MONTHLY NEWSLETTER | November 2026
When I got into my car the other day, I looked for a podcast. I often use my driving time to catch up on what’s happening in the world. What caught my attention was a New York Times special about Céline Dion's return to the stage.
I didn't expect to care. I couldn't stop listening.
Somewhere along that drive, I found myself asking, “Why does this feel so good?”
The answer was simple and a little uncomfortable. It felt good because it was different. Because for a sustained stretch of time, I wasn't absorbing another story about war, displacement, political upheaval, or the accelerating pace of a world that no longer pauses long enough to let me catch my breath.
This was a story of recovery. And I hadn't realized, until that moment, how hungry I was for one.
THE DIET WE DIDN’T CHOOSE
We are all consuming a relentless news diet—and it is heavy.
Wars with no clear end. Elections reshaping familiar landscapes. Economic pressure. The dizzying uncertainty of what AI means for work, creativity, and what it means to be human. The slow, grinding accumulation of complexity that greets us every morning before we've had a single cup of coffee.
This is not a leadership problem. It’s not a resilience failure. It’s not something to push through or reframe away.
It is simply what it means to be awake and aware right now.
And here is what I know about sustained exposure to difficulty: it recalibrates us without our permission. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, our nervous systems begin to treat vigilance as the default setting.
We stay braced. We manage. We cope. And somewhere in that coping, the bandwidth for lightness quietly narrows.
Not disappears—narrows.
WHAT CÉLINE KNEW
What moved me about Céline’s story wasn't the spectacle of her return. It was the honesty of the path she took to get there.
In 2022, Céline was diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes severe muscle stiffness and painful spasms. This syndrome does not yield to willpower. It doesn’t respond to a better morning routine. It required her to stop, surrender control, and move through an extraordinarily difficult passage—slowly, imperfectly, and in full view of the world.
Her return to the stage wasn't a triumph over hardship. It was a triumph through it.
That distinction matters. Because most of us have been taught, implicitly, that recovery means getting back to who we were before. Back to the former pace. The former clarity. The former certainty.
But that's not recovery. That's denial with good intentions.
Real recovery is about finding your footing in who you've become. It requires integrating the difficulty rather than outrunning it.
Sometimes, the most meaningful part of recovery is rediscovering the joy we forgot we needed.
A QUESTION WORTH SITTING WITH
Céline’s journey led me to this question: What sources of restoration have you been dismissing as not important enough, not productive enough, or simply a luxury you haven't earned yet?
A drive with a podcast that has nothing to do with productivity. A conversation with someone who makes you laugh. A book that has no application to your work. A moment of beauty that doesn't require anything from you.
These aren't indulgences. They are, in fact, the conditions under which the nervous system begins to believe that it is safe to loosen its grip.
Joy doesn't announce itself when it's ready to return. It slips back in through the small openings we allow.
Thank you, Céline, for reminding me of that.
