How Even Regrets and ‘Mistakes’ Hold Us Together

Last week, I found myself sitting in a cancer treatment chair during a strange, liminal space in the calendar—a transitional moment when Hanukkah flickered its last flame and the eve of Christmas drifted into the air. 

For most, this is a week of glowing lights and festive gatherings. But for those of us in the quiet corners of clinics and hospital wards, at times, the world’s glow can feel like it’s slightly dimmed. The holidays, for all their joy, carry a certain weight. They force us to look backward even as we’re marching toward the ledge of a new year.

So, as I sat there, listening to the quiet, steady drip of the IV, I contemplated two of the heaviest burdens I've faced throughout my journey: guilt and regret.

I took a mental trip back to 2020 then. That was the year of COVID—when the world stopped for everyone—but for me, that's when I got really sick, too. I remember the clinical coldness of the room when the doctor told me I only had two years to live. That was MY expiration date. Sobering. Terrifying. Sitting in that hospital room afterward, the silence threatened to swallow me alive. To never see my kids grow up, get their dream jobs, maybe even find love… To never grow old with Mike and feel the kind of love that's lasted a lifetime… That all seemed unfathomable.

So, in the torturous moments that followed, regret came knocking. I remained alone for much of that almost month-long hospital stay because everything had been locked down due to COVID—especially the cancer center. So, with tons of time to process things alone, I thought about the YEARS I’d spent as a workaholic. I lived my life in a sprint, grinding out eighty-hour weeks and saving every penny for my children’s futures. I wanted to build financial security for them and figured I'd trade “now" for "later."

Then, life took a sharp, cruel turn. The newspaper I worked for sold our location, and just like that, the career I'd practically traded my soul for…evaporated into nothingness. People cried as they lost their jobs, and I truly understood, feeling numb, insignificant, and demolished. Shortly after the newspaper sold—the entire nest egg Mike and I had saved—got dismantled, brick by brick, just to help pay for my first looooong hospital stay and initial cancer treatments to even keep me alive.

In those dark days of 2020, a crushing sense of failure enveloped me, and I realized I’d sacrificed my health and time for…worldly success and ultimately…trivial expectations.

Or so I thought…

Sitting at cancer treatments last week, I realized that over five years have passed since that initial diagnosis, and I've lived THREE years longer than expected! In fact, staring into the face of 2026, I saw how much the light has shifted for me. The perspective I have now isn't the one from that "two-year prognosis" room because I’m no longer tethered to the 80-hour work week and old ways of viewing success and significance. Because in this moment, I understand the one currency that actually matters: TIME.

In 2025, my youngest daughter, Indiana, and I discovered a shared language through loops and knots of yarn. We’ve started crocheting together, and every Sunday, we attend a local knitting and crochet group—a circle of people talking and laughing, hands moving in determined pursuits... Throughout the past several months, my baby girl and I have spent countless time together, crafting scarves, hats, blankets, and even purses. 

This week, as I watched my own crochet hook dip and pull, crafting a new row, a realization washed over me that finally brought me some peace I’ve been craving for years.

I thought of my grandmother: a woman of grit and grace who said that despite many regrets, she wouldn’t change a thing. As a younger woman, I filed this away as a cliché platitude, but now I see it as a profound key to joy.

So basically, think about a blanket or a scarf. To the casual observer, it’s a single piece of fabric. But to the knitter, crocheted, or weaver, it’s a series of thousands of individual choices. Every single stitch is vital. If even one piece of yarn is cut, or if a "mistake" from ten rows back is snipped and pulled out, the entire structure will begin to lose its integrity and eventually unravel.

Our lives are exactly like that. We look at our "workaholic" seasons, failed ventures, or moments of selfishness and wish we could reach back with a pair of scissors and snip them from memory. We want a "clean" history, but we forget that the yarn of our lives is continuous for a reason.

If I hadn't been that driven, tireless worker, I wouldn't have the discipline I use to keep fighting this illness today. My kids wouldn’t have seen what it took for me to strive as a single mom who wanted EVERYTHING for her children. If I hadn't lost that career, I might never have seen the value of time, reassessed my life and changed everything…down to the smallest details like picking up a crochet hook with Indiana. 

Every memory, every mistake, and every season of hardship is a stitch. If we tried to excise the parts we regret, we wouldn't be the people standing here today. We would be a pile of loose, disconnected strings…

In the world of handcrafted items, there is often a concept that the flaws are what provide the soul—the touch of humanity. Sure, a machine-made scarf is “perfect,” but it often lacks life or character. A handmade one might have a stitch that is slightly too tight or a knot where the yarn ran thin, but in this analogy, those are the markers of a life lived. They give the piece personality. They make it unique. They can even make it valuable.

As the treatment ended and I prepared to leave that hospital chair, a deep sense of gratitude settled over me. Grandma Stilson was right. It’s okay to be honest about our regrets. We can acknowledge that some stitches were painful to create and move beyond, but that doesn't mean we should change them. We don't need to carry past choices as heavy stones; we can wear them as something we've grown from.

As we cross the threshold into 2026, I hope you’ll look at the decisions of your past year—or your past decade—with a little more mercy. Don't pull at loose threads. They are holding you together more than you know.

You are a masterpiece in progress. You are perfect exactly as you are—tight stitches, knots, and all. Just wait until the work is finished, and you'll see how incredible it truly is. 

A Ghost of Herself

Every morning, I spend a few moments with a small, weathered box that holds more value to me than any bank account ever could. It’s what my grandmother called her “Happiness File.” After my grandma passed away, this object became my compass because inside are hundreds of index cards, each one boasting a thought, quote, or simple observation she found worth saving. Some are whimsical, but others are so profound they stop me in my tracks.

Recently, I pulled one out that held three words: “You are enough.”

On the surface, it sounds obvious and even trite. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized it’s a warning against the expectations we place on ourselves and others. In fact we spend so much of our lives projecting perceptions onto the people around us. We decide how our spouses should react to stress. We map out the degrees and promotions our children should pursue to be "secure." We tell ourselves that if they “just tried a little harder” or “pivoted a little faster,” they’d reach that subjective peak we call "success."

But one of the most dangerous people we do this to might not be friends or family because it can be extremely damaging when we do this to…ourselves. We live our lives for a "perfected" version of us that doesn't actually exist, and in doing so, we ignore the beautiful, breathing, struggling human being we actually are.

During a recent phone call with one of my oldest friends, I felt reminded of this painful truth. She is, by every traditional standard, quite accomplished. This is probably due to the fact that my friend is a perfectionist of the highest order—the kind of person whose work ethic is both inspiring and exhausting to witness. For years, I’ve watched her treat life like a mountain, convinced that if she could just climb one more peak, she’d  finally be worthy of the love and kindness she so freely gives to everyone else.

But as life eventually does to all of us, it recently hit her hard. A series of setbacks—professional disappointments and personal misfortunes—collided all at once. Because she had tied her entire identity to achievements, the loss of those goals felt like a loss of her very self.

On the phone, her voice wafted out thin and brittle. She cried, telling me she felt like a failure, a ghost of the person she was "supposed" to be. She felt fully convinced she’d never return to the starting line, let alone win the race.

I wanted to reach through the phone line to pull her back down to reality. I spoke from the perspective of my own experience with cancer—a journey that strips away the vanity of "professional standing" very quickly. When you’re facing mortality, you don’t wish you’d spent more hours in the office or received one more accolade. You realize that the only thing that truly echoes is how much you loved and how you made the people around you feel. I told her, as clearly as I could, that she is exactly who she needs to be right now. That she is perfect in her "trying," regardless of the outcome.

But she couldn't hear me. Her mind had already drifted someplace else.

Then, my friend began talking about the concept of parallel universes. She told me, with a haunting kind of hope, that she strongly believes in the multiverse—that somewhere out there, in an alternate reality, there is a version of her that didn’t fail—a version that is raking in the money, becoming famous, and receiving the "noted" status she craves. She started fantasizing about this other woman, this "Successful Her," as if that person were the real one and the woman on the phone—with me—merely represented a broken mistake.

When I hung up, I felt profoundly somber to realize that my friend—one of the sweetest, most generous souls I’ve ever met—had become so blinded by her own high expectations she couldn't see the miracle of her own existence in this reality. She looked into the cosmos for a version of herself to love, while the person standing right here is starving for self-compassion.

My friend’s fatal flaw isn't a lack of talent or drive. Her flaw is that she is kind to the entire world, yet treats herself like a tenant she’s trying to evict.

I know we’re all guilty of this to some degree. We live in a culture that treats "striving" as a moral virtue and "pivoting" as a failure. We’re taught that if we aren't moving upward, we’re falling behind. But my grandmother’s index card offers a different path, explaining the each one of us IS enough. Right now! No expectations. No potential. No assumptions. YOU. Are. Enough. 

Success is not a destination; it is a lens. If we view our lives through the lens of external achievement, we will always be poor, because there is always someone with a more prestigious title, a bigger house, or more… Stuff. But if we view our lives through the lens of kindness—if we measure our days by the grace we extend to others and the love we allow ourselves—we find that we have already arrived.

Life is hard. It is full of misfortunes we never asked for and setbacks we didn't earn. But we are all just doing the best we can with the tools we have at the time. Sometimes, "doing your best" doesn't look like a promotion; sometimes, it just looks like getting out of bed and choosing to be gentle with yourself and those around you.

If you find yourself today looking at the "parallel universe" of what might have been, I hope you can stop and smell the flowers instead. You don’t need to be the version of you that has it all together. You don’t need the accolades to be worthy of the space you hold in this world.

You are exactly who you need to be. You are here, you are trying, and in this universe, you are more than enough.

A Holiday Miracle in Three Bags of Yarn

Indy and I are so excited to announce that we recently converted to Judaism. This has been an incredible journey, and I’ve been working toward it for almost 5 years. To be able to convert right now, at such an exciting time of year, is really special. In the Jewish tradition, the holiday season is defined by light, and we share that universal feeling of goodwill that settles over the world in December. It’s really a time when we can look for illumination in the darkness, when we hold our families a little tighter, and allow ourselves to believe that miracles—however small—are just around the corner.

For my family, and especially for my youngest daughter, Indy, that miracle arrived last week. It didn’t come in a blast of light or apparate into our kitchen; instead, it came through our front door in three massively oversized bags.

To understand why this matters so much, you have to understand Indy. She isn’t just a dreamer; she is a doer. For a long time, she’s held onto a huge goal: she wants to go on a foreign exchange program next year. She wants to see the world, to learn, and to grow. After taking enough classes that she can graduate an entire year early and striving to get exceptional grades, Indy has already been accepted into one program and is anxiously waiting to hear back from a couple of others. But acceptance letters are only half the battle. The other half is funding.

Knowing this, Indy has been attacking this goal from every angle. She works as a cashier at a fast-food restaurant, earning minimum wage, and spends her off-hours turning her room into a small factory, creating crocheted scarves and purses to sell.
I watch her work with such pride, though it is mixed with a specific kind of heartache. I want nothing more than to be side-by-side with her for every single stitch, churning out inventory. But the reality of my current cancer diagnosis is that I am not well enough to do as much as I wish I could. My heart is willing, but my body is tired. I help where I can—sewing on a button here, finishing a row of stitches there—but Indy has shouldered the bulk of the labor herself.

Even with her tireless work ethic, we hit a wall. Yarn is expensive. When you calculate the cost of materials against the sales price of a scarf, the profit margins can be slim. We crunched the numbers and realized that minimum wage shifts and crochet sales alone simply have a ceiling; they wouldn't be enough to cover the substantial costs of a year abroad.
So, we swallowed our pride and asked for help, starting a GoFundMe for her trip. The response has been nothing short of astounding. People have been so generous, donating money to help a young girl fly. That community support gave us hope, but we still worried she wouldn’t make enough and knew she had to keep her crochet business running. We’d need to maintain inventory, but every penny we spent on yarn was a penny that couldn't go toward the trip.

Then, our worries and prayers got answered through a familiar face.

I hadn’t even finished listing Indy’s latest batch of items online when I received a message from Natalie, and incredible woman I haven’t spoken to in almost a year. 

Her words were cryptic, saying simply that she "had me on her heart" and felt compelled to connect. So, I quickly called her, and Natalie ended up explaining that she had some extra yarn and wondered if Indy would like it. 

Indy got excited! We expected a grocery sack, perhaps a few leftover skeins from an old project that Indy would squeal over and be elated about.

But Natalie Bergevin didn’t hand over a small sack. She gifted Indy three MASSIVE black bags, overflowing with beautiful, high-quality yarn.

When Indy saw this haul of yarn, her  reaction was immediate and visceral. She fell to her knees on the floor and began opening them, pulling out skeins in every color imaginable. She started sorting them right there on the rug, her hands moving quickly, her mind already racing with the patterns she could create.

Tears filled her eyes as she looked up at me. "Mama," she whispered, "this is a miracle."

I am honestly not sure if Natalie had planned to give away this yarn all along, or if she was just moved to do something sweet for a young girl working toward a dream. But that act of kindness changed everything this December. Because of her generosity, Indy now has inventory that cost her nothing but time. Every dollar she makes from these scarves is now pure profit toward her dream.

Between the GoFundMe donors, the minimum wage shifts, and now this incredible gift from a beautiful friend, Indy is finally making real headway.

This moment hit me harder than I expected. 

I think if my diagnosis has taught our family anything, it is that the concept of "someday" is a luxury we can't afford to bank on. We have to do what we can right now to attain our dreams.
I want my children to be kind, fulfilled, and happy, and I’m so blessed to still be here, watching all of that unfold. I’m fighting hard for a future where I can pick up the phone next year, FaceTime Indy, and have her show me the incredible adventures she’s having on the other side of the world. I want to see her fly. And I want all of my kids to go after their dreams however they can with the moments and abilities that they have.

If you would like to see what Indy is creating with her "miracle yarn," you can find her work at www.myfireflyfashion.com.
This whole experience reminds me of something my grandma always used to say: "We need to appreciate everything right now. Otherwise, time will pass us by."

This holiday season, thanks to the kindness of friends like Natalie and a community that cares, we aren’t letting a single moment be taken for granted. We are fighting for an incredible future, one stitch at a time.

Get my latest book for FREE!

 I’ve been sitting here reflecting this past Thanksgiving weekend, and mostly, I’m just overwhelmed with gratitude.

To be honest, I didn't think I would get this far. When doctors told me I only had two years to live—in 2020–I drafted a Will and got my affairs in order. I tried coming to peace with everything, but my youngest was only 10, and the thought of not seeing my kids grow up…get their dream jobs, maybe get marrried… Those thoughts felt unbearable. And as I tried facing the absolute worst, I realized mistakes I’d made. I was a workaholic, so focused on my career when I should’ve been building relationships. I would’ve done things differently if I could’ve seen into the future, and plus, there were so many things I STILL wanted to do. 

Maybe fully understanding our own mortality makes life so much clearer…

So, now it’s almost 2026 😮🤯 And I’m STILL alive. I’m grateful to be here, living, enjoying—still fighting while appreciating—and most of all, with a heart full of gratitude! 

When I got so sick this last summer with sepsis, I decided I really wanted to get one last book done (a novel I started working on in 2021!). There were MANY hard days where sitting at a desk wasn't an option. So, I actually wrote a huge portion of this story by using talk-to-text on my phone, sometimes just lying in bed trying to get the words out.

It was a lot. But several people (who I met online!😮) kept me motivated. 💓

The encouragement I’ve received from this online community is the fuel that helped me cross the finish line.

Anyway, there’s not much I can “give,” but I want to somehow say “thank you.”

So… for Cyber Monday

✨ Today, my brand new book, “The Unfinished Business of Opal Bloom,” is available for FREE download on Amazon! ✨

I also have several other books that are either free or just $0.99 throughout this week. Dec. 1–6.

To get them:

1. Simply visit: https://www.amazon.com/author/ecstilson

2. Or go to Amazon and search “EC Stilson books”

3. Download the books and enjoy!

You can find the Opal Bloom book here: https://amzn.to/4437AAN

Thank you for believing in me and for reading. I hope the lessons in this latest story will resonate with you, just as they helped me process the complex emotions I’ve faced with cancer—the doubts, the guilt, and the journey toward forgiveness.

Have an AMAZING day, and happy December 🥰