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In 2016, filmmaker Laura O’Grady reached out after reading about me in Impact magazine. She wanted to make a documentary. Side-by-side footage: my CrossFit life and my real CF life. Each week of the five-week Open, she’d film me competing, then cut to the truth—the coughing, the pounding, the transplant list interviews, the clinic visits.

When it launched in July 2017, it went viral on the biggest platform in the fitness world. But that was just the beginning.

Telus TV funded the project through their Storyline program. They promoted it on cable networks across Canada. Suddenly, my aunt in Prince George texted me—she’d seen a clip on CNN. People across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and BC were texting me that they’d seen me on their screens.

The documentary opened doors. It gave me credibility, a platform, a different audience for my fundraising. We raised $40,000 over four years with the Burpees for Breath challenge.

But it also trapped me in a narrative I couldn’t escape. When you become the inspiration, you become trapped in the miracle. You can’t admit you’re struggling. You can’t tell the truth. You have to keep producing the miracle for everyone else.

This is Episode 8: The story of how a documentary that was supposed to show my truth became the thing that buried it deeper.

Nicole’s Notes—where I’m finally dropping the mask and telling you what’s really true.

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When you're living your most public life—keynoting in front of CEOs, your face on 50-foot hospital banners, raising millions for your foundation—who sees you disappearing at home?

This is the story of the duality. Of building a public persona as the inspirational CF patient while your marriage quietly dies. Of performing health and strength while your lungs decline. Oxygen is the moment when hiding became impossible.

Nicole Zeller talks about 25 years of marriage, the shift from support to resentment, and what it takes to let someone go finally. About the galas where she was celebrated while feeling invisible to the one person who was supposed to love her. About the 50-foot banner and the man who couldn't accept what she refused to hide anymore.

This episode explores what happens when you stop performing for someone who resents your refusal to disappear.

Content warnings: Medical trauma, marriage dissolution, caregiver burden

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Episode 6: I weighed 74 pounds at my wedding. Ten years later, the University of Calgary named a research lab after me. This is how I went from surviving on a feeding tube to raising millions for CF research and discovering that my survival meant something bigger. This episode is the story of redemption. Not because I'm special. But because I refused to die on someone else's timeline.

From small wins in weight gain to speaking at CF conventions. From pitching my story to CEOs to starting the Summit Foundation. From galas to a research lab bearing my name.

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46 pounds lost in 7 years. 74 lbs at wedding. Surgery 6 weeks before marriage. "You'll die without this tube." Walking down the aisle as a skeleton.

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Trigger Warning: Medical trauma, childhood fear, anxiety, hypervigilance

What happens to a child's mind when doctors and nurses repeatedly invade their body and sleep without consent?

This bonus episode bridges The Exacerbation and The Feeding Tube. It's the story of what I didn't talk about in the main series: the bat under my bed, the nightly combat planning, the terror of closed eyes, and how I learned to sneak undetected into my parents' room just to feel safe.

For years, I couldn't understand why I was so hypervigilant. Why I couldn't relax. Why I refused help even when I was dying. Now, at 54, I understand: the hospital trained me to be afraid. And I've spent my whole life carrying the bat in different forms.

This is the episode about how medical trauma creates survival strategies that both save you and destroy you. It's dark. It's vulnerable. And it's the key to understanding everything that comes after.

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This is the story of a 22-year-old who thought she was invincible. Who had survived 10 years of hiding CF. Who had proven to the world that her disease didn't define her.

And then her lungs decided to call her bluff.

The hamster wheel was brutal:

• Thursday, Friday, Saturday: out until 2-3 a.m., drinking to blackout, not eating
• Sunday: sleep all day, try to eat, try to catch up on homework
• Weekdays: slogging across campus to 8 a.m. classes (which she skipped), working 2-6 p.m. at a data entry job, studying in residence until late

All while her lungs were in decline.

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This is episode 3 of 9.

At age 9, something shifted. Nicole joined the swimming team. And for the next 10 years, she became a master of performance. The world saw a varsity captain, a provincial athlete, a girl with no limitations. What they didn't see was the demon, hard and fast, every single day. How did she not collapse? A fantastic appetite. Sleeping constantly. Napping between every activity. The only way to perform invincibility is to rest when nobody's watching.

By the fourth year, the performance was cracking. She was coughing up mucus into cups. Dumping them down toilets. Her exercise tolerance is becoming nonexistent.

The masterpiece of invisibility was starting to shatter.

This episode explores the invisible reality of living with CF while appearing invincible.

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Your parents are 17 and 18. You're four years old. You have a terminal illness. The doctors just told them you probably won't make it to first grade.

Now what?

This is the story of what happens when a village decides that's unacceptable.

My parents were young and unprepared for parenthood, let alone parenthood of a child with cystic fibrosis. So they needed parenting, too. That's where Granni and Poppa came in — living within blocks, sometimes just houses between us, surrogate parents who literally held the foundation together.

Granni taught me how to bake, how to cook, how to clean, how to recycle, and how to save water for laundry. Granni had afternoon tea rituals with very specific rules: milk goes in first, always warm the teapot with boiling water before you make the pot. These weren't just tea times. They were rituals about showing up. They were about a grandmother loving her granddaughter enough to teach her something useless and beautiful.

Poppa was like the Godfather — all knowing, all powerful, this presence that commanded respect without demanding it. Every Sunday after mass, Poppa would take the entire family to Dairy Queen for sundaes. It was sacred. It held us together. Poppa was the rock that anchored everything.

My uncle was the one who teased me relentlessly, who made me laugh when nothing was funny, who treated me like just another person worth messing with instead of a sick kid to be pitied. That banter saved me.

My cousins Denise and Debbie tormented me with pranks — they convinced me a pirate lived under the bed and would grab my leg if I wasn't careful. I still have a thing about pirates under my bed. Doug was mentally challenged but could throw a ball farther than anyone I've ever seen, and I was in awe of him. I took him under my wing, and we had real adventures together.

And then there was Neil, my brother, 15 months younger, who had to live in my shadow, who had to follow me in school, who had a complicated relationship with being the healthy sibling in a family consumed with my illness. We fought. We protected each other. We would take a bullet for each other.

But none of them compared to Sleepy.

Sleepy is a brown, fuzzy dog the size of a medium-sized book who was given to me for my first sinus surgery at age five. He has droopy, cute eyes. He got an ID tag like I did when I was admitted to the hospital. He went into surgery with me. He was never not with me. He was my only true unconditional friend — the one being who never pushed crap down my throat or beat me up or demanded anything except love.

I still have him. He's 50 years old. He's my rock.

This village didn't save me through pity or martyrdom. They saved me by loving me fiercely, by teaching me to make tea the right way, by taking me for Dairy Queen sundaes, by teasing me relentlessly, by being present, and by refusing to treat a sick child like she was broken.

They made me fierce.