Before everything changed..

Written By Krista Parsons

December 12, 2025

There was a time when I didn’t think about my body.

Not in the way I do now.

It worked. It carried me through long shifts, busy days, and the constant motion of life in healthcare. I trusted it without question. I didn’t wonder if something would hurt, or if I would make it through the day. I just showed up—and it showed up with me.

I was the one people came to.

The one who fixed things. The one who stayed calm. The one who knew what to do next.

And for a long time, that was enough.

Looking back now, I can see how much of my identity was built on that version of myself. The capable one. The reliable one. The one who could handle anything.

I didn’t know how fragile that version of me actually was.

Because when things started to change, they didn’t do it all at once.

They shifted slowly at first—subtle enough to question, easy enough to push through. A pain here. A limitation there. The kind of things you tell yourself aren’t a big deal.

Until they are.

Until one day, you realize you’re no longer moving through your life the same way.

Until the body you trusted starts to feel unfamiliar.

Until the role that once defined you begins to slip through your hands.

That’s where this story begins.

Not at the breaking point.

But before it.

Before everything changed.

Krista Parsons
About Krista Parsons

Krista Parsons, BScN, RN, MAL-H, CHE, is a registered nurse, healthcare leader, author, and advocate whose career has been devoted to caring for others and leading within the healthcare system.

But when chronic pain and an unexpected change in her health forced Krista from the role of healthcare leader into the role of patient, everything changed. The career she loved, her independence, and the identity she had built over decades were suddenly uncertain. For the first time, the person who had spent her life helping others heal had to learn what it meant to need healing herself.

That experience became the foundation for her memoir, When the Healer Breaks: How a Healthcare Leader Became a Patient, Lost Herself to Pain, and Found Her Way Back. Through an honest account of pain, identity loss, navigating the healthcare system from the other side, and rebuilding a life she no longer recognized, Krista explores a question that reaches far beyond illness:

Who are we when the life we planned is no longer the life we are living?

From that story grew AND STILL… — a movement rooted in the belief that two things can be true at once: life can be painful, uncertain, and profoundly different than we imagined, and still there can be hope.

Today, Krista uses her experiences as both a healthcare professional and patient to encourage conversations about resilience, identity, compassion in healthcare, and finding meaning after life changes.

She lives in Grande Prairie, Alberta, with her family and continues to build the AND STILL… community, creating a space where people can share what they have lived through—and what remains possible.

Life changes. We change. AND STILL… hope remains.

https://www.whenthehealerbreaks.com
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