Tune-in Tuesday: Episode 132

Episode 132

Kelley Shinn & Jillian Kay

Kelley Shinn was sixteen, a scholarship-level cross-country runner, when a rare bacterial infection took her legs. A decade later she and her toddler daughter drove a Land Rover from England to Bosnia-Herzegovina, sponsored by the Landmine Survivors Network, to bring attention to landmine survivors around the world. 

Her memoir, The Wounds That Bind Us (West Virginia University Press), traces the whole arc. Losing her legs. Being adopted as an infant. Reaching, decades later, toward the woman who gave her up, and finding her at last through a pharmacy drive-through window in a moment neither of them will forget. 

On this episode of The Anna Jinja Show, Kelley talks about what it means to reframe a life instead of just surviving it. About being, in her words, clay that can always be remolded. About walking through a door that might only open once. Paired with her story is a song that was selected just for this conversation. Jillian Kay, an Ohio University music student you may recognize from Donkey Coffee or The Union, wrote “I'm Okay If You're Okay” as a letter to her own childhood self. 

After reading Kelley's story, she knew exactly where the song belonged. When she read about Kelley, she recognized the song immediately as belonging to this conversation. Jillian shares, in her own words, why lines like “roller coasters we have rode on, mountains we have climbed to the other side” felt like they belonged to Kelley's younger self as much as her own. 

This episode asks a question worth sitting with: what happens when you stop editing your past for other people's comfort, and start editing it for your own healing instead?