I always thought that the hospital was going to be the hardest part of my recovery. After that, I would go home and life would be fine. And that wasn’t true at all! The hardest parts were when I got home and realized that there were going to have be some real changes. Changes in how I interacted with my family, and how I play with my kids. I realized that things don’t start and finish—they are forever changing. We are forever changing.
Once you embrace that idea, as I have done, it makes the difficult moments so much easier. Once you reach a goal, you have another goal. You keep moving and life keeps changing. So that’s what I was thinking about when I wrote that line, which I like a lot, too. The book isn’t just about my journey, it’s about life’s journey. Life does that to you, and that’s something you’ve not only got to realize, but also embrace.
That line also speaks to some of the other situations you describe in the book, including your return to international reporting after your injury and recovery. You do seem to be asking yourself, “Is this something I still want to do?”
I definitely see my role as a journalist in a different way now. The first time I really noticed it was when I interviewed Maya Regev, an Israeli hostage released by Hamas. Throughout my career, I’ve tried to get people to open up so I could understand their story and convey it. It was only when I interviewed her and she had similar injuries to mine that I realized that I understood her.
That doesn’t mean that every journalist needs to have gone through something difficult to get the story of someone else’s difficulties. But as I said to my wife [Alicia Meller], I think that I’m a better journalist because of what I went through. I’m able to get at something that I couldn’t quite get at before. I’m able to sit and talk with people about what they’re going through and it’s given me access to this whole other world.
Based on some of your recent reporting, it seems like you’re now particularly drawn to stories about communities that are trying to heal or individuals navigating new stages of life if that’s not reading too much into things.
No, you’re spot on. I’m in a position now where I believe my story might help people. I firmly believe in the idea of resilience, and a lot of the work that I want to do is aimed at reminding people how important that is. The town of Hazard, Ky, is a great example. It was a town that had lost everything: the coal mines had shut, the opioid crisis hit it, and a flood knocked it down just a couple of months ago. But what makes that community amazing is that they have the strength to pick themselves up.
To refer back to that line from Resolute, is there a chance that the person you’ll eventually decides to pursue that work outside of journalism?
I do speak at schools and with people who are recent amputees, and I would like to be doing more of that. My wife is a real driver of that, too, and also wants me to do more. I never say never. Life is full of wonderful opportunities, and you must try to do as much as you can. But I’m not sure that I’ll ever really leave journalism behind. I just can’t jump on a plane as quickly as I used to! I also need things like specialized hotel rooms. But I am finding different ways of telling stories, and the Hazard story is an example of that.