After my stroke, my husband, Nishant, and I turned to doctors and therapists to help us understand what recovery might look like. But some of what we heard was difficult to accept.

One therapist told me I could forget about returning to work. My doctor told me that whatever recovery I made in the first three months would be all I could expect.

Those predictions were difficult to live with. But Nishant and I weren't ready to accept that our hopes for recovery had to end there.

We started small. Swallowing became easier. Words began to return. Each small improvement gave us something we desperately needed: hope.

Months passed, and I was still making progress. Eventually, we discovered that what we had been experiencing had a name: neuroplasticity.

In this episode of Return to Myself, I share how Nishant and I learned to look beyond the predictions we had been given. We worked on getting me out of the wheelchair, then walking without an ankle-foot orthosis. Years later, I even found myself learning to crawl again.

Along the way, we discovered the value of repetition, persistence, and finding new opportunities for my brain to learn.

What began as a belief that recovery was still possible became something much more personal: the experience of discovering, again and again, that I could still make progress.



Closing music: “Classical 2” by Jonny S., courtesy of Mixkit.

After my stroke, I spent months in a mental fog. I was content to sit on the sofa beside Nishant, my husband, with my head resting on his shoulder. It was a comfortable, familiar place to be.

Before the stroke, my life had been filled with people—family, friends, colleagues, and conversations. But in those early months, I hardly ventured beyond our home. And strangely enough, I didn't feel the need to.

Then one Saturday, Nishant gently shook me and said, “We're going to Starbucks.”

That simple outing turned out to be anything but simple.

In this episode of Return to Myself, I share the unexpected challenges of reconnecting with people. From struggling to make myself heard across a restaurant table to finding the confidence to host friends again, each experience helped me feel a little more connected to the world.

Over time, something else began to change. I started making plans of my own, navigating the city independently, and discovering new friendships and communities.

What surprised me most was how much I had missed the ordinary pleasure of being with people — and how energizing those connections could be.

Five years later, social connection is no longer something that happens around me. It is something I choose, seek out, and actively participate in again.



Closing music: “Classical 2” by Jonny S., courtesy of Mixkit.

For four years after my stroke, I didn’t paint.

Before then, painting had been an important part of my life. I worked primarily in oils, creating portraits and other paintings with my right hand. When I could no longer use that hand the way I once had, I couldn’t imagine how I would return to something I loved.

I told myself I’d already been a successful artist. I didn’t need to paint again. But imagining a life without painting was one thing. Picking up a brush again was another.

The possibility of painting again began to feel real when the nonprofit I attended started planning its fall gala. Conversations with my therapist about creating a painting for the event stirred an interest I hadn’t felt in years.

And so, during a therapy session, with my arm supported and a brush secured between my fingers, I began painting my therapist’s portrait.

What happened during that hour surprised both of us — for very different reasons.

In this episode of Return to Myself, I share the challenges, adaptations, and unexpected discoveries that helped me find my way back to painting—and what that experience taught me about creativity and physical recovery.

There was so much I had to learn to do differently. But as the portrait took shape, I began to recognize something familiar: the artist in me was still there.

Closing music: “Classical 2” by Jonny S., courtesy of Mixkit.

Before my stroke, words were a big part of my life. I spoke six languages. Workdays were spent in meetings, presentations, writing, and mentoring. Language came naturally to me.

Then, after my stroke, almost every object became a “remote.”

I knew what the objects were. I knew what I wanted to say. But somewhere between knowing and speaking, the words disappeared. Nishant, my husband, began finishing the sentences I couldn't complete.

In this episode of Return to Myself, I share what that strange new world felt like—and five very different ways I began finding my words again. I learned to talk around the words I couldn't retrieve. I prepared for conversations that once would have come naturally. I read Pulitzer Prize winners, played with words—and, perhaps most surprisingly, started learning another language.

These aren't medical recommendations. They're the experiments, discoveries, and everyday practices that helped language slowly become mine again.

Closing music: “Classical 2” by Jonny S., courtesy of Mixkit.

Before my stroke, my life was full — work, art, music, languages, exercise, friendships, and the ordinary routines that made me feel like myself.

Then, suddenly, many of the things I had taken for granted became difficult or impossible.

In this opening episode of Return to Myself, I look back at the life I was living before my stroke—not simply to describe what I lost, but to introduce the person who began this journey of recovery.

This is where the story starts: with the life I was living, the moment everything changed, and all that I still didn't know about what would return, what would change, and what recovery would eventually mean.

Welcome to Return to Myself.

I’m Savvy Dani, and this is a podcast about what happens when life changes, and you have to find your way forward.

Through stories of recovery, creativity, and the new connections we make along the way, I explore what it means to rebuild a life after everything you thought you knew about yourself has changed.