve been carrying quietly.

It’s a rare thing. A small miracle, really.

The realization that you’re not alone.

I also wrote about the moments, while working on that book, when I sat there thinking, I can’t do this. About how ninety-five percent of writing is overcoming those five words. How ninety-five percent of life, I think, is overcoming those same five words. And how I’m not quite sure what the other five percent is—but I suspect that part is for each of us to figure out.

I think that’s what Tolstoy was getting at.

There are things we “know” without being able to explain them. Things we hold onto not because they’re proven, but because they help us keep going.

Irrational knowledge.

Your irrational knowledge may only make sense to you and that’s 100% okay. I have learned explaining your irrational knowledge is am absolute waste of time.If you’re honest with yourself, you probably already know what yours is. The quiet belief you don’t talk about much—but keep leaning on.

I still remember the looks I got when I told people I was going to spend good money on a college degree in Literature. It didn’t exactly scream “practical life decision.” And for a long time, I wasn’t sure they were wrong. I mean, was I going to make a career out of reading and writing books? Would reciting verses of Hamlet pay the electric bill? Would knowing Jay Gatsby’s motivations help me raise a family? And even if I became a writer, what would I write about?

Twenty-some years later, when I got sick, retired for my teaching job, and started writing Bedtime Stories for the Living, something clicked. That maybe my degree wasn’t a waste of money. That it was something I could now justify. That maybe it now had purpose. That in those pages, I realized my story might actually might help someone else make sense of theirs. That irrational knowledge offers you the purpose and comfort you have always sought.

And that putting words to this life—this strange, uneven, sometimes beautiful, sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating life—might help someone feel a little less alone inside theirs.

I can’t prove it. But I’m going to keep writing anyway.

Because some knowledge doesn’t need to be rational to be real.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

“Useful, but untrue.”

He was talking about Think and Grow Rich—the OG of self-help, written by Napoleon Hill after studying Andrew Carnegie.

The book is packed with advice. Some of it inspiring. Some of it… let’s call it creatively ambitious. (At one point, a castrated bull is somehow part of a lesson on ambition and wealth. I’m still not clear on that.)

But beyond the pasture, most of it isn’t true in a water-freezes-at-32-degrees kind of way.

And yet—it’s still useful.

In its own strange way, it teaches perspective. Not facts, exactly. But a way of looking at things that helps people move.

Once I saw that, I started seeing it everywhere.

Poetry? Useful, but untrue.
Religion? Same deal.
Politics, art, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and where we’re going.

I was raised Catholic. Catholic school. Church on Sundays. Christmas. Easter. The whole thing. Before I ever stepped foot in an Olive Garden, I knew about the Garden of Eden. I believed if I followed both celestial and earthly rules, I’d get into heaven.

Then one summer at camp, I met a Jewish kid. He told me he celebrated Hanukkah. Didn’t celebrate Easter.

I remember asking him if he was okay going to hell.

He never spoke to me again.

And just like that, my neat little version of “truth” cracked open. Not because mine was wrong and his was right, but because both of them were, in their own way… useful, but untrue.

A few decades later, I’ve been diagnosed with an incurable disease.

Every year, I see two neurologists. One in the spring. One in the winter. Two different hospitals. Two very smart people.

Both agree on one thing: my disease isn’t curable.

Cool.

Then they prescribe different exploratory medications. And each doctor—very professionally, very politely—explains why the other guy’s prescription isn’t quite right.

Apparently, people with impressive degrees are just better guessers.

Cool.

I take the meds. Not because I’m convinced they work. If I’m honest, I’m pretty sure they don’t do much. But they give me something.

A sense of movement. A feeling that I’m doing something. A small belief that says, maybe this helps.

Useful, but untrue.

And I’ve started to make peace with that. Ignore trends, fads, and opinions. Take an action, no matter how small, no matter how untrue, that makes you feel better. Even a little bit. (See my list of small actions in a downloadable PDF 👇)

Maybe the goal isn’t to chase absolute truth in every corner of life. Maybe the goal is to choose the beliefs that help you live inside your reality a little better.

Not perfectly. Not delusionally.

Just better.

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Doomscrolling. Not casually. Professionally. Like if anxiety had a LinkedIn profile, this would be a top skill.

It started harmless enough. A quick check of the news. Then a video about nuclear fallout maps—turns out my town doesn’t do great, which feels personal. Then a zombie apocalypse survival guide that confidently assumed I could jog long distances and swing a bat with coordination.

Bold. Misguided. Deeply optimistic about my hamstrings.

By minute forty-five, I was locked into a future where gasoline is currency, society has collapsed, and I’m bartering canned beans in scrap-metal shoulder pads like a low-budget extra from Mad Max. Somewhere in there, AI took over and gently informed humanity we’d been downgraded to “non-essential.” Not angry. Not violent. Just… done.

All before I brushed my teeth.

It’s wild how fast the brain goes from “Should I get pancakes?” to “I need a long-term strategy for societal collapse.” Like mental CrossFit. Except instead of abs you just get dread.

And underneath all of it—beneath the mushroom clouds, the zombies, the calm, terrifying competence of machines—there’s a quieter thought:

I am not ready for what’s coming. Not the cinematic version. The real one. Because I don’t get to scroll past I already live in an uncertain future. The slow kind. The kind that takes things one quiet inch at a time and has the nerve to call it “progression.”

Some mornings, before I even move, I take inventory. What still works. What’s stiff. What’s weaker than last week.

Less “Good morning,” more “status report.”

No one makes videos about that.

No voiceovers. No survival gear. Just a body slowly rewriting the terms of your life without asking permission. And still—there I am, trying to out-prepare the apocalypse like it’s going to follow a script.

If I can just see it coming—nuclear winter, collapse, the undead politely jogging past me—maybe I won’t be caught off guard.

The zombie plan assumes I can run. My actual plan is to make eye contact and hope they respect boundaries.

But somewhere between the third “end of civilization” video and whatever algorithm decided I needed to see how AI will replace me in twenty years, it hit me: I’m not afraid of the world ending. I’m afraid of the slow erasing.

The quiet narrowing of a life. The possibility that one day my world doesn’t explode—it just… shrinks. Smaller rooms. Smaller circles. Fewer people who understand. More negotiating with gravity. More calculating energy like it’s currency—because it is.

There’s a line from Seneca I can’t shake: “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

And sure, that sounds wise. But lying there, staring at the ceiling, I’m not so sure. Because sometimes imagination isn’t exaggerating anything. It’s rehearsing what already feels inevitable.

Still, the morning was happening.

Quietly. Faithfully.

The weight of the blanket. The hum of the house. The small, invisible negotiations my body makes just to begin.

No explosions. No collapse.

Just this.

And maybe that’s what I keep missing while I’m bracing for impact. The future isn’t always something that happens to me.

Sometimes it’s something I’m already inside of.

And I’m still here.

Not prepared. Not certain. Not in control. But here.

And maybe survival, for me, isn’t about outrunning what’s coming. Maybe it’s about refusing to disappear before I have to.

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My greatest fear is not pain.

Not to sound like some tough guy, but pain and I have reached an understanding. We’re not strangers avoiding eye contact across the room anymore. We nod now. We recognize each other’s patterns.

Pain is like that coworker you didn’t trust…until one day they brought in a chocolate donut, and suddenly you’re sharing inside jokes and texting each other poop emojis on Sunday night.

Pain has perfect attendance. A committed professional. It rarely misses a day. It has no life of its own—except the one it lives inside mine. And familiarity, it turns out, takes some of the mystery out of fear.

No, what I fear more is something quieter.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

Not to sound like some tough guy, but pain and I have reached an understanding. We’re not strangers avoiding eye contact across the room anymore. We nod now. We recognize each other’s patterns.

Pain is like that coworker you didn’t trust…until one day they brought in a chocolate donut, and suddenly you’re sharing inside jokes and texting each other poop emojis on Sunday night.

Pain has perfect attendance. A committed professional. It rarely misses a day. It has no life of its own—except the one it lives inside mine. And familiarity, it turns out, takes some of the mystery out of fear.

No, what I fear more is something quieter.

What I fear more is being alone inside the life my body has given me.

April has become a quiet anniversary. It marks the month the US Government decided I was officially “disabled” and retired me early from teaching Literature. A 17- year career that ended as quick as a CAT Scan. And six years later, I still sometimes measure time in semesters I never got to teach, papers I never got to return, conversations that ended mid-sentence. Some losses don’t announce themselves. They just stop happening.

In September, my daughter leaves for college. One small suitcase for her. One oversized emotional carry-on for me. My two sons will follow eventually. That’s the quiet job of children, I suppose — to slowly make you obsolete in the most beautiful way imaginable.

My parents are getting older. And my wife, who loves me completely, has her own goals and her own life, as well as her own reasons not to talk about neurological issues at dinner.

I don’t want my story to become the only story in the house.

Living with a progressive disability sometimes feels like standing in a room that is slowly emptying. Not abandoned. Just quieter. Chairs pushed in. Lights dimmed. Voices drifting down the hallway toward their own bright futures.

And me, still inside, trying to decide whether the silence feels peaceful or a little too loud.

It’s a vulnerabile thing, to need help in a culture that worships independence. Literature celebrates rugged individuals striding bravely into the unkown. Even Odysseus needed a crew to get home. Frodo had Sam. Sherlock Holmes had Watson.

The lone hero has always been better marketing than biography.

Still, the fear lingers.

What happens when the house gets quieter? When the roles shift? When the people I’ve spent years protecting begin protecting me?

Sometimes the thought sneaks in: a future with a smaller circle, fewer loved ones in it, more doctors in their place, and more of my time spent negotiating with gravity.

And in the background, as I write this, the chorus of one of my favorite songs savagely (and ironically) mocks me:

I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my old life
Everybody leaves, so why, why wouldn't you?

(Great Expectations, The Gaslight Anthem)

Because the fear isn’t really about being alone.

It’s about being unknown. Unseen. Untethered from small exchanges that quietly make up a life. Inside jokes, poop emojis, discussions about books, the sacred ritual of asking someone what they want for dinner, and listening to a favorite song on repeat.

Emily Dickinson wrote, “The soul selects her own society.”

What she didn’t mention is that sometimes society selects us right back. My daughter leaving is not a tragedy. It is a testament. My sons growing up is not loss. It is evidence that something went right. Even the fear of becoming a burden comes from loving people enough to want their lives to remain wide.

The goal was never to live forever. The goal, I believe, is to live honestly.

Honestly means admitting that courage and fear sit in the same chair. That independence is admirable, but connection is oxygen. That the room may grow quieter — but quiet is not empty.

The circle is not closing. It is widening.

Stretching into dorm rooms and careers and aging parents and marriages that evolve and friendships that deepen and communities that appear in places you never expected to need them.

Maybe that has been the story all along.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

One man beginning his eighth decade. One young woman beginning adulthood. And me, standing in the middle, realizing I am now officially the ham in the generational sandwich.

Having celebrated my own birthday last week, I’ve been especially aware of mortality, and the undeniable truth that I am now one day closer to confidently asking about the senior discount at the movie theater.

It makes sense that I’ve been thinking about aging lately. April 9th is also National Cherish An Antique Day, which feels aggressively on-brand. Appreciate old things. Preserve what lasts. Try not to make too much noise when standing up from the couch.

The truth is, everything is aging. Every person you love. Every memory. Even your favorite song Rage Against the Machine song migrates from hot “new release” to “classic rock” to playing in the grocery store while you compare cereal prices.

The more honestly we face aging, the more alive we become. And maybe, urgency isn’t panic. It’s clarity.

To me, aging with grace means growing older unapologetically, truthfully, and in community. Perspective sharpens. Priorities simplify. The noise quiets. You stop waiting for permission to do the things your heart has been gently nagging you about for years.

For most of my life, I talked about being a writer. Getting sick, becoming disabled, created the urgency I needed to finally do the work. Turns out nothing motivates creative courage like realizing your calendar isn’t unlimited.

A few weeks ago I discovered Year to Be Young 1994 by Stephen Wilson Jr.. He sings about being a 90’s kid, listening to Nirvana and Boyz II Men, wearing a “No Fear” sweatshirt, falling in love at the roller rink, and holding that wonderfully foolish belief that you will live forever.

Maybe aging gracefully means keeping just enough of that No Fear kid alive — not because we believe we’ll live forever, but because we finally understand we won’t. Courage hits different when you realize time is a use-it-or-lose-it coupon.

We can’t stop time. But we can decide how honestly we show up while it’s moving. Love yourself. Love others. Say the thing. Start the thing. Attempt the thing. Even if you feel like a slightly cracked coffee mug still doing its job.

So this April 9th, I’ll celebrate my dad at 72 and my daughter at 18. One life seasoned with wisdom. The other wide open with possibility.

Both remind me that aging isn’t the enemy.

Wasting time pretending we’re not aging might be.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

I know, weird sentence to read, right? If there was a waiting list, no one would be lining up to get a disability. There are no early bird discounts for neurological curveballs. No loyalty program for balance issues. No punch card that earns a free latte after the tenth doctor visit.

And yet.

Being disabled teaches you fast that the world doesn’t really care about your self-pity. Not because people are jerks, although some people need a stiff jab to the nose, but because people are too busy dealing with their own invisible duffel bags of stress. Mortgages, marriages, aging parents, kids who only want to eat dinosaur-shaped foods.

Everyone is too busy to care about your pity party. The cold hard truth is, most people are too busy keeping their own boat afloat to care about yours.

And yet, weirdly, that is kind of liberating. Acceptance is often mistaken for giving up, but really, acceptance is just realizing you’ve been reading the map wrong. It means you still get to move forward, just no longer pretend that the terrain is supposed to be any flatter than it is.

Just when I thought I’d exhausted all lessons on hope, I picked up Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Set in 1980s Ireland, the novel quietly asks what it means to live with purpose. Bill Furlong, the main character, goes about his simple life while asking: “Was there any point in being alive without helping one another?” It reminded me that hope is built in the doing.

It’s a novel that reminds you, gently but firmly, that hope is not the domain of the privileged. Hope is built, often painstakingly, through acts of courage. Through the decision to look, to look anyway, and to engage in the construction of the world, even if the only tool you have is kindness.

Disability, I have learned the hard and painful way, is the crash course in thinking this way. It’s the thing that reminds you, forcefully, that hope is not an abstract concept. Hope is something you have to make, have to schedule, have to make time for on Tuesdays. My hope is big some days. Some days, my hope is physical therapy, decent sleep, and avoiding Facebook after 9 pm.

I need you to know my hope is not fireworks and possibles cures. My hope is pilot light. And nobody is coming to strike the match.

Which brings me back to the uncomfortable first line.

Not everybody gets the gift of disability. Not everybody gets the gift of being disabused of the notion that someone else is in control, that someone else is writing the script, that someone else is giving them meaning. Disability is the thing that gives you the pen and tells you, gently but firmly, keep writing.

Writing, with all its mousy nouns and verbs, is a little thing I do, and I find that it gives me hope. I only hope that my writing has given you hope too.

Becuase hope requires participation. Participation requires action.

Even small action.

Small action, as it turns out, is the entire story.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

Which feels like an age where you finally stop expecting life to make perfect sense and start noticing how often two completely opposite things can be true at the same time. I’m beginning to suspect adulthood is mostly the ongoing adventure of managing your own contradictions.

I see mine every morning within the first ten seconds of opening my eyes.

Maggie May is forty-nine pounds of possibility. She persistent reminder that something new can still arrive in your life and immediately feel like it was always meant to be there.

She wakes up believing the day holds joy, snacks, and at least one rabbit who needss to be scared straight. She does not dwell on limitations. She does not create contingency plans. She has never once Googled a symptom. She simply assumes life is possibility.

Also within eyesight each morning is my house walker.

Big Blue is not anti-possibility, but it does have opinions about pace. With its clean, thick wheels, it’s a practical object that quietly reminds me that possibility sometimes travels at a different speed than it used to. So before I even brush my teeth, there they are: possibility and limitation, hope and adjustment, forward motion and careful motion. The puppy and the walker. If that isn’t adulthood, I don’t know what is.

At 26, contradictions felt like problems to solve. At 46, contradictions feel more like traveling companions.

I am learning that a meaningful life is not built by eliminating contradictions, but by learning how to carry them without letting either one cancel the other out. I can feel grateful for what is still possible and honest about what is difficult. I can laugh at Maggie’s belief that the mailman is an ax murderer and still acknowledge that some days require energy management than heroics. I can miss the ease of my younger body and still be curious about what this version of my life might teach me.

There is a particular temptation in midlife to start narrating decline — to quietly count the ways things have become harder. Sitting on the living room floor now requires a small strategic plan and, occasionally, a bone-creaking, Herculean effort just to stand back up. When moments like this prompt us to grumble, “I’m getting old,” it becomes dangerously easy to assume our best chapters have already been written.

But as I was writing this, I kept thinking about something my longtime man-crush Bruce Springsteen once said in an interview, something like: a real sign of maturity is admitting to the contradictions that live inside you. To hold them. Accept them.

That idea keeps echoing for me not as resignation, but as permission. Permission to be both grateful and frustrated. Hopeful and tired. Still becoming, even while still adjusting.

I think as you age, perspective begins to replace urgency. You become a little less interested in immediately impressing people and a little more interested in understanding what actually matters. You develop a tolerance for complexity. You begin to realize life is rarely one thing at a time. It is often joy and grief, hope and fatigue, love and worry, progress and limitation. Sometimes all before lunch.

Turning 46 doesn’t feel like arriving anywhere in particular. It feels more like learning how to hold more things at once without dropping all of them. Maggie reminds me that something in me still leans toward possibility. The walker reminds me that wisdom sometimes comes disguised as pacing. One encourages forward motion. The other encourages sustainable motion.

Honestly, that feels like a pretty good team.

Maybe that’s what 46 is. Not the absence of contradiction, but the courage to keep living despite contradictions. At a thoughtful pace, with good company, and just enough curiosity to believe the story is still unfolding.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

The kind where the weather is unpredictable, the itinerary unclear, and you’re almost certain you’ll forget something important no matter how carefully you plan?

Living with a disability feels like packing for that kind of trip every single day.

In Staying Afloat, I wrote about learning not to panic when the water rises — about discovering that surviving the sea often has less to do with strength and more to do with refusing to surrender to the splash.

But nobody sends an email explaining what to bring when you’re involuntarily placed on a boat you never planned to board in the first place.

There’s no packing list for ataxia. No helpful reminder about what to wear when the conditions keep changing. No cheerful bullet point suggesting you bring extra patience — because you’re going to need far more of it than you ever imagined.

Still, after enough days at sea, you start to assemble a bag.

Not a hero’s bag. Not a dramatic survival kit stocked with flares and Braveheart speeches.

More like a carry-on filled with things you hope will fit somewhere between uncertainty and dignity.

Because staying afloat is one skill. Learning what to bring with you while you float — that’s another.

Here’s what I’ve learned to pack:

Time. Because everything takes longer on a moving boat. Shirt buttons take longer to button. Stairs take longer to climb. Even putting in contact lenses now feels like it requires a strategic planning session. Everything just… takes longer.

A sense of humor. Because if I don’t laugh when my leg briefly forgets the concept of “walking,” the alternative is starring in a very serious documentary called Man vs. Uneven Concrete.

Lower expectations. Accept what is. Do what you can. Remember that “close enough” has an excellent track record in both rock n’ roll and rockin’ a disability.

The ability to receive help. Pride is heavier than most luggage and far more difficult to fit in the overhead compartment.

Snacks. Always snacks. Courage is significantly more accessible when blood sugar isn’t plotting a coup.

People. The right people. The ones who don’t try to row the boat for me — and also don’t try to convince me the sea is calm when it clearly isn’t. The ones who sit beside me, look out at the horizon, and say, “Well… this is strange. But I’m here.”

Perspective. Not the kind I find scrolling through everyone else’s highlight reel. The quieter kind that whispers, This is hard… and still, there are things worth noticing.

I still didn’t choose this boat, but I’m learning what I need to stay on it.

Because if Staying Afloat taught me anything, it’s this: survival isn’t just about keeping your head above water. It’s about discovering that even here — especially here — a life can still be lived.

So I steady myself against the railing. Adjust the weight of the bag on my shoulder. Take one careful step forward on a deck that rarely stops moving. The horizon is still the horizon, even when you reach it slowly.

And I’m still here. Learning as I go, balancing what I can, leaving behind what I can’t carry. Even a reluctant sailor on a rudderless boat can still drift, slowly and stubbornly, toward the sun.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

Somewhere out there, a dad is rubbing a little dirt into the pocket of a brand-new glove like it’s a sacred relic. Somewhere out there, a mom is Googling whether sunflower seeds are considered dinner. And somewhere out there, a kid is practicing their swing in front of the mirror, dreaming of hitting game-winning homeruns.

My kids have already put away their cleats. Their gloves are retired to the garage, creased, quiet, and smelling of Gatorade and hope. Without baseball, our house is less chaotic. Fewer game-day scrambles. Fewer grass stains that look like abstract art. Fewer arguments over whether a 9 a.m. doubleheader constitutes an act of child development or mild parental sadism.

And yet, every March, when the temperature rises by a single degree and the sun lingers like it’s thinking of promoting itself to summer status, I still feel it.

Baseball is like life. And life, if we’re honest with ourselves, has a lot of strikeouts.

Both are games of failure. Even the best hitters strike out most of the time. You can do all the right things. Prepare. Practice. Drink all the water. And still watch the ball drop softly into another guy’s mitt for an out.

Life’s like that. Show up. Swing. Miss. Swing again.

And every once in a while, accidentally bunt your way into a little bit of wisdom. (To be obvious, I feel like I’ve done that with my writing. )

Some of my best memories have happened at baseball fields. Small diamonds of green cut out of the earth. Places where time stops, and every parent becomes a philosopher with a folding chair.

The truth, though, is baseball does not often provide the movie ending (see The Natural staring Robert Redford) with overly dramatic music. What it does provide, more often than not, are awkward at-bats, dirty socks, and the hard reality that baseball, at any level, is a game of failure.

Yet, there are moments, rare as they are, that provide something different. A small glory. A moment that will remind you that there was a time when someone believed in you, even when you did not fully believe in yourself.

In my book, Bedtime Stories for the Living, I shared a moment like this with you. It was called The Wink. I hope you will enjoy it. And I hope it will find the parents learning to let go a little at a time, the writers trying to find their words, the people fighting their bodies, and anyone wondering if they have a swing left in them.

Sometimes, what we need most isn’t advice, isn’t instruction, isn’t a new trick or a new hack. What we need most is a reminder that someone believes in us.

And sometimes, that’s enough to get us to step back into the batter’s box, look up, and swing.

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THE WINK

My experience as a teacher has led me to believe that eighth-grade boys are the most repulsive things on the planet. They’re gangly looking aliens that smell like wet dreams. They grow out of clothes quicker than you can say “skinny jeans,” and they eat a week’s worth of food for dinner and never put on weight. These conceited assholes make no contribution to the goodness of humankind aside from having coasted up Middle School Mountain, which should prohibit their right to be narcissists or assholes.

As an eighth grader, I was five feet, four inches, and ninety pounds. I hadn’t hit puberty or kissed a girl. While most of my classmates spent their weekends dry humping, my Saturday nights featured Nerf battles with my friend Dan and a few other undeveloped tadpoles. I learned about high school from the kids of 90210. Aaron Spelling’s fantasy made me believe that all high school fellas had goatees and muscles, drove convertibles, and had unprotected sex with their pouty-lipped girlfriends in the Peach Pit bathroom. So naturally I spent most of eighth grade scared to death.

I watched boys mutate into men. Strange-looking gremlins with crackling voices and patches of facial hair. To my amazement, I watched girl after girl give herself up to these strange things. Eighth-grade girls wanted to make out with boys who looked like men. They wanted their virgin cheeks rubbed by sharp facial stubble. They didn’t want to kiss their little brother. At fourteen, that’s what I looked like—America’s favorite little brother. Parted hair. Freckles. High pitched little boy voice. And more insecurities than pubic hair.

The one equalizer was my athletic ability. Though I was small and weak, I was fast and agile. Sports earned me a thread of respectability. But I knew soon I would be sharing high school halls with Dylan McKay and Brandon Walsh, and I would be pulverized into a pile of pubescent dust.

Then this happened.

A May evening. A sinking sun. A gold sky that stretched like a lion’s fleece. Under the tutelage of my dad and his best friend Coach Turner, the St. Ephrem’s varsity baseball team found itself in a precarious position. We had bullied our way through the regular season and were one game away from an undefeated record. However, on this night, in the championship game, we found ourselves tied four to four in the bottom of the seventh to the cross-town rivals, Queen of the Universe. I was due to lead off the bottom of the seventh inning.

Because of my lack of size and strength, batting was a problem. My weapon of choice was the same thin barreled bat I used in sixth grade, not for bat speed but because my twigs couldn’t handle anything else. And for your baseball purists out there who are thinking, “Why not bunt?” Three reasons: Most teams brought the infield in on my sheer lack of size. My bat barrel was so thin that the margin for error was narrow. I had an absolute fear of getting my fat little fingers crushed by a fastball.

Please don’t think I was on the team because Dad was the coach. I may be selling myself a bit short on my baseball abilities since my game had some redeeming qualities. I was an above-average fielder with a solid baseball IQ, and because of my speed, I could be a terror on the base path. However, I simply could not hit. The scouting report on my approach at the plate went in this order: Looks to get walked. Gets hit by a pitch. Prays and swings.

I stood on the edge of the infield grass, scared out of my Nike cleats, watching the pitcher rear back and throw a few warm-up pitches. He looked like most of the kids I feared. Tall and lanky with a square jaw, a spotty goatee, and sideburns. Stalking the mound with the confidence of a man that spent his weekends dry humping.

Eighth grade was difficult for me because only three years prior, in fifth grade, I ran with the “in” crowd. Before the puberty epidemic, which I seemed immune to, life had been good. In fact, I was one-half of the first “relationship” in my grade. Her name was Courtney. She had brown spiraled hair. We never got beyond holding hands at the skating parties and passing notes in class, but I established in fifth grade that I could get girls without really doing anything. This is how our relationship began:

Courtney’s friend Jen said, “Courtney likes you. Do you want to go out with her?”

I replied,, “Sure.”

“Congratulations. You’re a couple.”

And two months later, this is how the relationship ended:

Jen said, “Courtney doesn’t want to go out with you.”

I said, “Ok.”

“Sorry. You’re not a couple anymore.”

The umpire barked, “Batter up!” I crossed home plate and eyed down the third-base line to Coach Turner. Married to a professional cheerleader, Coach Turner was the closest thing I knew to a chain-smoking pirate. He walked with a limp and sported a seafaring scowl that would make a sailor’s asshole pucker. Coach Turner’s meaty left hand had tugged at the bill of his cap while his right hand ran down his thigh, signaling that I was to “take” the first pitch. I stepped into the batter box, screwing my back foot into the dirt.

The first pitch sizzled in―a belt-high fastball that popped into the catcher’s mitt.

“Strike one!”

I had stepped out of the batter’s box and looked down the third baseline. Coach Turner put his hands on his hips and drilled holes through me with his eyes. I knew that look well. He was telling me I should pray and swing, but he was secretly hoping I’d take a fastball in the ribs. I turned toward the batter’s box. I felt Dad’s presence looming in foul territory by the first base bag some ninety feet away. At that moment I felt embarrassed for Dad. The coach’s son, scared to swing.

I stepped into the batter’s box. I wrung the bat handle. A second belt-high fastball whistled in.

“Strike two!”

The Queen players erupted in jeers, “One more! He’s afraid to swing!”

I stepped out of the batter’s box and looked down at Coach Turner. There were two strikes. Bottom of the seventh. Tie game. There was no signal for “Stop being a coward and swing the fucking bat,” so he spread his arms out, palms face up in disgust. The reaction a pirate would give when questioned by an IRS agent about pillaged loot.

I must have looked foolish to Coach Turner. A little boy in a baseball uniform just circling the drain of life. Before I stepped back into the batter’s box, I looked toward Dad who stood in foul territory, patrolling first base.

Unlike Coach Turner, Dad was a modest man. Always calm. Never swept up by emotions or the magnitude of the moment. Then and now Dad is the Zeus in my mythology. He’s all powerful. All knowing. In a good way. Not in that prickish—I’m your father, the ruler of the universe, and you will do as I command—way. Dad had quiet determination. He had graduated from high school and immediately went to work as a welder. He later went on to open his own business repairing and selling pallets.

At the height of the evening’s drama, Dad looked down the first base line and into my soul. The sun sank behind the tree line. Crickets hummed. Fingers were crossed. All those eyes were locked on me. The players, the crowd, the entire cast of 90210. A swirl of voices screamed and whooped, cheered and jeered.

I felt myself collapsing under the weight of my adolescence. Failing at fourteen, on this stage, would be cataclysmic and undoubtedly cost my parents years of therapy co-pays. Dad knelt and ran his hand across the points of grass. Then, as subtle as the advent of the moon and as natural as the setting sun, he winked at me.

I climbed back into the batter’s box, choked up on the bat, and shortened my stance. Just like Dad had taught me. The pitcher reared back. The ball shot off the bat and rolled toward the dead space between the pitcher’s mound and first base. I dropped the bat and tore down the first base line. The first baseman retreated to the base. The pitcher leaped off the mound. Dad still knelt. The sun was at his back as he helplessly watched his son struggle in a world full of giants.

“Safe!”

The evening sky erupted in a burst of cheers and moans. Dad moved in behind me, put his hand on the small of my back, and calmly said, “Check your signs.”

I looked across the infield. The pirate ran his right hand down his left sleeve. Steal. On the next pitch I took off for second.

“Safe!”

Brian, the best hitter on our team and a seventh grader who had hit puberty, sent the next pitch flying out to right-center. I sprinted toward third. The pirate hopped up and down waving me home.Things were quiet in the car. Every so often Dad and I looked at each other and smiled. Still speaking in signals. Like father and son so often do. As we rounded the corner and headed home, I asked, “Dad, why did you wink at me?”

I felt the weight of the championship trophy in my hands. The sky shifted into deep purple. Single suburban houses with yellow porch lights flickered by. Dad looked across the car and said, “Because I believe in you.”

We slid into the driveway. Safe from the scrutiny of the world. Dad cut the engine and I looked over at him and his eyes met mine. “Thanks, Dad.”

Fast forward to 2020. There are many nights when I convince myself this book will never happen. When I fall into myself and teeter on the edge of failure. When I think it won’t be worth the work. When my kids pine for attention or when I can’t muster the energy to find a single word that satisfies me. When the blank Word document is as menacing as a strapping pitcher with facial hair and a propensity for destroying twerps like me.

Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I don’t swing.

Then sometimes I see a baby-faced fourteen-year-old boy in baggy blue baseball pants standing in the on-deck circle. His head rattles about in an oversized helmet. He’s scared out of his skull. Scared of everything. And I see my father. He’s a young man. Strong. Proud. With the sun behind him, he kneels in the green grass and winks at me the way fathers do who secretly believe in their sons.

Then the pitch comes.

And I’m scared.

But I swing.

Every time.

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ON SALE: The award-winning, Amazon best-seller Bedtime Stories for the Living

When someone believes in you before you fully believe in yourself.

This book is for the late bloomers. The tired fighters. The people quietly rewriting their story in the margins of ordinary days. Reflections about resilience, hope, failure, love, and the small glories that keep us going.

Perfect for anyone who needs a reminder that imperfect lives can still be beautiful ones.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called “Strong in the Broken Places” that was all about having skin cancer dug out of my face. Well, this week, I went back in for round two.

So, as a writer, my initial reaction was, “Well, at least I’ll have something to write about.”

As a human being, I thought, “Not this shit again.”

The waiting room still smells like spearmint and I’m sitting in the same chair I sat in last time I was here. I’m still trying not to think about scalpels and stitches. And still trying not to think about how my neurologist told me sitting in the sun helps people grow. Like a tulip. While my dermatologist advised me to avoid the sun. Like a vampire.

In that post, I wrote about how my wife said that my scar looked sexy, which, by the way, is just a nice way of saying that my face is now a small excavation site. I wrote about healing, too. About how that’s not always a solo activity. About how behind every scar is a series of steady hands, hard choices, and voices that don’t get squeamish when things get real.

All that’s still true. But what’s not always talked about is that healing is a choice. Not the cancer. Not when the doctor says, “We’re going to need to go back in.” However, the part after that requires participation. You can’t sit on the sidelines of your life and hope to get better by accident. You have to participate. You have to engage. You have to choose, sometimes daily, sometimes on an hourly basis, how you’re going to get through this.

Which is why, maybe, I’ve been a little obsessed with the show Shrinking. On the surface, it’s about therapists helping other people untangle their lives. But really, it’s about a bunch of very human people trying to untangle their own lives while pretending to be professionals about it.

There’s Paul, played by Harrison Ford, dealing with retirement and a Parkinson’s diagnosis. Smart guy, guarded, a little cranky in a way that actually makes him more endearing. When the situation calls for it, he confides in a friend, played by Michael J. Fox who understands the diagnosis not a Hollywood kind-of-way, but in hard, actual reality.

I’m staring at the painting on the wall of the speaarmint smelling waiting room.

It’s still a Picasso. Master of cubism. A face but not really a face. Off-angle, uneven, and misshapen. Like a blind 4-year-old tried to glue together the idea of what a face looks like. It seemed strange and cruel. Especially, just having my face cut, stitched, and scared.

Especially, in that ironic Picasso in a dermatologist’s waiting room-kind-of-way.

I guess, that’s what life looks like when things don’t go as planned—not clean lines and perfect symmetry, but more like pieces and parts, some sharp and some soft, glued together in a way that doesn’t always make sense at first glance. A life drawn by that blind 4-year-old kid.

You can look at that face and say, “That’s broken.” Or you can look at that face and say, “That’s still a face.”

I don’t know if healing happens within that choice, but I think it could.

Not in fixing every angle or smoothing every edge, but in deciding how you’re going to see what’s in front of you and then deciding how you’re going to respond.

And if I’m being honest, I found myself wondering if I looked a little more like that painting after today would my wife still call it sexy?

I have a feeling she would.

Which either says something about her or gives me a much better definition of what “healed” is supposed to look like.

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Billions of years. Stars forming. Stars collapsing. Chemistry slowly becoming life.

And then somehow… us.

Brief collections of atoms with opinions about politics, coffee, and very specific ideas about how our lives are supposed to go. From that distance, it’s harder to cling to the definitions we once thought were permanent.

My understanding of manhood has shifted. It’s less about strength and more about patience. Less about independence and more about interdependence. Less about control and more about living honestly in the life I have.

Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

My writing friend Gail and I have a small, somewhat nerdy tradition.

Most Sundays, we read a newsletter from The Marginalian, written by Maria Popova, who somehow combines philosophy, poetry, physics, and the occasional 19th-century thinker into something that makes your brain feel both smarter and slightly overwhelmed.

Then we text about it like two people who snuck into a graduate seminar full of people with very strong opinions about very smart things and if the word snuck should ever be used.

Recently, Gail threw out a friendly challenge:

“You should write a response to one of her essays.”

Ha. Writing a response to Maria Popova feels a little like being asked to jam in your garage with Bruce Springsteen. Possible? Technically. Humbling? Absolutely.

But one piece—Why You?—has been circling my brain for weeks like a student who refuses to drop the class.

Popova explores the idea that our lives are built from an incomprehensible chain of accidents. Atoms bonding this way instead of that way. Your parents meeting each other. Time, place, and culture shaping the person who eventually calls themselves me.

Change any one of those variables, even slightly, and the person living your life wouldn’t be you at all.

I haven’t been able to shake that idea. It’s so random. And makes me feel so helpless.

Because my own story—the one I thought I was supposed to live—has changed in ways I never would have predicted.

When I was 16, during the Blizzard of 1996, I broke a bone in my foot. At the time, it felt like bad timing. A season interrupted. A plan derailed.

What I didn’t know was that this small fracture would eventually lead me to meet my wife, change the trajectory of our lives, and contribute to the world gaining three remarkable human beings.

That’s the fragile architecture of a life. One small shift, and everything rearranges.

For most of my life, I carried a traditional story of what it means to be a man. Be strong. Be capable. Take care of people. Handle problems. Carry the weight when it’s your turn.

Then my body started making edits.

A neurological disorder in my cerebellum began rewriting the script. Balance became uncertain. Speech became effortful. Independence became… complicated.

Roles I had quietly assigned to manhood were no longer available to me. And when that happens, you’re left with a question: If the script changes… who are you?

Popova’s idea about the randomness of the self stops being abstract. It becomes personal. Because the truth is, I didn’t choose this body any more than I chose the one I had before.

Same person. Different chapter.

What keeps drawing Gail and me back to Popova’s work is how she zooms the lens all the way out—past routines, frustrations, and identities—until we’re staring at something much bigger.

Billions of years. Stars forming. Stars collapsing. Chemistry slowly becoming life.

And then somehow… us.

Brief collections of atoms with opinions about politics, coffee, and very specific ideas about how our lives are supposed to go. From that distance, it’s harder to cling to the definitions we once thought were permanent.

My understanding of manhood has shifted. It’s less about strength and more about patience. Less about independence and more about interdependence. Less about control and more about living honestly in the life I have.

And eventually, Popova lands somewhere unexpected. Not in theory. Not in probability. Something simpler: Love.

Love of truth. Love of beauty. Love of the people sharing this wildly improbable moment with us.

Because sometimes love doesn’t begin with a grand plan. Sometimes it starts with a 16-year-old kid in the Blizzard of 1996 who took a seemingly wrong step.

A step that leads, over time, to a woman he will love, a life he never imagined, and three people who will carry that moment forward in ways he’ll never fully understand.

Maybe that’s the point.

Even if existence is built on chance, it still somehow gives rise to consciousness, memory, longing—and love. And in that, I feel a little less helpless. Like I still have a say in the parts that matter. Like my life isn’t just a some great experiment.

I don’t know if that answers why we’re here. But it’s the answer that makes the most sense to me right now. Because if the universe hands you a story you didn’t expect…
a body you didn’t choose… a life that doesn’t match the plan… maybe the work is to live it with a sense of wonder and to love the people in it as well as you can.

Because if being you is one of the most improbable things in the universe… sometimes it only takes one step in the snow to change everything.

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Every year, when Daylight Saving Time rolls around, I think about the scheduled theft of one hour of my life.

This year I happened to be far from home, deep in Virginia, staying at an Airbnb for my son’s soccer tournament. A strange place to lose an hour of your life, but perhaps the perfect setting for a sleepless night.

The calendar warns me. The news reminds me. My phone sends a polite memo. And yet when the moment arrives, I resist it the way a four-year-old resists bedtime—irrationally, stubbornly, and with the quiet belief that maybe this year the clock will finally change its mind.

It never does.

So instead of going to bed, I watched one of my favorite movies: Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Again. For probably the twelfth time.

CLICK AND READ THE REST ABOUT MY RESTLESS DAYLIGHT SAVINGS NIGHT….

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

Five years ago, I published my first book, Bedtime Stories for the Living. At the time, I had no idea what would come of it. I didn’t know who might read it, where it might travel, or what parts of my life it would end up preserving. I only knew that writing it felt necessary.

Anniversaries have a funny way of sneaking up on you. One minute you’re just trying to get through the day, and the next minute five years have passed and you’re staring at the same words you wrote in a completely different season of your life.

Right now, my family is living in one of those seasons where the future feels wide open and slightly terrifying. My daughter is heading off to college. The house is about to change in ways we can’t quite predict. Every parent knows this moment is coming, but knowing something intellectually and living it are two very different sports.

And layered into all of that, of course, is the ongoing adventure of living with a progressive disease—an experience that has taught me, sometimes gently and sometimes with the subtlety of a frying pan, that thinking too far ahead is rarely helpful.

I can get into a pretty dark place if I spend too much time staring at what the disease has already taken from me, or imagining what it might take tomorrow. It’s like living with a check engine always on.

My imagination, it turns out, is not always a helpful travel companion.

The trick, as far as I can tell, is learning to live in the narrow gap between the past and the future. Right here. Right now.

The poet Mary Oliver once asked a question that feels more relevant the older I get: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

It’s a beautiful question.

But it assumes we know the plan.

Most of us don’t. Most of us are just figuring things out as we go—raising kids, facing diagnoses, packing dorm rooms, and trying to stay present long enough to notice the small miracles hiding inside ordinary days.

Because the truth is, the only place life actually happens is right here.

And sometimes the best we can do is return to the moment we’re standing in.

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SPEECH THERAPY

“Mr. Armstrong, you can come back now.”

With Clark Able, I follow the speech therapist down a hallway and into a small square room that overlooks the parking garage.

“Hi, I’m Jodie. It’s nice to meet you. I’ve read your chart. You’ve got a lot going on. How’d did you end up in speech therapy?”

I tell Jodie the story about the hole in my brain, about the falls, and about the difficulty reading aloud. Jodie writes notes on a yellow legal pad. She shakes her head. “That’s some story. I need to learn more about your speech. Repeat after me—ZZZZZZZZ.”

“ZZZZZZZZ.”

“Good. Ahhhhhhhh.”

“Ahhhhhhhh.”

“Good. Kakakakakaka.”

“Kakakakakaka.”

“Good. Now, I’m going to show you a series of pictures on this flip chart, and I want you to tell me what you see.”

Jodie draws a line across the yellow legal pad and begins to flip.

“Boy. Car. Star. House. Bathtub. Knife.” I lean back and smile.

“I know this is silly,” she says, “but there’s no adult version of speech therapy. It’s the same for kids and adults.”

“I feel like I’m in first grade again.”

Sensing my frustration, Jodie smiles, “Just a few more.”

“Dog. Soap. Duck.”

“And what does the duck say?”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Quack.”

“Good.” She writes something down. “And do you know why ducks quack?”

“—to communicate?”

“Yes. Very good.”

Let me be clear. I like Jodie. She’s doing a fine job. She’s asking questions, taking notes, and establishing a baseline assessment for me. But the “quack” makes me flush with frustration. I’m a forty-year-old man identifying coloring book pictures and quaking like a duck. Throughout my journey I’ve tried hard not to feel sorry for myself. But, right now, I feel sorry for myself.

A beige and brown tin box, known as the speech trailer, had perched on cinder blocks in my grade school parking lot. Kids would be summoned there by slips of yellow paper. If you were summoned, you’d hope it was in the warm months because the speech trailer had air-conditioning, and the school did not. But, as grade school lore went, the speech trailer didn’t have heat. So if you received a yellow slip in February you were encouraged to bring your coat, gloves, hat, and whatever else Mom forced you to wear to school.

I was summoned to the speech trailer once in first grade when going to the speech trailer was still considered mysterious and cool. I identified pictures on laminated index cards (apple, tree, scissors) while a woman wearing big round glasses wrote on a yellow legal tablet. After I identified all of the index cards, big round glasses told me to go back to class. That was the last time I was inside the speech trailer.

Despite the air-conditioning, as you got older, the speech trailer became less cool. That yellow slip announced to everyone something was wrong with you. Now, as I sit in speech therapy as a forty-year-old man, I feel like an eighth grader trying to sneak out of the classroom before anyone notices the yellow slip in his hand. Ashamed. Embarrassed. Emasculated. My self-esteem choking on fumes.

I know I’m not the first person with a neurological disease to struggle with their voice. Yet, in this swirling moment, I feel like I am. Our voice is a part of our identity. Our voice carries our story. Our voice is what makes us distinct and unique and, for better or worse, memorable.

What if I become a stranger to the people who knew me when my voice was clear and boomed like a drum? What if people avoid talking to me? What if I avoid talking to people? What if I’m only seen and no longer heard? What if I lose my ability to teach and tell stories? What if my sarcasm and wit and sincerity remain stuck and unsaid in my head? What if I lose my ability to deliver a well-timed curse word? A punchline? What if I lose my ability to sing off-key? What if I can no longer bullshit with my friends or give a toast at the kids’ weddings or tell a story to my grandchildren about their parents? What if I will forever lose my ability to quack with the people I love? What if I lose my voice and then lose myself?

Jodie interrupts my cyclone of worst-case scenarios. “Do you have any questions?”

I take a deep breath, look down at the parking garage iced with snow, and ask, “Given that my disease is progressive, will speech therapy really work? I mean, I’m not trying to—”

She nods, “I know. I understand your fear and skepticism. But, we’ll never know until we try.”

Jodie’s right. We’ll never know until we try.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

Every year, when Daylight Saving Time rolls around, I think about the scheduled theft of one hour of my life.

This year I happened to be far from home, deep in Virginia, staying at an Airbnb for my son’s soccer tournament. A strange place to lose an hour of your life, but perhaps the perfect setting for a sleepless night.

The calendar warns me. The news reminds me. My phone sends a polite memo. And yet when the moment arrives, I resist it the way a four-year-old resists bedtime—irrationally, stubbornly, and with the quiet belief that maybe this year the clock will finally change its mind.

It never does.

So instead of going to bed, I watched one of my favorite movies: Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Again. For probably the twelfth time.

The premise is simple and wonderfully earthly. Steve Martin plays a man trying—through planes, trains, automobiles, snowstorms, rental-car disasters, and the enthusiastic companionship of an overly friendly salesman—to get home for Thanksgiving.

No superheroes. No intergalactic battles. Just a suburban guy wrestling with the stubborn physics of distance, weather, and fate.

The movie ended around 2:00 a.m., which is precisely when time decided to jump forward and my phone calmly informed me it was now 3:00 a.m.

Somewhere inside that missing hour it occurred to me that Planes, Trains and Automobiles might actually be a modern retelling of The Odyssey. A man trying desperately to get home. Endless obstacles. Strange companions. Uncooperative weather. The vague sense that the entire universe is conspiring to delay your arrival.

Odysseus had cyclopes and sea monsters. Steve Martin had canceled flights and a burned-out rental car.

Different centuries. Same story.

I tossed. I turned. Then I turned and tossed.

I opened the window and stared into the dark like a man expecting the moon to explain something. I got up and stumbled to the bathroom. I turned on the fan. I lay back down and stared at the ceiling, listening to the quiet rhythm of my wife’s small snores beside me.

Around 4 a.m., my brain began doing what brains sometimes do when they should be resting.

It started asking questions nobody had invited.

Where did the past go?

When was the last time I rode a Big Wheel down a cement sidewalk?

Whatever happened to my college roommate? Is he still alive?

What’s the next calamity of my disability? Will I ever walk on a beach again—feel Atlantic sand between my toes? Will someone discover a cure before it’s too late?

Is heaven real? And if it is, what does it look like? What does it smell like? Does it feel like that floating moment when you finally arrive home after a long trip?

And if heaven does exist, is cheesecake available there? Or is that one of Earth’s exclusive perks?

Why can’t I sleep?

I started thinking about the strange invention of Daylight Saving Time itself. It’s one of those ideas that makes perfect sense on paper and far less sense when you’re lying awake at four in the morning taking inventory of your life.

Eventually the sun rose. The birds began their morning announcements. Coffee started to feel less like a morning beverage and more like a necessary medical intervention.

And somewhere in that first cup, I realized something about both Planes, Trains and Automobiles and The Odyssey.

All those ships. All those planes. All those trains and automobiles. They’re inventions built for one purpose: to outrun time. To shorten the journey. To collapse distance. To get us home faster.

But whether you’re Odysseus crossing the Mediterranean or a tired traveler stuck in a snowstorm in Wichita, time still wins.

And if losing one hour of sleep sends you wandering through comfort movies, Greek epics, and late-night philosophy, maybe the real point isn’t the hour we lose.

Maybe it’s remembering where we’re trying to get to in the first place.

Home.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

After the port-o-potty incident in North New Jersey — wind howling, body wobbling, brain and bladder staging their own small rebellion — I drove home thinking about framing.

Not dignity. That had already packed up and left the premises.

Framing.

I’m a writer, which means I don’t just live my life — I narrate it. I circle it. I hold it up to the light and ask, What is this, really? Living with a progressive brain disease gives me plenty of material. It affects my balance, coordination, speech. It turns short walks into strategic missions and drawstrings into advanced engineering problems. One hundred yards can feel like Everest without the scenic views.

Those are the facts.

But facts are just lumber. The frame decides whether you’re building a cabin or a coffin.

If I wanted to frame my life as loss, I could make a strong case. MRIs. Scars. Broken bones. Exploratory medications. Research studies. Support groups. .Canes. Walkers. Genetic testing. Doctor reports.

That version of the story wouldn’t be wrong. It would just be incomplete.

Because there is also laughter in plastic bathrooms. There is the ridiculous joy of naming your rollator Mellow Yellow. There is the odd intimacy of knowing your body so well you can sense a neurological glitch before it fully arrives — like a sailor reading a subtle shift in the tide.

I’m currently reading Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield, which is as brutal. It’s about the Spartans preparing fror their grear battle at Thermopylae against a Persian invasion. It’s violent, bloody and obscene and makes my physical therapy session in my dusty garage look like a spa day in the French Riviera.

But there’s a line in the book that keeps echoing: “The gods endow each man with a gift by which he may conquer fear.”

That sentence stopped me.

The Spartans conquered fear with discipline, loyalty, shield walls. Their gift was forged in training yards and tested in battle. Mine looks different. My gift is writing.Writing is how I conquer fear.

Fear of decline. Of humiliation. That this progressive condition will slowly narrow the borders of my life.

When I write about the wobble, it becomes a paragraph instead of a prophecy. When I describe the bathroom mishap with enough honesty — and maybe a touch of humor — it shifts from shame to story. The act of naming something robs it of some of its power. It pulls fear out of the shadows and sets it down on the page where I can examine it.

Resilience, the kind with muscle and breath in it, isn’t denial. It’s interpretation. It’s choosing to say: this will shape me, but it will not shrink me. It’s taking the gift you’ve been given — sword, shield, pen — and using it.

Happiness, I’m convinced, is less about what happens and more about how we frame what happens. Two people can live the same day and tell entirely different stories. One drafts a tragedy. The other writes a dark comedy with spiritual undertones and questionable bathroom aim.

Same scene. Different lens.

When I frame my life as an expedition instead of a slow unraveling, I’m not pretending my cerebellum is behaving. I’m practicing resilience. I’m insisting that this story is bigger than a diagnosis code.

There are setbacks. There are moments when my body refuses to cooperate and my pride takes a hit along with my balance.

But there are also sunsets over cold soccer fields. Conversations with strangers outside a port-o-potty. Prayers whispered in relief and gratitude — sometimes in the same breath.

If I wait for stability before I allow myself happiness, I’ll be waiting a long time. Stability may not be in the cards. But meaning? Meaning is still available. Joy is still available. Even in a body that sways.

The Spartans had their shield wall. I have sentences.

And when I sit down to write,I am using the gift I’ve been given. I am conquering fear in my own small, stubborn way.

Not on a battlefield. But on a page.

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Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.

So there I am. Alone. North New Jersey. A cold, wind-slapping March evening.

I’m standing behind my rollator on mushy grass at a soccer complex, weighing the most important decision of the night:

Left — about 200 yards to a snow-kissed evergreen.
Right — 100 yards to the lone port-o-potty.

Both promise relief. Both feel like Everest.

“O God,” I say out loud.

When your bladder starts shouting louder than your inner voice, philosophy disappears. There is no dignity. No strategy. Only urgency. Standing still doesn’t calm it; it enrages it — an impatient organ screaming, MOVE.

I go right.

By the time I reach the port-o-potty, I park Mellow Yellow beside the plastic fortress, swing the door open, and pull myself inside. My bladder senses victory and roars.

I am a veteran of cold soccer nights. Under my sweatpants? Thermal pants. Because I plan for frostbite, not anatomic conflicts.

The bladder pulses. Now. Now. NOW.

In moments like this, credentials mean nothing. College degree? Irrelevant. Teaching awards? Meaningless. Writing honors? Useless. I had to pee.

And when one organ hijacks a neurologically compromised body, things get… creative.

The ataxia kicks in hard. It reminds my bladder who’s in charge. My back slams against the plastic wall opposite the urinal. O God. A civil war erupts between bladder and brain. My fingers fumble with the drawstring like it’s a Boy Scout knot tied by a sadist. One pair of sweatpants down. One more to go.

I sway. Curse God. Attempt the normal adult maneuver — lower the second layer a few inches. My body rejects this plan. So I commit. Both pairs to the knees. My pale backside smacks the cold plastic wall with a sound that echoes like shame.

The bladder is delirious with anticipation. Pants down. Private space secured. Urinal in sight.

But my brain will not let my feet move forward.

And there, in a port-o-potty in New Jersey on a bitter March night, a great battle takes place: Brain vs. Bladder.

My feet shuffle forward. The bladder releases. I exhale. Victory.

And then — because ataxia demands attention — my body ricochets off the wall again. The bladder does not care. A yellow puddle forms near my shoes. I try to adjust, but another neurological glitch sends the stream sideways. The wall. The soap dispenser. Geometry collapses. Then gravity. So do my potty training lessons from forty-three years ago, the Golden Rule, and the unspoken bonds of human decency.

For a godless moment there is no order, no mercy, no design. Just biology and bad aim and half-naked relief.

When the flood finally subsides, I inhale. Thermal pants up. Sweatpants up. I exhale and whisper, “Thank you, God.”

I push open the door.

A kindly older woman stands there smiling.

“Is it safe to go in there?”

“Enter at your own risk,” I say.

She chuckles. “I think people forget how to use those things once they get inside.”

“Yeah,” I reply. “I don’t know what happens in there.”

I place both hands on Mellow Yellow’s handles. My bladder and brain sign a temporary ceasefire. The field stretches wide. The winter sun sinks low. The wind stings my face. I almost peed my pants. Almost.

Behind me, from inside the plastic chamber of consequences, a voice exclaims:

“Help me, God.”

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The other day, when the bandages came off and the scar finally saw daylight, I stood in the bathroom studying my reflection like it had something to explain. The mark ran along my cheek, pink and blue and slightly raised. The newest addition to a body that collects scars the way some people collect coins. Different sizes. Different years. All earned.

My wife looked at me and said, “The scar looks good.”

Now, that is definitely not the same sentence as, “Scars are sexy.”

But in my head? Close enough. A prime case of selective hearing.

Jay Armstrong is an award-winning author and speaker who refuses to be defined by his diagnosis of a rare neurological disease. Despite challenges with movement, balance, eyesight, and speech, Jay continues to press forward with determination, humor, and hope. As the leader of the Philadelphia Ataxia Support Group, he’s dedicated to helping others find joy, peace, and meaning in their lives, no matter the obstacles they face.