Chapter 15 - Camila Builds a Different Life
Three years after surgery, my scans remained clear.
I celebrated every clean MRI quietly.
No champagne towers.
No revenge parties.
I bought a smaller home overlooking Lake Michigan.
Smaller was relative.
It was still beautiful.
But it was mine because I chose it, not because it represented a
marriage.
My company expanded into three new markets.
I hired a CEO and stopped working eighteen-hour days.
Surviving brain surgery had changed my relationship with ambition.
I still loved building things.
I no longer wanted achievement to consume the life it was supposed to
improve.
I began funding patient-navigation services for women undergoing complex
neurological treatment.
Not because every patient had a cheating husband waiting with divorce
papers.
Most did not.
But illness made ordinary paperwork, money, childcare, transportation,
and legal decisions brutally difficult.
I understood vulnerability differently now.
One afternoon Dr. Harris attended a fundraiser.
She hugged me.
“You look annoyingly healthy.”
“I worked very hard at it.”
She laughed.
So did I.
For years, I had believed survival meant winning against Alejandro.
Eventually I understood.
May you like
Survival was waking up and discovering my future no longer revolved
around him.
