Cathy Coley

Welcome to 2026, with some reservation regarding the wider world so far, I hope yours is lovely and peaceful, and that it is full of love. I know I’ve been absent for a while here.

A lot of changes have been happening on a personal level since around when my father passed away fairly suddenly, he was 86 after all, in February of 2023. Grief does funny things to one’s psyche, as does hitting a milestone birthday this week. This may end up resembling the holiday letters of old, but I promise there is more to the story, and it gets good.

Since going through cancer treatment in 2020-2021 (I am still taking a med for it, but 5 years cancer-free) and multiple surgeries and physical therapy related to it even well into 2025, I have been doing a lot of assessing about what I want my life to look like, where I thought I’d be by my current age of 60, and how I can begin to make those thoughts merge into real life, rather than remain brain noodlings. I am doing deep soul work.

I’ve been in therapy for grief and other things, and it’s helped a lot beyond being a place to dump a lot of life stuff rather than on friends. I am generally a Big Picture person, but along the way, I was getting lost in the details of figuring out parenting, while treating chronic pain from a lot of things, but mostly a car accident in 2013, ankle injury 2017, and surgery for that in 2018, learning to walk again twice, then the cancer stuff, which started with being diagnosed on the day of the COVID shut down, while I had COVID, etc. Dealing daily with pain and body disabilities takes up a lot of brain work, like running the engine on overdrive constantly. The hard drive was HOT, in another analogy.

There has been a lot of family stuff both good and not. I’d rather talk about the good, and respect privacy of other members of my family. My eldest married in 2024, and I am incredibly happy for him and his wife. My youngest is graduating high school this year, and has been accepted with full tuition, early decision to their first choice university. My middle adult child has worked in the food service industry while building his creative work with a network of artist friends he has made around the world. I was late diagnosed with autism and ADHD, also known as AuDHD, which amplified a lot of my life assessment: past to make more sense of the paths I’ve walked and why, going back to childhood; and future, where to go from here? I have successfully raised three spawn, each with their own set of challenges and joys, talents, and life desires. I am grateful and proud of the empathic, creative people they have become, and I think I did my best to nurture that in them. I had some practical support, but not a lot of emotional support through all of the above.

Here comes the gear shift. The did-you-unplug-and-plug-it-back-in-again. Well, I did. I am pretty much always going to be in a physical state of do something – recovery mode for the rest of my life. I understand that deeply now. I have reached jalopy state, just keep this functional with repairs as needed until it doesn’t work anymore. I will never be able to work a 9-5 position, as my body just isn’t up for a day-to-day work environment, but I can work for short stints, such as filming. Creatively, I didn’t stop writing, per se, but I have not really finished things, either.

The gear shift is that a little creative voice from when I was 14 has grown louder in these medical and parenting years, and now I have heard it loud and clear. In May of 2022, I started taking on-camera acting classes, started doing some background and supporting day player work in projects filming locally and a bit farther reach, out to Charlotte. I started a Meisner class in 2023 and finished it in fall of 2025. I participated in a few workshops; one improv workshop netted me a big agent in Atlanta. They have put me up for auditions for small parts in big projects. I continue taking classes to maintain and improve the muscle. Meanwhile, I keep self-submitting for other things, and have filmed a few of those! This is all very exciting for the 14 year old’s heart who loved movies and television, and allowed someone to get in her head and keep her from her earliest childhood dream.

While I always loved writing, and still do - it won’t ever leave who I am - I always had the sense that it came more easily, that I always just did it, that it was the thing I fell back on, rather than the thing I loved the most. The thing I originally loved and wanted to do is still here, and I am honoring that now. Character comes pretty easily; memorizing lines after a lot of medical trauma, not so much. I often struggled with writing longer works, like novels or screenplays, and excelled more with poetry and short stories. A big part of who I am is enjoying the struggle, doing the hard things, addressing the harder things in life, so that it might improve. I’ve raised a neurodivergent family. I am 60 years old, this is my first love, and my third act.

If you made it this far, thank you. I am grateful we are still here. I love you and may all our 2026s move into more peaceful and fulfilling waters. Too many analogies, metaphors, I know. It’s what I do.

Resist what doesn’t work for each and all of us.

Find your flow.

Peace and love from this ol’ hippie punk,

Cath