444: She Was Electrocuted, Frozen in Place… Fully Awake—And Somehow Survived

Kevin Lowe: You're going to hear the story behind the path that would lead her into the mountains.

Kevin Lowe: The story that led up to the moment when she stood frozen as a statue, being electrocuted, and couldn't do anything to stop it.

Kevin Lowe: You're going to hear the story, the path of what happened next.

Kevin Lowe: And my friend, what happened next, it changes everything.

Kevin Lowe: That is what takes us from being a story that entertains you and inspires you to a story that motivates you and empowers you.

Kevin Lowe: This is a story of self-discovery, of destruction, but of birth, of rebirth.

Kevin Lowe: It is, without a doubt, one of the most impactful stories you will ever hear. Full stop.

Kevin Lowe: So, my friend, if you're up for a story today, From a woman named Melissa Strong, who will show us all what it means to be strong. This is for you.

Kevin Lowe: This isn't just about the accident. It's about the road that led to it.

Kevin Lowe: But more importantly, the road that led away from it.

Kevin Lowe: And, of course, I hope you'll stick around to the very end. I'm talking all the way till the end.

Kevin Lowe: Because, well, not only does her story continue to get better, the more you hear.

Kevin Lowe: But waiting you at the end, I took the pleasure of turning her story into a full custom song that we are debuting here on the podcast today.

Kevin Lowe: It was created with my custom music production service called K-Lo Music.

Kevin Lowe: So please be sure to stick around till the end to hear the debut of the song titled Found My Home with Bird and Jim.

Kevin Lowe: With that said, this is episode 444 of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and this is my incredible interview with none other than the absolutely amazing Melissa Strong.

Kevin Lowe: What's going on, my friend, and welcome back to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: Today, I have the absolute honor of being in the studio by none other than the infamous Melissa Strong.

Kevin Lowe: Melissa, welcome to the podcast.

Melissa Strong: Hi, thanks for having me. It's my pleasure.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, my goodness. Well, Melissa, I am so excited to get to dive into your story and to unpack it for my listeners today.

Kevin Lowe: And where I would love to start is actually taken from the preface of your book, your book, Climbing Through.

Kevin Lowe: And in the preface, there was one quote that you had that I wanted to ask you to maybe just kind of unpack for me a little bit without obviously divulging all the whole story involved.

Kevin Lowe: In the preface, you say that you are one of the luckiest, unlucky people you know.

Kevin Lowe: And I was wondering, what do you mean when you say that?

Melissa Strong: Even right from the accident, strangely enough, considered myself lucky because I lived.

Melissa Strong: You know, when you're faced with a life-threatening accident, I guess to back up a little bit, I survived an electric accident in 2017 where I was connected to the electric chain accidentally picking up two live leads.

Melissa Strong: And I was connected for approximately like 20 seconds.

Melissa Strong: And for those 20 seconds, I was completely aware that first I made the mistake that I was not supposed to do by touching these leads when the machine was plugged in.

Melissa Strong: And then I was aware that I was trapped, that I had no way out and that I was dying.

Melissa Strong: And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it to help myself.

Melissa Strong: So the fact that I got to live and try at life brings me to that sentence.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. Well, I felt like it was so powerful because it just kind of gives you a little glimpse into the type of person you are.

Kevin Lowe: The type of person who can take something as traumatic as is what we're going to talk about today and yet be able to see good out of it. It says a lot about who you are.

Melissa Strong: There were two roads for me, you know, and thankfully I had what it took to steer myself down the road that had the light and the grace opposed to the dark path, the other direction.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Kevin Lowe: Well, so I know one kind of aspect of your story is going to involve rock climbing, which I'm excited to get to.

Kevin Lowe: But I guess I would love to kind of back up and kind of go back before rock climbing.

Kevin Lowe: For somebody to be as involved in that sport as you have been, have you always, like growing up, been somebody who was big athletic into outdoors or not?

Melissa Strong: No, not really. I mean, I did have, thankfully, the influence of my family kind of dragging me, you know, to do things that were, you know, involved.

Melissa Strong: And I grew up in Massachusetts, so we have summers, you know, on the ocean.

Melissa Strong: So I was outdoorsy in a different way than what I am now, where, you know, going to the beach and playing in the waves as a kid, and then learning how to ski with my family.

Melissa Strong: So they did keep me active, but most often I preferred laying on the couch, watching TV, listening to music, going through – back then it was magazines.

Melissa Strong: I was just kind of like a lazy, unmotivated kid in a way and had my worst dreaded class in school was always gym class.

Melissa Strong: Somehow I always managed to get C's in gym class. And I just, you know, I just found it all like torturous. I didn't want to run laps.

Melissa Strong: I ducked when the volleyball was coming at me, you know, things like that.

Melissa Strong: I wasn't naturally, I never naturally felt coordinated or good at any of the sports, you know, that I ever tried in high school.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. But a C in gym class, I'm going to assume from my own experience, remembering gym class.

Kevin Lowe: A C in gym class makes me think, were you probably one who like failed to dress out on time or something like that?

Melissa Strong: Yeah, often I forgot my uniform for sure. You know, we went to a private Catholic school and there were many days that I just looked in my locker and was completely gutted because I'm like, oh no, I forgot my gym bag again.

Melissa Strong: And I'm sure, you know, Melissa, as a teenager, there's no doubt that there was some attitude.

Melissa Strong: And if I didn't want to do something, I'm sure I could put a happy face on like you learn as an adult sometimes to do.

Melissa Strong: Yeah, it was Miss Chang and I did not get along.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, my goodness. I love it. That's hysterical. Now, so the type of school you went to, was that like a situation where you stayed in the same school basically all the way up through like graduating?

Melissa Strong: It was a pretty small school. My family felt that the smallness and the discipline of an Opus Dei school, which is a Catholic form of Catholicism, would be good for their kind of unruly teenage younger.

Melissa Strong: Well, I wasn't even a teenager then, so I, you know, started young, given the problems.

Melissa Strong: But I entered at seventh grade and stayed there through graduation.

Melissa Strong: And our graduating class, there were 26 girls, and we all fit on the stage.

Melissa Strong: So, yes, we stayed in one school the whole time in one building.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. So now going from such a small high school, what did you have planned for after as far as like college goes or did you even have plans of college?

Melissa Strong: I did. Fortunate enough, my parents were able to help me pay for college.

Melissa Strong: So there is really no excuses for me to not.

Melissa Strong: Go on. And my, you know, I initially applied to university, but I wanted to University of Hawaii. And my mom said, no way too far.

Melissa Strong: So you can see my path. I just wanted to go, you know, go to, go to the beach, go have fun and keep living this charmed life really.

Melissa Strong: But they limited my scheming to Catholic colleges.

Melissa Strong: And after some searching of who would take a budding young student with some C's on their resume, I found Loyola University in New Orleans.

Melissa Strong: And I just, I really fell in love with the beauty of the campus and the kindness of the people.

Melissa Strong: You know, the South was a whole new world to me being, you know, from Massachusetts. And I was just enamored with it and landed at Loyola, New Orleans.

Kevin Lowe: Okay. Wow. Wow. Amazing. Now, how was college for you?

Kevin Lowe: I think everybody kind of has their own unique experience, good or bad.

Kevin Lowe: Was it a good experience for you?

Melissa Strong: You know, it was, I wouldn't say it was typical, like most things, I guess, for me.

Melissa Strong: Loyola attracts a lot of local people. So instead of getting into the fraternities and sororities, I wound up meeting a great group of local kids who commuted to school and eventually, of course, started dating one and followed my passion of literature and studied literature and history.

Melissa Strong: I enjoyed the academic part of it. It took me a minute.

Melissa Strong: I mean, I definitely went to a school in New Orleans when I was 17 years old.

Melissa Strong: And as soon as the drinking age down there back then was 18.

Melissa Strong: So, you know, I definitely blew off a little steam and then kind of focused more on studying for the following three years.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Well, that's good. Everybody needs a break in period, you know?

Melissa Strong: It's hard not to do in New Orleans either, right?

Kevin Lowe: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you're kind of setting yourself up for something, you know? Yeah.

Melissa Strong: Exactly.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. So now what then is the story behind how you would end up in Colorado, which I know is where a big part of our kind of conversation is going to take place?

Melissa Strong: Well, after school, we still had some Catholic influence from our families happening.

Melissa Strong: And the fellow I was dating to our parents that we were going to go live in the mountains for a year and live together.

Melissa Strong: And then after that, we would start real life. And he would go on.

Melissa Strong: He wanted to be a lawyer. And I would, after he was done with school, then continue on my path of getting a master's and PhD in literature.

Melissa Strong: And so we just made that announcement. And our parents said, well, you know, put the pressure on basically for us not to go live together and to get married.

Melissa Strong: So we wound up getting married and then searching for where that one year in the mountain was going to be, where that mountain town was. We had driven back and forth from New Orleans to Massachusetts a few times, and so we had checked out, Asheville, North Carolina, and we've checked out around the Smoky Mountains.

Melissa Strong: And I just, you know, how I looked at it back then is let's go to the real mountains, you know, out west.

Melissa Strong: And so we avoided Colorado specifically because he had been there and I had been there to ski with my family.

Melissa Strong: So we're like, let's, let's look at everything else. And we drove up, packed up the 4Runner, left Massachusetts and stopped.

Melissa Strong: One of our first stops was Whitefish, montana and he he loved it and for me back in that was 1996 so back then it was really remote and i i just felt like it was a little too remote for me we kept going and we went into washington and then back kind of down into oregon and headed back east and i really liked ben to oregon and he voted vetoed that and so I'm like well why don't we just go to Colorado and so we uh went to Colorado and drove through Fort Collins and up through Estes Park to cut over through the national park to go over to ski resorts

Melissa Strong: because I'm like well I might as well just keep skiing for this year if we're going to live in Colorado got to the ski resorts and just, you know, you can't, it's, it's really tough. Even back in the nineties, it was really tough to make a living and pay for your cost of living.

Melissa Strong: So we were just kind of at a loss of what to do.

Melissa Strong: And we're in a motel in Dillon, Colorado. And he said, let's flip a coin.

Melissa Strong: Heads, we go to Massachusetts tails, we go to new Orleans.

Melissa Strong: And I'm like, well, no, no, well, that was not part of the plan.

Melissa Strong: And so I was like, let's just go back to that little Estes Park town.

Melissa Strong: It was cute. It was affordable.

Melissa Strong: It wasn't too far from Boulder or Denver or the airports, you know, to visit family.

Melissa Strong: And that's how I wound up in Estes Park. So somewhat very randomly in a way.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. I love it. Well, well, I mean, I had to laugh.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, I thought we were going to get the infamous, I mean, the whole thing of the coin flip, but then you're like, no, I don't, I don't want either side of the coin.

Melissa Strong: Yeah. Nope. Those are not my options.

Kevin Lowe: It's like, listen, I choose a totally different coin.

Melissa Strong: Exactly. Still on the path.

Kevin Lowe: Exactly. Exactly. I love it. Now, one question I had was, what was it that maybe compelled you that you wanted mountains? And it's because earlier we were kind of talking about more, I was thinking of love for like the beach.

Melissa Strong: Yeah. And I think it was just that, just something opposite, something different, you know, kind of just like what the South was to Massachusetts.

Melissa Strong: Like I was excited to go somewhere completely different, completely different culture and kind of dip my toe in it and figure it out.

Melissa Strong: And then like, you know, okay, that's good. Glad I visited that.

Melissa Strong: And now I, I just felt like, The moms were calling and let's go check them out.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Now, talk to me for those of us who are not familiar with Estes Park, Colorado and stuff.

Kevin Lowe: Talk to me a little bit about that specific town and what it's like and what kind of drew you to it.

Melissa Strong: Well, obviously we knew nothing about it, except I didn't want to go to Massachusetts or New Orleans. But it was a quaint little mountain town.

Melissa Strong: It's right at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. So you can imagine how stunning the backdrop is.

Melissa Strong: It's just gorgeous. The continental divide is right to the west of the town.

Melissa Strong: And then the town is the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Melissa Strong: So little did we know at that time that because I think this is around October that we were there. So we were there towards the end of the season.

Melissa Strong: Back in the 90s, the seasons ended.

Melissa Strong: They've extended now. They ended earlier. And so we have more people traveling.

Melissa Strong: But it turns out that it's a very large tourist town because that's how you get into Rocky Mountain National Park.

Melissa Strong: So approximately now a day is it's like four point five visitors go through our little town.

Melissa Strong: Back then, I would say it was probably somewhat in the three millions.

Melissa Strong: So it's a really quiet town of about 6,000 people surrounded by old mountains and big mountains and mountains.

Melissa Strong: Prop formations of all kinds. It flows up to about 30 to 60,000 people in the summer.

Melissa Strong: And then you have tourists that come through and visit and keep our little town alive financially.

Melissa Strong: And we're basically 45 minutes up from or 50 minutes up from like Boulder and Longmont and Loveland.

Melissa Strong: And then about an hour and a half from Denver.

Melissa Strong: So it was it's an awesome little town.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it sounds amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Kevin Lowe: Now, once you guys settled in there, how did life kind of progress from there?

Kevin Lowe: Kind of curious with that relationship, with career-wise, just direction in life kind of in general.

Melissa Strong: Well, I think we were going to, well, we were just getting whatever job we could to pay the bills. Because this wasn't our career.

Melissa Strong: You know, this wasn't our future. This was just a pit stop along the way.

Melissa Strong: And our future was going to really start in the next couple of years.

Melissa Strong: So now it's just time to go out and have fun and work the jobs that pay the rent.

Melissa Strong: So I had left the house with the little newspaper in my hand of who was hiring and came back about 20 minutes later. And he's like, well, what happened?

Melissa Strong: I'm like, well, I just walked into the first place and I got a job.

Melissa Strong: So I felt like that was good.

Melissa Strong: And I walked into Ed's Cantina, which I decided to go the furthest away from the want ads, which was only like 10 minutes and work my way home.

Melissa Strong: But the first one worked and that landed me at this restaurant called Ed's Cantina, which is still there today.

Melissa Strong: And, you know, I never, I actually worked in a restaurant when I was a teenager for a few months and swore it off and said I would never work in a restaurant again.

Melissa Strong: But here we are, you know, just trying to pay the bills.

Melissa Strong: So that was where I landed. And he had wound up getting a job in construction.

Melissa Strong: And a person from New Orleans getting a job in construction in October.

Melissa Strong: Basically it was a real cold windy winter for him yes yes and I don't think he fell in love with that so how that you had mentioned the relationship how that panned out is we moved there in October and in February he left and went back to New Orleans so things things really weren't looking out working out for us we really should have listened to that gut feeling and not had that big wedding, but we went our separate ways not too long after we tied the knot.

Melissa Strong: So we, I think both realized quickly that outside of the easygoing pace of being in school and hitting that real life kind of feeling for the first time that we were, we were not the right match for each other.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We, we, sometimes you never know until you just give it a shot, you know?

Melissa Strong: It's so true. And we tried and that was that. But once we knew, we knew.

Melissa Strong: So I think we were both happy to just kind of go our separate ways at that point.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah. I love it. Well, okay.

Kevin Lowe: So we'll just kind of summarize it to say, with that love out of the way, how do we then find the love of rock climbing?

Melissa Strong: Well, with that love out of the way, I basically felt kind of like I picked up first semester freshman year of college when we met.

Melissa Strong: So instead of being inspired to figure anything out, I basically just made some friends and had a good time and was like, oh, this is great.

Melissa Strong: I work. I make a bunch of cash. We all go out to the local bar.

Melissa Strong: We have dance parties, close the bar down, bring everyone home.

Melissa Strong: And we just had a really good time. The friends I met at the restaurant, we were all just kind of having fun.

Melissa Strong: And I was happy with that until one day I decided to try to run.

Melissa Strong: And I felt like, look at all these people that come into work and they're not bleary-eyed. They're not hungover.

Melissa Strong: They're happy. They just went for a hike. I mean, look at all these beautiful mountains around me.

Melissa Strong: And I'm like well maybe I should maybe I should do something so I decided to uh there's a path around like Estes and I decided to try to jog it you know I'm still in my 20s like no big deal go out for a little jog and I couldn't even run a half a mile and I was just so shocked and kind of appalled at myself like good god what would Miss Chang think of me now like here she'd be like exactly right exactly where i knew melissa would wind up she could never run a lap anyway.

Melissa Strong: So uh that definitely lit a fire in me that i needed to do something and for you know working with a bunch of other rock climbers i had heard about rock climbing and had been asked to go rock climbing and on occasion had been persuaded to you know go out and try it and but again being hung over and baking on a slab on a rock didn't really win me over.

Melissa Strong: So I realized that there was a core life change I needed to make within myself. And that was...

Melissa Strong: Stay out of the bars, quit smoking. I smoked cigarettes back then.

Melissa Strong: Let's try to get outside and enjoy life while you still can.

Melissa Strong: So oddly enough, like it was this really strange thing that just happened to me one day. And thank goodness it did.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. I love it. I love it. That's an amazing, amazing story.

Kevin Lowe: Now, obviously rock climbing would become a big part of your story.

Kevin Lowe: And so I would love to just hear a little bit more about specifically rock climbing.

Kevin Lowe: Maybe when was that moment when you started climbing when you realized, oh my gosh, I love this.

Kevin Lowe: Like, I'm just kind of curious to understand how that whole kind of aspect transpired.

Melissa Strong: Well, like I said, going out hungover, baking on a slab did not win me over.

Melissa Strong: So I had to eliminate those aspects but right then and there like when that spark kind of hit me that you know on that run i couldn't even finish i said you know i've got to do something and so i called my friend and who had been asking me to go out climbing with her for a year and i said let's let's go like when are you going climbing again and she uh invited me out that week with a group of girlfriends.

Melissa Strong: And so a few days later, here I am trying to keep up with people on the hike, which was challenging enough.

Melissa Strong: I'm like, oh, my God, how am I going to even climb up a rock again?

Melissa Strong: I can't even do the approach, let alone pull onto this rock that's going to come up at the end of this hike.

Melissa Strong: But I got there without, you know, keeling over.

Melissa Strong: And they gave me the 101 basic, which I had the rundown before.

Melissa Strong: But this was different. I had climbed before on Luffy Ridge, which is traditional climbing.

Melissa Strong: So you use gear and you put it into the rock to secure your path up.

Melissa Strong: And if you fall, you know, you get caught by that gear you put into the rock.

Melissa Strong: And one person goes ahead of you, and then you're left on the ground.

Melissa Strong: And then when it's your time to climb, then you start climbing up to that person.

Melissa Strong: Obviously, as a beginner, I was never leading for the couple times I went out.

Melissa Strong: So this was different because this was sport climbing.

Melissa Strong: And what my friend did was she had had her friend belay her and climb to the top and put a top rope up.

Melissa Strong: So there was a rope coming from the person on the bottom that went all the way to the top of the climb through anchors and back down.

Melissa Strong: So then she could stay on the ground and belay me while I attempted this rock climb.

Melissa Strong: So having her there, I think was helpful too, to just kind of like talk me through a few things and get me on the rock.

Melissa Strong: And once I got on the rock, you know, you kind of look at it first and you're like, how am I going to even get on this rock?

Melissa Strong: How am I going to, what do I grab? What do I hold on to?

Melissa Strong: And then once I started moving, something just took over and I loved it.

Melissa Strong: I loved the movement. I loved the feeling of it.

Melissa Strong: I wasn't as terrified as I was when I first tried to climb and the person is.

Melissa Strong: Away from you and you're just dangling off the end of this rope kind of by yourself.

Melissa Strong: There was something about being able to be in contact with my friend who was encouraging me and telling me, oh, it's okay that your legs are shaking.

Melissa Strong: You you know just sit back on the roof and relax because you know the more tense you get the more you over grip and you don't have i didn't have any of the muscles to do any of this so my legs are twitching my hands are are losing grip and you know but i was i was having fun and i sat back and i contemplated things and then she's like you can pull back on now if you know once you're rested And I did.

Melissa Strong: And I was just so could see the top of the climb. And I was so determined to get there.

Melissa Strong: And once I got there, that was it. I just I knew I wanted to do this over and over again for as long as I could.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Now, the term that you used earlier, and I've heard it when people talk about reclining, belay. What does that mean?

Melissa Strong: Well she's holding so the rope that that went that they put up through the top of the anchors and back down, She has a harness on and she has a belay device and that rope runs through her belay device.

Melissa Strong: Back then, it wasn't an automatic one. They have automatic greegrees is what they call them now.

Melissa Strong: Back then, it was not automated and you just kind of used friction to stop the rope from running through it if the person fell.

Melissa Strong: But they're in charge of making sure you're safe.

Melissa Strong: And if you fall, that rope gets pulled tight and you're safe.

Melissa Strong: The rope isn't going to run through that device and plummet you all the way to the ground if you're doing everything correctly.

Melissa Strong: Of course, people can make mistakes, and those mistakes have happened, sadly.

Melissa Strong: So you can belay someone's sport climbing and even traditional climbing.

Melissa Strong: Like when I was hanging on that rope away from the person who climbed away from me, they were at an anchor belaying me up to them.

Melissa Strong: So doing the same thing Bronson did from the ground, but now from above.

Melissa Strong: So basically, it's the person that's making sure you're not going to die.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, quite the responsibility.

Melissa Strong: Yeah, definitely.

Kevin Lowe: So it truly, I'm going to say rock climbing, which is something that I, in my head, I think of as a solo sport. It's really more of a team sport.

Melissa Strong: Well, in that case, on a rope, it really is. I mean, I think maybe when people think of like Alex Honnold and free soloing, like he's up there by himself.

Melissa Strong: You know, if you are climbing with a partner, then you definitely are relying heavily on that partner to, you know, keep you safe on a rope and vice versa.

Melissa Strong: And then eventually I moved into bouldering and that is different, you know, but in you can go out and climb by yourself bouldering.

Melissa Strong: But to me, there was always a team and social aspect of bouldering that I liked a lot as well, is that...

Melissa Strong: If you're climbing with friends on the same boulder problem, because, you know, there's a rock and some of these gigantic rocks can have five, six, seven, eight, ten more boulder problems on the rock.

Melissa Strong: But, you know, if you're climbing on the same problem with a friend or partner, it's really fun because you're just kind of figuring out how the moves work and what works for you.

Melissa Strong: What might work for them can be totally different because, you know, we're all different shapes and sizes. and we usually have different strengths as well.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, I love it. Okay, so I'm going to ask a stupid question.

Kevin Lowe: What is really the difference in bouldering?

Kevin Lowe: I mean, obviously I'm picturing a big, massive rock boulder instead of like a mountain face, but like what would compel you to one versus the other?

Melissa Strong: Well, there's there's the big difference would be there's no ropes.

Melissa Strong: But so to me, you know, it makes things easier.

Melissa Strong: Right. Because you're not you're not worried about typically you don't worry about dying bouldering.

Melissa Strong: I mean, some people do climb pretty high up and, you know, something could happen severe. But yeah.

Melissa Strong: You take a bit of the fear factor out, but you also lose the rope.

Melissa Strong: So you lose a lot of the technical gear.

Melissa Strong: You carry big foam pads that you land on if you fall.

Melissa Strong: And, you know, a lot of times you do fall and your friends help direct you to that.

Melissa Strong: So another thing that to me was really different about it is the grading of it. So a rock climb with a rope, traditional or sport, starts with a five grade.

Melissa Strong: So five, five, five, six.

Melissa Strong: So even some hikes get a five grade, you know, and that's when you know like, hey, this is going to get serious. I'm going to be doing a little like scrambling.

Melissa Strong: I'm going to be putting my hands down to get maybe up this talus field or something like that.

Melissa Strong: But then once you get into five, five, five, six, you're usually roping up for that.

Melissa Strong: The bouldering scale starts at v0 so v0 is the equivalent to 510 so that's one thing i liked about the bouldering scale we're not bouldering scale but bouldering in general is the difficulty so you kind of go back to that rope climbing and you climb a lot you you hike a lot you you set up your gear you climb climb climb and then you get to the crux of the problem which could be.

Melissa Strong: You know, eight to 10 feet of climbing. And that's where, you know, that highest point of that grade, that difficulty is represented right there in that crux.

Melissa Strong: Well, now you take that crux and you just put it on a big rock and you don't have to do all the things to get to that crux.

Melissa Strong: You're just starting that difficult challenge right off the ground.

Melissa Strong: And to me, that's where I think I really fell in love with bouldering.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. I love it. Oh, wow.

Melissa Strong: Hopefully that's so Yeah.

Kevin Lowe: It does. Well, I mean, I'm just in my head, I'm listening to you and I'm just thinking like, wow, how would I picture in my head coming from the flat state of Florida is is is I just can't help but think in my head just to be in a situation where you can have boulders like you're talking about.

Kevin Lowe: Talk about being in the most picturesque, beautiful places on earth in that moment.

Melissa Strong: It's amazing. That's what I love about it. It gets you outside.

Melissa Strong: Sometimes you're near a river and, trees are swaying and you can hear the leaves and it's just, it's gorgeous.

Melissa Strong: I know a lot of people climb today inside and I do as well.

Melissa Strong: We have climbing gyms usually in our garage that keep us strong and keep us fit.

Melissa Strong: But to me, the purpose of climbing is to be outside.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Okay.

Kevin Lowe: So I'm curious to know that your husband that you have today that you're married to, you guys met while doing this sport you love as well, correct?

Melissa Strong: Correct. Yes. It took me years.

Melissa Strong: I dated people and never, I guess, found the right guy.

Melissa Strong: But yeah adam came into my life through mutual friends who were rock climbers and he had moved to estes park for the summer just to a lot of people go up to estes obviously for the summer for for different reasons the beauty but also the heat you know the hotter it gets everywhere else the higher up you go the cooler it is so a lot of rock climbers are you know heading for the hills for the summer to get cooler temperatures so they can climb.

Melissa Strong: So he headed to Estes Park to check it out, and he had never been there before, and, I had made plans to meet up with my friends who were climbing and they said, oh, another friend is coming. Hope that's OK.

Melissa Strong: Of course, that's always OK. The more the more people means the more crash pads, which means the more comfy of a landing space.

Melissa Strong: I could never say no to that.

Melissa Strong: So, yeah, that's how that's how we met was it was at a roadside boulder.

Melissa Strong: So maybe not the most picturesque scene, but still a roadside boulder in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, I think to myself, I mean, what better way to find the person you're meant to be with than to find them doing the thing that you love to do?

Kevin Lowe: I mean, that's just, that's pretty awesome.

Melissa Strong: It worked out. And then we realized, you know, you can take that equation, you know, that issue, that potential future issue out of the equation.

Melissa Strong: Honey, I'm going climbing. You're going climbing again?

Melissa Strong: Now it's like, where are we going climbing?

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, I love it. so much. Wow.

Kevin Lowe: Okay, so skipping ahead in your story, obviously I have no idea the timeline of events.

Kevin Lowe: I'm going to assume it's going to be a while later on because at some point in time You have an idea to to get into the restaurant business, which obviously you're going to have to fill in some gaps because I'm like, where does that even come from? That seems totally out of left field.

Kevin Lowe: So if you would kind of catch me up to speed, how do we even get to that point in your story of thinking about opening a restaurant?

Melissa Strong: Well, that first job at Ed's Cantina, you know, not only paid my bar tab, but once I stayed out of the bar, I'm like, wow, this is this is good money. This is good cash.

Melissa Strong: And then once I started rock climbing, I was like, wow, this is perfect.

Melissa Strong: You know, I can climb and work here all summer, fall and spring.

Melissa Strong: And then when it gets really cold out and the tourists leave and I don't have as many shifts, I can just travel.

Melissa Strong: And my bosses loved it. You know, as long as you come back, like, yeah, go away in the off season and come back when it's busy.

Melissa Strong: So the whole restaurant life was really working out for me.

Melissa Strong: I did go back to clear that, I guess, check that box off the list with the master's and PhD in literature.

Melissa Strong: And I did go back to school for a little bit and explore, you know, hey, is this that road that was so once a thing for me?

Melissa Strong: Is that going to still be a thing for me?

Melissa Strong: You know, I enjoyed going back and taking some classes at CU Boulder, but it just didn't have that same spark that that I had when I was in college.

Melissa Strong: So I closed that door and said, well, you know, hey, this this restaurant and climbing thing is working out for me. But then at the same time, you know, Estes was kind of a little too comfortable for its own self.

Melissa Strong: I think, you know, the restaurant movement was happening all around us in Denver and Boulder.

Melissa Strong: And all these great restaurants were popping up and it was a huge food movement.

Melissa Strong: And Estes Park wasn't seeing any of that. It was just still like in the dark ages as far as that went.

Melissa Strong: And it was like a tourist town. It's not broke. Don't fix it.

Melissa Strong: And I just didn't want to have to kind of drive up my day off to go eat at a good restaurant. I felt like, you know, Estes, you know, should have its own good restaurant. And so I worked really, that was my dream.

Melissa Strong: It's kind of just how it all came to be was wanting that for our community.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, wow.

Kevin Lowe: I know for myself, I've thought along and along how I would have would love to to open a restaurant.

Kevin Lowe: But the idea of opening a restaurant and actually opening a restaurant are like two totally different things.

Kevin Lowe: And I mean, it's no doubt that I think it's probably one of the hardest businesses to get into to be successful at. Yeah.

Kevin Lowe: So for you, I mean, where did it even start?

Kevin Lowe: Like, does it obviously, I guess maybe starts with a concept?

Kevin Lowe: Does it start by seeing a location you want?

Kevin Lowe: Like, how did the journey kind of unfold?

Melissa Strong: A lot of it started with, I mean, definitely eating in other people's restaurants and seeing what was happening and, okay, I would do this or I wouldn't do this or, you know, why would they even do this?

Melissa Strong: And then that just kept fueling what was in me and to take that and manifest it definitely was location you know hey where you know i've got all these dreams i've got all these ideas but you need you need a you need a storefront you need a location so that was where i started i also wanted a partner i didn't want to do it alone because i like my life of climbing I didn't want to have to give up those winners of traveling.

Melissa Strong: I mean, I knew I would initially for X amount of years, but I felt like if I could do it with someone, well, then you could split the workload and it wouldn't be as daunting.

Melissa Strong: At least that's what I told myself in those early years.

Melissa Strong: So yeah, it was finding a place to land.

Melissa Strong: I kind of had the concept in my head. I knew what I wanted to make and what I wanted to do. And then it was finding the location.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. So now how did it come about where you would end up deciding to open the restaurant? How did you decide on that?

Melissa Strong: Well, I got a realtor and started looking around at places.

Melissa Strong: And, you know, there was definitely some places that I thought, oh, this could work.

Melissa Strong: You know, when you want something to work so bad, sometimes the idea is better than what it actually is.

Melissa Strong: Okay, I really want this to work. So this location is going to be great.

Melissa Strong: And I had a few of those locations that I, you know, either talked to the landlord or looked at purchasing the spot and it just it really wasn't working out.

Melissa Strong: And then just really kind of one of those small town or, you know, who knows that how life kind of unfolds in those strange ways.

Melissa Strong: You know, when one door was closing, basically another one opened and I had talked to the bank because I also needed money. Right.

Melissa Strong: It's great. OK, I need a location. I need this. I need that.

Melissa Strong: But if you don't have any money, I guess none of it's really going to happen, sadly.

Melissa Strong: And so the bank that I wound up talking to and telling them, like, these are my dreams, this is what I want to do.

Melissa Strong: He had helped a hotel group come in and buy this restaurant and hotel that's less than one mile away from Rocky Mountain National Park.

Melissa Strong: You have the mountains of your view.

Melissa Strong: It's just kind of the ultimate location. But the guy didn't want to run a restaurant and a hotel. He just was a hotel guy.

Melissa Strong: And so he wanted to go through the process of subdividing it and selling it to someone who wanted a restaurant.

Melissa Strong: And so it was just that connection. And I had just switched banks like a month beforehand.

Melissa Strong: So it was all those little pieces that fell together.

Melissa Strong: And that's how I landed where our current location is for Bird and Jim is the restaurant.

Melissa Strong: And it used to be the old Suntec restaurant.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, wow. You know what? It's just some things you know what it's meant to be when things finally start falling into peace almost like effortlessly in a way, you know, where it's like, oh, wait, this was meant to happen.

Kevin Lowe: This was meant to happen so that this would happen.

Kevin Lowe: So I think that's incredible.

Kevin Lowe: Now, the name of your restaurant, Bird and Jim, please tell me what is the name?

Kevin Lowe: What does that even mean, Bird and Jim?

Melissa Strong: Well, it's so funny. I've always wanted to open a food truck so I could call it the Flying Bird.

Melissa Strong: Bird and Jim is historic characters.

Melissa Strong: So Isabella Bird and Mountain Jim. Isabella Bird came to Estes Park in the late 1800s.

Melissa Strong: She was obviously a Victorian woman who was from Scotland.

Melissa Strong: And as you know, back then, women...

Melissa Strong: Read books, learned the piano, did needlepoint working, stuff like that.

Melissa Strong: They didn't travel by themselves around the world, but Isabella Bird did.

Melissa Strong: And when she traveled, she wrote letters home to her sister.

Melissa Strong: So all of this is in, bound in books now, all of her letters.

Melissa Strong: So it's really cool that we get such a picture of wherever she was.

Melissa Strong: And she was determined to get to Estes Park during this trip to Colorado.

Melissa Strong: So she had a few failed attempts where she, or a failed attempt when she tried to come up with a couple from the Loveland directions, the Highway 34 direction, which is more east, and didn't make it.

Melissa Strong: Just really sounded like an awful time of getting lost in the woods with horses sliding down steep slopes. It sounded horrible.

Melissa Strong: But she was like so determined that she landed at an inn now, like in the Longmont area and this guy who ran the in said he had some younger I think they were college students who were heading up a different route that was a little more established and she went with them and got to Estes Park and as you come into Estes Park from that direction you get into this valley where it just opens up and it's it's so beautiful and you can see the mountains kind of through this opening in the valley at the far end.

Melissa Strong: And apparently that's where she met Ma and Jim.

Melissa Strong: And Mountain Jim was like a local hunter trapper, also like the local revenant, because he was mauled by a bear.

Melissa Strong: And as she describes him, like a marble statue on one side and the other side of his face was what was mauled.

Melissa Strong: And she stayed with the Evans family and homesteaded for about three months.

Melissa Strong: And our tallest peak in Estes Park is we have a 14-er.

Melissa Strong: It's Long's Peak. And she was determined to get up Long's Peak.

Melissa Strong: And with the help of Mount Jim, she summited Long's Peak.

Melissa Strong: And there was an alleged romance. And then she left.

Melissa Strong: And after she left, he was shot and died.

Melissa Strong: So there's a little bit of Estes Park history.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Okay. So I am so glad I asked the question because, I mean, well, first off, how could you not ask the question?

Kevin Lowe: Would the name as unique as that? But I was honestly thinking it was, I don't know, like silly nicknames or something.

Kevin Lowe: But to instead get to understand that you got to name it something of truly this amazing story of the location that it's in.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, I think that's just absolutely incredible.

Melissa Strong: It's super fun. And a lot of people think that, too. They're like, so who's Bird?

Melissa Strong: Who's Jim? And I'm like, well, are you Bird? And I'm like, I'd be really old if I was burned.

Melissa Strong: Oh, my gosh.

Kevin Lowe: I love it. I love it. Well, so in the process of you opening the restaurant, I believe that's what's going to take us into one kind of next chapter in your story.

Kevin Lowe: And so, I would love it if you would kind of take me back in time to, I believe it was maybe April 2nd of 2017, and hoping that maybe you could take me back to what was going on, what was happening that day, and we'll kind of go from there.

Melissa Strong: It was, I feel like a lot was happening that day because I was, I had found the location. I was trying to secure the finances.

Melissa Strong: I was so, so stressed about securing the loan.

Melissa Strong: We had hired a contractor. We had asbestos removed.

Melissa Strong: I'm borrowing money from my family to pay for this and to keep this all going.

Melissa Strong: And I still have no idea where that loan's going to come from.

Melissa Strong: I just got back from a climbing trip with my husband.

Melissa Strong: My husband and I got to, So Adam and I had gone to Waco Tanks, which is a place we climbed in Texas for the winter and came back.

Melissa Strong: And it was just, you know, early spring. Thankfully, that year we had a lot of snow. And if we don't, we can't always say that in Colorado now.

Melissa Strong: But I just didn't want to go outside and climb and, you know, post holes through a bunch of snow.

Melissa Strong: And it's kind of always a pain in the butt spring climbing when you're dealing with that.

Melissa Strong: But I decided that okay I'll just I'll climb on our climbing wall today I'll get a workout in because no matter what you know you gotta you gotta stay fit and keep focusing on that part too after the climb I said oh well I can do these wood burning designs on the table legs and I still have a few hours it was you know getting lighter later and the back up a little is the wood burning designs for the table legs came into play with the fact that I had no money and I'm still renovating the restaurant.

Melissa Strong: And I'm like, well, there's old pine tables in here that definitely don't fit the look I'm going for.

Melissa Strong: But if we have to buy 30 new tables, that's just gonna keep adding up and adding up.

Melissa Strong: So let's take these old tables and let's see how I can make a fit into this new kind of vibe that I'm going for.

Melissa Strong: And I had tried a bunch of different things here and there, paints, wood burning tools, you name it. And the wood burning tools were cool, but gosh, they were intensive because it's like a little pen that you plug in and you're drawing all the designs.

Melissa Strong: So maybe a few weeks before or prior to this, my husband found the Lichtenberg technique, which is a wood-burning technique that you do with electricity.

Melissa Strong: And he showed it to me on the internet. And I'm like, well, that's super cool.

Melissa Strong: Can you make me that machine? And he's like, yeah, of course.

Melissa Strong: It's just an old microwave transformer. It's a powerhouse.

Melissa Strong: And basically, we had an old microwave that we weren't going to use at the restaurant from the sun deck. And so I dug that out of the storage container, proudly brought it home, and this is going to be great.

Melissa Strong: And he gutted it, took the transformer out, hooked it up to two leads, almost like mini jumper cables like you would use for a car.

Melissa Strong: The power source was still attached. You could plug it in.

Melissa Strong: And so then you take these two leads. You paint baking soda and water onto the wood. You attach these two little clamps to the wood.

Melissa Strong: The on-off switch for the machine was plugging it in.

Melissa Strong: He felt like if there was no on-off switch, then I really couldn't screw it up because like, is up on, is down on, is up off, down off.

Melissa Strong: Like, if you can believe it, he put a lot of thought into this and said, she'll never screw it up this way.

Melissa Strong: And so this way to get it to turn on, you had to plug it in.

Melissa Strong: So we had done a handful of burns together. Really cool.

Melissa Strong: It looks like kind of rivers on a map. makes these really cool, cool lines. And, um, So I had finished climbing and was like, oh, there's there's time to try this on a chair on a chair from the restaurant and see how it looks on the back of the chair.

Melissa Strong: And I had decided I was going to work outside because it was so nice out of spring.

Melissa Strong: So I moved everything outside, including the machine. I unrolled an extension cord and I wanted to make sure the extension cord was going to be enough of an extension cord that the machine would be outside and that the leads would fit.

Melissa Strong: All enough cable. So I plugged it in to see if it would all have enough length.

Melissa Strong: And right then, for some reason, I remembered that I forgot the baking soda and water.

Melissa Strong: Also, strangely enough, the machine always sparked when I plugged it into the wall.

Melissa Strong: And it didn't spark when I plugged it into the extension cord, making me think like, oh, the extension cord isn't in the wall.

Melissa Strong: It might have come out of the wall or just weird. It didn't spark.

Melissa Strong: So I don't think it's, it's alive.

Melissa Strong: Anyway, that thought just immediately got wiped out with, uh, you forgot the baking soda and water.

Melissa Strong: And I dropped the cords and went inside, mixed up the baking soda and water came outside.

Melissa Strong: And picked up the two leads. And right then and there, it was just instant.

Melissa Strong: I knew I made the ultimate mistake of my life. And I was connected to the electric chain.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, wow. So the leads, what should you have done?

Kevin Lowe: Like trying to understand how it works.

Melissa Strong: Well, I should have unplugged the machine when I plugged it in.

Melissa Strong: You know, or if I thought like, oh, the extension cord isn't plugged into the wall where it came loose, I should have backtracked, you know, and made sure it was plugged in or not plugged in.

Melissa Strong: But either way, I should have unplugged the machine.

Melissa Strong: And I just, just like I said, made a mistake, just either, you know, distracted or the thought that I thought the machine wasn't plugged in.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. Wow, so you grab these ends, these leads, the ends that you kind of described as jumper cables.

Melissa Strong: Mm-hmm.

Kevin Lowe: What happens?

Melissa Strong: Well, Instead of the leads being connected to the wood and making that cool design with electricity on the wood, they were connected to me and the electricity was now pulsing through me.

Melissa Strong: And when that happens, you can't move. You can't scream. You can't fall over.

Melissa Strong: Those were my first thoughts. Well, my first thought was, this is exactly what Adam told me not to do.

Melissa Strong: And then my next thoughts were you know can i scream he he was inside you know maybe if i could scream he could hear me and come save me but you can't you can't even scream you're you're literally.

Melissa Strong: Frozen and you know then another thought was maybe i could shake my hands and one might fall you know i get one to fall out i couldn't shake my hands instead like well all this was happening, the humming of the machine was just growing louder and my hands were gripping harder, clenching.

Melissa Strong: The electricity was just forcing my muscles to just clench up.

Melissa Strong: And then I thought like, oh, maybe I could fall over and one of them might come out of my hand if I could just like fall over on it.

Melissa Strong: And I couldn't even fall down.

Melissa Strong: It's the strangest feeling in the world when you're completely aware of what's happening to you and there's absolutely no response that you physically can can muster and that's when i realized i was dying and just said well it's really sucks i'm gonna die before i get to open my my restaurant and then that was it it was dark so in a way full circle that's why i'm lucky wow.

Kevin Lowe: You it was literally like you just became a statue.

Melissa Strong: Totally.

Melissa Strong: Just frozen.

Kevin Lowe: Wow, wow, wow, wow. Now, talk to me about when this happens, because I know that you had a really powerful, what I'm going to classify as like a near-death experience.

Kevin Lowe: Would you mind sharing what was happening?

Melissa Strong: Well, at that point, everything went dark. You know, I have my last thoughts were I'm dying and I don't want to die, but I don't have any control over it.

Melissa Strong: And everything went dark.

Melissa Strong: And all of a sudden I was in a beautiful forest and it was just gorgeous.

Melissa Strong: The sun was coming through the high canopy.

Melissa Strong: It was lighting up ferns on the ground. And I was looking off to my left and just really captivated with how beautiful the forest was.

Melissa Strong: And then I turned my head and looked forward and right in front of me was this huge tunnel hanging in the middle of this beautiful forest.

Melissa Strong: And, you know, I just remember it was lined with stones and it was dark.

Melissa Strong: The center of the tunnel was dark.

Melissa Strong: And in between me and the tunnel were these shadowy figures that were floating.

Melissa Strong: And I'm a super vivid dreamer. And my first thought was asking myself.

Melissa Strong: You know, is this a dream?

Melissa Strong: And I answered myself, like, I know we're a vivid dreamer, but this is, this is happening.

Melissa Strong: This is not a dream. This is real.

Melissa Strong: And then I kind of said, well, if this is real, I want to get out of here.

Melissa Strong: And I think if I could get to help, I think I could be okay.

Melissa Strong: And it was just kind of with that.

Melissa Strong: Thought that I left that scene.

Melissa Strong: It's just everything kind of went dark again. And then I opened my eyes and blinked and I saw the gravel on my driveway.

Melissa Strong: So I obviously had fallen over.

Melissa Strong: Why had I fallen over? I had no idea.

Melissa Strong: The last thing I knew is I couldn't fall over and I was dying.

Melissa Strong: And now all of a sudden I'm on the ground, but it was all a lot to absorb.

Melissa Strong: But all I could do at that point was just scream.

Melissa Strong: So all of those screams that were kind of trapped inside of me for those 20 seconds where I couldn't scream all just erupted and my husband still didn't hear me.

Melissa Strong: So then I stood up and somehow stood up and took five steps to the door.

Melissa Strong: Well, I would say somehow, but obviously it was adrenaline. And at that point, that's when I saw the damage of what was gone, you know, what was burnt on me.

Melissa Strong: And, you know, I screamed into the house and then he came out.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Have you had time to unpack for yourself what that scene was that you talked about?

Kevin Lowe: From the beautiful forest to the dark cave to the, I think you said shadowy, like dark figures.

Kevin Lowe: Have you had taken the time to process what that all meant?

Melissa Strong: Well, I had a lot of time because...

Melissa Strong: Coming up after that was nothing but kind of like time and waiting to see, you know, what was going to happen medically for me, what could happen medically for me.

Melissa Strong: And that image was so, I mean, all of that was so vivid and so real that I almost couldn't escape sitting with it for a while.

Melissa Strong: You know, obviously it wasn't initial.

Melissa Strong: It was get to help, get to the hospital, get to another hospital.

Melissa Strong: Okay and then once I woke up at that other hospital really all I could think of was the tunnel in the forest in my hands you know those were the those were the thoughts okay this thing I saw and was in and it was real and these charred bones sitting in front of me it's really you know all I had to sit with and since the doctors couldn't tell me anything at that moment about my hands, it was back to all I have is to sit with this tunnel and this forest and the scene I saw.

Melissa Strong: And funny enough, with my Catholic upbringing or, you know, whatever, you don't even need to be Catholic to hear, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel. Right.

Melissa Strong: And I was just so upset because the tunnel was dark. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's it. I'm going to hell.

Melissa Strong: And that was sadly that was my initial takeaway and i was just like adam the tunnel was dark when i woke up and you know this poor guy is like his gosh i mean i can't one day i'd love for him to write down what he thought and saw but i can't even imagine uh what he was going through at that moment and that i was concerned about the tunnel.

Melissa Strong: I felt the inky, the shadowy figures, they were people I knew who died.

Melissa Strong: I felt like one of them was my grandmother.

Melissa Strong: And I felt like another was a friend, a climbing friend who had just passed away a few months before the accident.

Melissa Strong: I felt like their presence was there to keep me away from going into the tunnel, that it wasn't my time to go in there.

Melissa Strong: And I definitely felt like they were guarding the tunnel. and it took a conversation with my family.

Melissa Strong: Adam's like, let's call your parents because it's the first time I'm waking up.

Melissa Strong: So it's the first thing I'm talking about is have they said anything about my hands? No. And then I went right to the tunnel.

Melissa Strong: He called my parents because they had heard that there was the accident, but they hadn't spoken to me yet.

Melissa Strong: I was just like uploaded on them. The tunnel was dark. And they're like, what the hell are you talking about?

Melissa Strong: And I'm like, no, the tunnel was dark. I saw the tunnel and it was dark and my mom just immediately like without even skipping uh taking a breath you know nothing she's just like.

Melissa Strong: Well, it wasn't your time to go in the tunnel, Melissa. So therefore it was dark. And I'm like, okay, you're right. She's right.

Melissa Strong: As my mom would tell you, I hardly ever say that right off the bat.

Melissa Strong: I usually say it after a lot of time. She usually is right, but I usually don't agree right away.

Melissa Strong: But yeah, she helped me kind of feel that right then. And then, you know, the figures definitely back that up, that it wasn't my time.

Melissa Strong: And the beautiful forest is, I've heard people, I've told this, you know, you tell the story to a handful of people.

Melissa Strong: I actually told it to a neurologist one time.

Melissa Strong: So I was having really bad migraines. And so they wanted to see if it was connected at all to the accident because the electricity traveled up my arms and down and out my chest.

Melissa Strong: So it touched you know obviously your spinal cord and things up in the back of your neck anyway the neurologist said you were in eden and i was like wow okay you don't find especially doctors kind of you know doctors are a little more grounded in science but she really felt that and i thought that was pretty cool but that forest is always you know whenever i i meditate or i do breath work you know and you're going back into the essence of you or whatever whatever the person guiding you is saying,

Melissa Strong: I always go back to that forest and that forest is a very comfortable, like happy place for me, which is, I find interesting.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Very, very powerful story.

Kevin Lowe: But back to when this happened and you, you came out of that And do you remember vividly in like able to put it into words that, What you saw when you looked at your hands?

Melissa Strong: It was horrifying what I saw. I saw charred, burnt bones.

Melissa Strong: Literally, I saw the ends of my fingers instead of there being that nice fleshy material that was just not there.

Melissa Strong: And there were charred bones there and kind of like charred, deflated flesh that melted away in certain points of like my palms to like a waxy, light yellow, like a crude type of center.

Melissa Strong: It was strange because there's no blood or because everything was cauterized.

Melissa Strong: Usually when you see or think of something horrific or, you know, you watch a horror movie or a doctor show, there's always so much blood.

Melissa Strong: Well, there is no blood. So you could really, really get a handle of the damage really quickly, which was not so great. I think mentally for me, those images will definitely never go away either.

Melissa Strong: You know, all I could see is everything I loved to do and what my future in a restaurant would look like.

Melissa Strong: You know, what would any of it look like with these burnt bones?

Melissa Strong: You know, what could a doctor do?

Melissa Strong: Like, what would my future look like? I had no answer. Wow.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt. And I mean, not only the restaurant, but I mean, what we've talked about, climbing.

Melissa Strong: Yeah.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, that, wow, wow. So, obviously, in any recovery with something like this, there's the physical recovery and the emotional recovery.

Kevin Lowe: What was, we'll take it kind of piece by piece, the physical recovery, what happened from here?

Kevin Lowe: Obviously, I'm going to assume there was a lot of time in hospital, but what was that journey of physically recovering from such an injury?

Melissa Strong: It's crazy, right? When something happens to you, anyone out there knows it.

Melissa Strong: You break a leg, you sprain an ankle, whatever you do to yourself, you lose muscle mass so quickly.

Melissa Strong: It's kind of unfair how fast it goes away and how difficult it is to come back you know.

Melissa Strong: So the physical recovery was was long and i mean first off there were eight surgeries that were spaced out over about six or seven months so in between those surgeries any strength that you know you might have even gained you know you you you face losing again but when i when i left the hospital, physically, I was just a shell of myself.

Melissa Strong: I could, you know, barely even move my wrist.

Melissa Strong: So I was really starting at ground zero.

Melissa Strong: My arms look like little pipe cleaners, just these skinny little strands of like spaghetti.

Melissa Strong: And I physically hadn't even rotated my wrist for almost a couple months at that point.

Melissa Strong: And so physically, my recovery there was baby steps.

Melissa Strong: Just, okay, I'm going to rotate my wrist today. I'm going to rotate my shoulders today.

Melissa Strong: My arms were sewn together for three weeks, which means you're not really rotating or moving your arms freely at all.

Melissa Strong: Um, so coming out of positions like that left, uh, a vast ocean of, of movement that I, that I needed to do just to even get back to square one.

Melissa Strong: It was, it was tough. Definitely. It was, it was definitely, uh, you know, thoughts of, of why even try, you know, what's the point?

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. Now, talk to me a little bit, because I know from your book, you talk in depth about this, and I'm very interested for you to explain it to me.

Kevin Lowe: You mentioned briefly about having your arms sewn together at one point.

Kevin Lowe: And so explain to me what in the world that was all about.

Melissa Strong: Well, when they first woke me up at the hospital, they said if I had stayed there, I'd probably only have four fingers, my pinky fingers and my index fingers.

Melissa Strong: And all they could do was just let the injury declare itself because electricity is like frostbite and it takes a while before you even know the damage.

Melissa Strong: And that they would just debride, they would just clean and trim away dead tissue.

Melissa Strong: And they said that they were going to transfer me to another hospital, which I'm like, well, that's my prognosis here. I'm like, great.

Melissa Strong: Try another, please. And that there was a plastic surgeon who specialized in hands, who had done amazing things.

Melissa Strong: And I'm like, OK, well, that sounds better than four fingers.

Melissa Strong: But he saw the pictures and he wasn't optimistic. I'm like, okay, you know, I understand you have to put all the reality in there, but definitely transfer me.

Melissa Strong: So when I met Dr. Ignachuk, he pricked the both, the pin pricked my thumb tips.

Melissa Strong: And he said that if there was blood pressure.

Melissa Strong: That if any blood surfaced with these pinpricks, that he would try to help save my thumbs.

Melissa Strong: And that moment was obviously a huge moment, especially, I mean, it's a huge moment when someone's coming at you with a needle on these thumb tips that were suspended by burnt bones.

Melissa Strong: I'm like, okay, well, now they're going to stick me with needles, but let's just see what happens. Let's hope for that blood.

Melissa Strong: And thank God, thank anyone, thank everyone that your thumbs have arteries on the backs of them. The only fingers that have arteries on the backs of them.

Melissa Strong: So that part of the back of my thumbs were not damaged and the artery was still intact and delivered blood. So he said he would try to help.

Melissa Strong: And right off the bat, it wasn't like, so next I'm going to sew your arms together.

Melissa Strong: It was, you know, let's take a look. Let's have a few surgeries.

Melissa Strong: Let me get in there. Let me assess the damage.

Melissa Strong: Let me see where the blood is flowing and where, obviously, anywhere there's blood flowing might be hoped to save any of the material.

Melissa Strong: After a few kind of deprivements and let's take a deeper look surgery, he came up with bilateral flaps.

Melissa Strong: And I'm sure I know there's a medical name for all of this.

Melissa Strong: And they do call it flaps where they need to move a big portion of skin to another portion in your body is one of the reasons why they use this and obviously these exposed burnt bones needed to in in the palms that had these kind of burnt craters in them needed to be covered by skin and that skin comes from your body then your your body tends to reject donor skin.

Melissa Strong: So that was one reason to sew my arms together, was to introduce these large portions of skin to what would hopefully be its new home.

Melissa Strong: Because your body can also reject these grafts as well.

Melissa Strong: And the other um point was to see if they could introduce just good blood flow to the area to see if there was anything else that might kind of spark back to life or benefit from that good blood flow and um see if they could save it so he came up with the idea of they've done flaps before where they'll sew your arm your hand any part of you into another part of you to uh to harvest to create this skin that's going to accept its new home.

Melissa Strong: And I guess apparently they hadn't done bilateral before. So doing both of them at the same time, which was great because it would have been a lot longer of a process if we were just doing one hand at a time.

Melissa Strong: And obviously both hands needed to be addressed ASAP.

Melissa Strong: So yeah, he suggested let's do this flap and he explained it to me and, You know, when you start hearing things like that, it's terrifying.

Melissa Strong: You're like, oh, you can just kind of picture these like horror movies or something like what is going to happen to me.

Melissa Strong: But I, you know, I went from you only have four fingers to someone who's trying to help me.

Melissa Strong: And I had decided if anyone would try to help me, I would do whatever it took, you know, to receive that and see what the best possible outcome would be.

Melissa Strong: And he initially suggested sewing my thumbs into my abdomen so my arms would have been bent at an angle and it just sounded like a horrible idea to me right off the bat so like you know you're just you're hearing this all for the first time within like you know 10 minutes and you're like trying to process it all and you're like okay now imagine myself with my arms which were my hands were completely banished at that point you know and I think I had the resting on my abdomen, And I'm thinking like, oh, how is this going to be?

Melissa Strong: Like, how am I going to, because at this point.

Melissa Strong: I haven't used my hands now in like a week or so.

Melissa Strong: And so I can't do anything for myself, but I can at least move my arms independently.

Melissa Strong: And now I'm like, okay, how am I going to get out of this hospital bed with my arms sewn into my abdomen? How am I going to do any of these little things that I can at least do as far as movement goes with my arms being independent?

Melissa Strong: And anyway, he lifted up my hospital gown and looked at my abdomen and said, well, there's just not enough material there.

Melissa Strong: Years of fitness years of abs you know i am a climber and i i always try to remind them that i was a climber and how i mean everyone's hands are important to them but um you know just how instrumental they were to to that part of me and so then he i don't know we go back and forth on this one quite a bit he says it's my idea and i'm like how on earth is it my idea but um i remember or it being his idea that we sew my thumbs into my opposing forearms.

Melissa Strong: So I initially said, like, I dream of Jeannie, trying, of course, to find the best case scenario there.

Melissa Strong: And then in the end, I kind of felt like I'm like, well, this is also kind of like the straitjacket pose.

Melissa Strong: And I'm sewn like this.

Melissa Strong: It was horrible. There's just no two ways around it. You know, if you don't, you don't go through something like that.

Melissa Strong: And I couldn't find a positive in that one, but I, I, you know, just, And people tell me that they don't have what it takes to go through something like that.

Melissa Strong: I'm like, but you do, because I would have said the same thing if the roles were reversed. Like, I don't think I would have what it takes even today to go through it.

Melissa Strong: But I did it. I don't know how. And I did it to save my thumbs.

Melissa Strong: You know, just if someone gives you that opportunity, well, suffer for three weeks to potentially get a good outcome. Sure. Sign me up.

Melissa Strong: So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. So is that the so that's how long it would would take was only three weeks.

Melissa Strong: Well, initially he told me a week to two.

Kevin Lowe: And, you know, that's like,

Melissa Strong: OK, OK. You know, because you're mentally like, how? OK, how can I endure this?

Melissa Strong: OK, it's only for for this amount of time.

Melissa Strong: So, you know, I can endure it. And then as time went on, initially things were looking good.

Melissa Strong: And then towards the end of maybe I don't exactly remember how many days, but maybe like 10 or so.

Melissa Strong: Maybe nine or so days, my one thumb tip started to not look as good.

Melissa Strong: And he said, well, let's go the full three weeks.

Melissa Strong: And I'm like, what do you mean full three weeks? You never said anything about three weeks.

Melissa Strong: I never heard three weeks.

Melissa Strong: But we wound up going three full weeks with my arms in that position.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. So what would be the final outcome for your hands?

Melissa Strong: Well, when they separated my arms, they harvested a lot of other skin from other parts of my body.

Melissa Strong: So it's not only did I need new skin for thumbs, but there were still other portions of my hands that were still burnt and needed skin, including the exit was where the electricity came out.

Melissa Strong: They were big enough holes that they weren't healing on their own.

Melissa Strong: He, gosh, I think it was like an eight or a nine hour surgery for them that I was on the table for.

Melissa Strong: And they took different parts of my thigh skin and my groin skin, and they sewed them onto different areas of my hands.

Melissa Strong: After, of course, they had to undo my hands, capture that skin from my forearms.

Melissa Strong: Wrap those and sew those around my thumbs and then add in all those other pieces of skin.

Melissa Strong: So basically, I didn't see that result.

Melissa Strong: You had to be as still as possible for, I forget exactly, it was like six or seven days that he wanted me to just sit there still and heal.

Melissa Strong: And then I got to see what they look like.

Melissa Strong: So at that point.

Melissa Strong: To me, they looked horrible. It was like, I call them Frankenstein baseball mitts.

Melissa Strong: It looked like a quilt of my body placed on my hands.

Melissa Strong: And of course, at this time, your hands are still traumatized.

Melissa Strong: They're still so swollen and gigantic.

Melissa Strong: And there was still a lot of healing and a lot of surgeries to go, which I, you know, it's hard to, it's hard to, it's obviously hard to see into the future in general.

Melissa Strong: But when you're going through something this difficult, it's, and you just keep kind of seeing this horror show at the end of your hands.

Melissa Strong: It's, it's hard to know that, okay, they're going to look better in six months from now.

Melissa Strong: It was kind of shocking to me because it was like, oh, I was just so patient. I was so good.

Melissa Strong: I did everything I was told. And now I'm them and i was like oh my god this is uh this is rough.

Kevin Lowe: Wow yeah i can i can't i can't imagine i can't imagine now so would you lose how many fingers on each hand

Melissa Strong: I lost a lot of the fingertips.

Melissa Strong: So there's one, two, three fingertips, just the tops kind of portion of your finger, if you bent them, are gone.

Melissa Strong: And then from the middle knuckle up, that is one finger on my right hand.

Melissa Strong: And then on my thumbs, the flexor tendons were blown out of them.

Melissa Strong: But it's like, gosh, I have thumbs, you know, there's at times where I didn't think I'd have thumbs, but I have two thumbs.

Melissa Strong: One is full length. It is, it's fused.

Melissa Strong: That was another thing that was kind of an issue was getting the bones to heal because the bones that he was able to save, you know, had been carbonized and burnt.

Melissa Strong: And now we're trying to bring them back to life and have them live.

Melissa Strong: So they were, there was no kind of, it was just saving what you could.

Melissa Strong: It wasn't like, oh, let's create a joint. Let's put a flexor tendon in here.

Melissa Strong: It was, let's just, you know, kind of save what we can.

Melissa Strong: So I have one full length thumb and I have one tiny little thumb.

Melissa Strong: He was able to kind of create and save.

Melissa Strong: I told him, you know, if I have thumbs, it will be a miracle.

Melissa Strong: And he looked at me and said, no, it will be silence. And maybe it's a bit of both. I don't know.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well, I mentioned earlier that there's obviously two aspects of healing. There's physical and emotional.

Kevin Lowe: How did you deal with the emotional aspect of healing during this process?

Melissa Strong: That was a tough one. You feel very, even though I had the support of Adam.

Melissa Strong: And, you know, my parents who were far away, but, you know, Adam would Skype them on a daily basis and family and other family and my sister and her family and friends, you feel very alone going through something like this with all the resources, with all the love, you feel alone because in the end of the day, you're the one that has to wake up and go to bed different.

Melissa Strong: You know you're the one that has to make it work that your life just changed and i, could see that i could go into a really dark space with this and i could be very, i could choose that kind of lone lone path and it'd be isolated and have that life of pity and you know, jump right into that dark pit of despair that was right in front of me.

Melissa Strong: Or I couldn't, I couldn't do that. I had that choice.

Melissa Strong: And it was a hard choice to make. But one of the things that drove me was that people were helping me, a doctor was helping me when someone said that they weren't going to help me or couldn't help me.

Melissa Strong: And if I could stay somewhat positive, If I could believe in, you know, if we put everything into this, that maybe there'll be something I can make work someday.

Melissa Strong: Whether it's in a restaurant, whether it's climbing something, if I could focus on that opposed to the darkness, that I knew that I would have a better outcome.

Melissa Strong: And I don't know how I knew that, but I just knew it.

Melissa Strong: And I also was relying on so many people around me. I couldn't brush my teeth.

Melissa Strong: I couldn't go to the bathroom.

Melissa Strong: I couldn't brush my hair. I couldn't get dressed. I couldn't without your hands, there's a lot of things you can't do.

Melissa Strong: And I was so reliant on everyone to help me, from the outstanding nursing staff to people who visited me.

Melissa Strong: And I knew if I went into that dark space, it wouldn't be easy to help someone who's in that dark space.

Melissa Strong: And I knew I needed all the help I could get.

Melissa Strong: So that was another reason why I just knew I couldn't go there.

Melissa Strong: So luckily enough I was able to kind of mentally understand that and then there was okay I have all of these things going for me really you know which is hard to see when when things are aren't really going for you right you know when everything is real shitty it's hard to see the things you do have, the blessings you have.

Melissa Strong: And, um, I really held onto those and steered myself as best as I could into a positive state.

Melissa Strong: And, um, it wasn't an easy state to stay in.

Melissa Strong: And when I'm talking positive, it's not like I was like the head of the cheer committee. It was just like, I wasn't miserable and mean to everyone around me, you know?

Melissa Strong: And, you know, I had a lot of things to tackle. I had to forgive myself for making this mistake.

Melissa Strong: You know, the only, the only person that landed me right here was me.

Melissa Strong: And, uh, I had to tackle that and I had to, you know, learn what to lament and what not to lament when, and when to do that, you know, so I couldn't, I couldn't lament that climbing was over for me yet.

Melissa Strong: I just didn't want to let myself do that. So I just had to put it away.

Melissa Strong: I had to put it in a box and I had to, you know, continuously put it back in a box and continuously try to close the lid on that box because I knew thinking about it wasn't going to help me right then and there get any better.

Melissa Strong: But I also knew if I said, that's it, it's over for me.

Melissa Strong: I will never climb again. That wasn't going to lead me to a healthy recovery either.

Melissa Strong: It was challenging.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. Wow.

Kevin Lowe: How did your husband handle all of it? because I know that it's hard on family also.

Melissa Strong: Yeah, yeah, you're not, you feel alone, but you're not alone.

Melissa Strong: Everyone else's life around you and everyone who loves you is hurting right there with you.

Melissa Strong: Like I said, I'd love for him to even write a chapter or something.

Melissa Strong: I could never get that to happen.

Melissa Strong: But, you know, he was steadfast. He was strong. He was so supportive.

Melissa Strong: I never had, I was so fortunate, right?

Melissa Strong: I mean, some people don't have this in their lives. Some people go through something traumatic and, you know, don't have that support.

Melissa Strong: And I was so happy and relieved that when I looked into his eyes, I knew he wasn't going anywhere.

Melissa Strong: I knew this wasn't, yes, it was going to change our lives, but I knew it wasn't going to change us or our love for each other.

Melissa Strong: And I was so lucky to have that and how he got through it.

Melissa Strong: He just put his head down, I guess, and just took kind of one day at a time and just and supported me as best as he could.

Melissa Strong: But he was also, you know, a human. And I respected that.

Melissa Strong: I didn't take advantage of it. I didn't want him to sacrifice everything he loved just because of what I was doing either, which hopefully helped.

Melissa Strong: And the fact that I saw that, I hope I helped him carry the burden that he was carrying as well.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. Wow. Well, I want to at this point, I guess, circle back around because this happened in the midst of you trying to open a restaurant.

Kevin Lowe: Obviously, I know the restaurant happened. And so how do you get back on the horse and keep going after enduring such a truly life-changing accident?

Melissa Strong: Sometimes looking back on it, I don't know how I did it, but I did it and I'm thankful.

Melissa Strong: And I kind of feel like maybe I didn't have too much of a choice because that loan finally came through.

Melissa Strong: Like really i they were signing loan papers while i was at that first week in the hospital so like well i own the building it's already gutted you know people had committed to be partners with me they had you know quit their jobs or put in their notice that they were you know x amount of time and um they were done and they were opening you know a restaurant with me so i, I felt this huge obligation on me too.

Melissa Strong: I couldn't really hit pause on life while I figured out if I was going to have thumbs or not.

Melissa Strong: While I grappled with my mental challenges, and darkness and depression and all of that, I just, I didn't, in a way, it's great that I didn't have the luxury to just kind of go further down the rabbit hole of me.

Melissa Strong: And I had something I had to do and that was to open the restaurant.

Melissa Strong: I had to do it for the fact that it was a building that my family invested in and their finances were tied to it.

Melissa Strong: I had to do it for the people who quit their jobs and believed in me and said, sure, we'll be sweat equity partners and come in and make this work with you.

Melissa Strong: And I had to do it for my community.

Melissa Strong: I had already taken all of these steps and it's something I really wanted to do.

Melissa Strong: And in the end, I had to do it for me as well. because I just didn't want to quit.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, to be honest with you, I mean, if we want to look in this big picture of things, like it truly, I would imagine, could in some ways be kind of your saving grace.

Kevin Lowe: I mean, yeah, this happened while you were building the restaurant, but it's because of the restaurant that probably you're where you are today because it gave you that drive, that purpose to have to keep going.

Melissa Strong: 100% it did. And it was a great distraction along the way because it's like, okay, well, you know, I can't just continue, you know, or live in a pity party, right?

Melissa Strong: I've got to pull up those big girl pants and I've got to interview people for a point of sale today.

Melissa Strong: I've got to look at the light fixtures. I've got to decide the paint on the wall.

Melissa Strong: I, you know, from A to Z still hadn't been done yet.

Melissa Strong: It was all still swirling of thoughts and dreams that needed to come out of my head and into reality.

Melissa Strong: Now we were really getting into that reality stage. And so it did, it was a great distraction.

Melissa Strong: You know, when I thought about, oh, am I ever going to climb again?

Melissa Strong: It's like, well, you know what, shut the lid on that box because what, what color are you going to put the paint, you know, on the walls?

Melissa Strong: What are the bathroom wallpaper going to be like?

Melissa Strong: What's the floor going to be like? Where's the bar where, you know, where all these little components that are, are so important that, you know, you have to decide along the way.

Melissa Strong: So it really gave me another outlet. It gave me another focus and it did help save me for sure.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. I love it. Now talking about the other, the passion in climbing, did climbing ever get to come back into the story?

Melissa Strong: It did. Surprisingly enough, there were many days that I never thought it would, and it did come back it took a lot you know I got I got sent home and you know like I said I my physical therapy was move my wrists so it's okay climbing still definitely out of the picture looking at the skin grafts healing still you know completely out of the picture but as I said you know eventually things do start to heal and being a climber you can't help but test it and say oh oh, well, can I put my fingers on here? Like, will that work?

Melissa Strong: And slowly and little by little, it came back.

Melissa Strong: And initially it was just some friends of mine who make climbing holds down in Boulder.

Melissa Strong: At that point, they make climbing boards now too. But at that point, it was even before the boards and they were just making holds.

Melissa Strong: They invited me down to see what holds might work for my hands.

Melissa Strong: We came home and Adam screwed a handful of holds into the side of our stairs, wooden stairs at home.

Melissa Strong: And they're like right in the middle of our living room.

Melissa Strong: And I would just stand there with my feet on the ground and just touch them, you know, just like, okay, this is how these fingers would now lay here.

Melissa Strong: Because I have index fingers that are, natural length, which makes it interesting to see how the shorter fingers are going to come in and join the party.

Melissa Strong: So initially it was just, just simple as that of just standing there and touching holds, which I mean, at first I didn't want to touch anything.

Melissa Strong: So it was obviously gradual baby steps there.

Melissa Strong: And then little by little, I, you know, was out on our climbing wall and I'm like, okay, now I'm going to hold onto these holds that are on the wall and see if I can put one of my feet onto the climbing wall as well and put all my weight on these fingertips.

Melissa Strong: It was excruciating beyond, you know, kind of vomit style.

Melissa Strong: But eventually you just kind of those nerve endings that are so raw that are there, you learn how to kind of bypass that pain.

Melissa Strong: And sometimes the pain decreases on its own by toughening it up.

Melissa Strong: But then, you know, I still have fingers that are kind of just feel just as raw as they did that first year.

Kevin Lowe: Wow.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Now, about how long after the accident would it take before you got to that point where you could start trying to climb?

Melissa Strong: My first climb was on our wall, was in October.

Melissa Strong: If anyone listening wants to see along, all of these videos are actually on my website with a lot of graphic, horrible images from the hospital.

Melissa Strong: So a warning, there is a warning.

Melissa Strong: But yeah, I was able to pull onto our climbing wall and, you know, move my hand to the next hold and grab it.

Melissa Strong: And that took a lot mentally and physically, because mentally, you know, your brain is telling you, giving you warning signals, like, don't do this.

Melissa Strong: You don't have fingers. It's going to be painful.

Melissa Strong: You know, what on earth are you doing?

Melissa Strong: So you you get all these warning signals and you know that your body's trying to protect itself and what it just went through and stubborn enough you know you have to override those warning signals and those brain challenges that are getting thrown at you to even make yourself want to move your hand and grab that hold and then when you do you have to endure the amount of pain that just shot through your whole being because you did grab that hold.

Melissa Strong: And it's like this weird thing where it's like this, this kind of like horrific challenge, but you're so happy because it filled you with joy.

Melissa Strong: And it's one step closer to getting back to something you love to do.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Strong: It took a while.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. No, no doubt. And at the same point, I mean, I, again, just have to say, like, What it just says about you, the amazing just soul that you are, the person that you are.

Kevin Lowe: And I mean, I couldn't help, but I was sitting here thinking, I thought, you know, is her last name really and truly strong?

Kevin Lowe: Or is that something she branded and changed her last name? Because I'm like, it sums up everything.

Melissa Strong: It's by marriage, really and truly. Adam's last name. So, yeah, we didn't we didn't change it in the act during the accident.

Kevin Lowe: OK, because I was thinking I'm like, I'm like, because I'm like, I have a feeling if it wasn't really strong, she probably would have just went with badass if she was changing it.

Kevin Lowe: I don't know. It could be her middle name, Melissa Badass Strong.

Melissa Strong: That's it. I'm going to the documents. We're going to get badass as a middle name.

Kevin Lowe: Yes, yes. Oh, my gosh. I love it. I love it.

Kevin Lowe: Well, where I want to kind of wrap up today is what has connected us, is the fact that as if you're not crazy enough to open a restaurant, as if you're not crazy and badass enough to get back to climbing after such a life just changing injury, you then decide, you know what? I'm going to start sharing my story.

Kevin Lowe: I'm going to write a book. I'm going to start going on podcasts.

Kevin Lowe: Where did that idea come from to write a book?

Melissa Strong: That piece of literature there that I decided, you know, not to continue on with that passion that I had, you know, I always loved reading and I always loved writing in school. I was more of a critical writer.

Melissa Strong: And then over the years it adapted and I just really enjoyed writing.

Melissa Strong: I wrote being like a sponsored rock climber. I had a blog, so I would always be blogging and I'd always be writing.

Melissa Strong: I wrote for different climbing magazines so it was always kind of a part of me and it was always I think just another part of me too that I used to heal so I started writing pretty early on initially it was very matter of fact very cold very distant I still didn't know the outcome right like it's hard to it's hard to get optimism in there when you're just still kind of day to day, what the hell is happening to me and what's going to happen to me and what is this going to look like?

Melissa Strong: But I, I just, I wrote kind of throughout the whole thing, especially of course, once I could actually have control of my hands and, um, use them again.

Melissa Strong: And I always knew that I wanted to write my story and share it basically because I knew that what I went through was challenging and horrific and I was making my way through it.

Melissa Strong: And potentially, maybe this could help someone go through a challenging time in their life.

Melissa Strong: Because like I say, you don't have to burn your hands off to have a bad day. And you know it.

Melissa Strong: You know, we have really bad things that happen in life. and, you know, hopefully by sharing our stories, we can help people that might be navigating a challenging time.

Melissa Strong: So for some reason, I always knew that I wanted to do it, especially once I saw the outcome was, okay, I opened the restaurant, I am climbing, you know, let's bring this light into someone else's life.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, yeah, I love it. Your book, the title, Climbing Through, What does that title mean?

Melissa Strong: I climbed through it, you know, just like most everyone does going through a challenging time. You get through it.

Melissa Strong: Sometimes I felt like I pushed my way through because I had to get better.

Melissa Strong: I had to open the restaurant, but I also got back to climbing, you know, so I really was able to kind of climb my way through the challenges, the pain, the suffering that April 17th.

Melissa Strong: April 2nd, 2017, opened up to me.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And it kind of goes back full circle to where we started our conversation of being the luckiest, unlucky person you know.

Melissa Strong: Yeah. Yep.

Melissa Strong: So thankful to be here, right? And then I get to try. It's really cool. Yeah, absolutely.

Kevin Lowe: Absolutely. Well, for the person who's been listening today, who would love to get a copy of your book, who maybe would love to visit your restaurant, would you mind just sharing with us ways in which we can find your book, find your restaurant, connect with you?

Melissa Strong: Yeah, for sure. I do steer a lot of people towards my website because everything is on there.

Melissa Strong: Which is my name and it's really my name melissaistrong.com and it's funny because i stands for a middle name that was never given to me at birth so maybe it really should be melissa badass strong.com but um it's melissaistrong.com i chose irene as my catholics get a confirmation name so i chose irene as my confirmation name so it is my actual middle initial a lot of people read it as melissa is strong and i'm like no that's melissaistrong.com and you'll see links to amazon barnes and noble bam walmart hudson booksellers bookshop

Melissa Strong: a lot of online places there it's also hopefully at your local library or local bookstore i love telling people go to your local bookstore and ask them to carry a copy because they can get it no problem.

Melissa Strong: And then you're helping a local business like Bird and Jim. And that is the restaurant in Estes Park.

Melissa Strong: In 2022, we opened the Bird's Nest, which is a bakery and pizzeria right across the street from Bird and Jim.

Melissa Strong: Coffee shops, you can get coffee and a sandwich on your way into the park and on your way out, pick up a pizza or go to Bird and Jim to eat dinner.

Melissa Strong: Bird and Jim is seven days a week, lunch and dinner.

Melissa Strong: In Bird's Nest is also seven days a week, opens 6 a.m. to get your coffee fix.

Melissa Strong: So that's all in Estes Park and on the website there's links to the restaurant.

Melissa Strong: There's also links to see the renovations so you can kind of see what they were and how they changed with all the literal blood, sweat and tears that were put into your bird and gym.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow. Well, Melissa, you, you are truly amazing.

Kevin Lowe: You are truly strong.

Kevin Lowe: You are truly badass.

Kevin Lowe: And with now basically two restaurants, an author doing all you are, we might even say you're a little bit insane, but only in the best way.

Kevin Lowe: You truly inspire me. I love your story for the minute. I heard your story.

Kevin Lowe: I knew I wanted to have you on my podcast. I knew I wanted to just get to soak up some of the energy that you possess is truly inspiring. And so in the most heartfelt way possible.

Kevin Lowe: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to be here on my show.

Melissa Strong: Thank you so much for having me. It really means a lot. I really appreciate it. From one bad ass to another.

Kevin Lowe: Absolutely. I love it. Love it. And for you listening today, please be sure that you check out today's show notes for all of the links, for all the resources mentioned by Melissa.

Kevin Lowe: You can also just head on over to the website, gritgrace.com inspiration.com slash Melissa dash strong.

Kevin Lowe: And you can find all of that information there as well.

Kevin Lowe: Until next time, my friend, if nothing else, let today inspire you to just get out there and whatever challenges you might be facing, they're just there so that you can overcome them.

Kevin Lowe: So my friend, get out there, do that. And I'll see you back here next week for another episode of grit, grace, and inspiration.

Found My Home with Bird & Jim by K-Lowe Music begins to play