When she was in third grade, Stacy Sims remembers waking up on the floor of her classroom, mouths hanging wide open above her. She’d had a seizure.
Sims was diagnosed with epilepsy and prescribed barbital, a drug often used as a sedative. Today, she says, doctors probably wouldn’t give it to her. But this was a long time ago, and they did.
While taking the medication, Sims remembers doing all the things she loved. Especially riding horses. She remembers Casey, the best horse she ever had. She remembers taking first place in 4-H at the Carthage Fair. A memory of time standing still. A memory of being good at something.
She remembers reading under a tree, while Casey ate grass, her book propped up on the horse. She remembers all this, and she knows she enjoyed it. But she doesn’t remember feeling anything.
This is what her medication did, a prescribed numbness. The kids called her Spacey Stacy.
In her earliest memory, Sims was 4 years old and living in Finneytown. She remembers a seemingly larger-than-life hill separating her family and her neighbors. She remembers an adult telling her she was pretty.
“I know,” she replied.
This was before epilepsy and seizures and gasping faces. Before the anxiety and the pills and the charade of social drinking as an adult. Before there was a void in her life she was trying to fill. Before Pilates and meditation and stillness.
She remembers this moment now, as a 60-year-old woman sober for decades, because she didn’t realize people saw things differently than she did.
Of course, she did not understand this as a 4-year-old. At the time, she was confident. Because she didn’t know any better.
The problem is no one stays 4 years old forever.
When Sims stopped taking her medication in middle school, she felt like she had missed so much. So, she chased those feelings. The ones she never felt.
She chased them with cigarettes and alcohol and coffee.
She always wanted to write a novel, and she called herself a writer, but she didn’t really write.
As an adult, she would go to the grocery store, powered by anti-anxiety medication, her heart racing with thoughts of dying. Her reward for making it home was a pot of coffee and another pill.
She looked forward to being alone.
Sims' story is more than that. Because that was more than 20 years ago.
Her story is about listening to yourself, even when you don’t want to. It’s about mindfulness. Her story is about what you see when you look in the mirror, and about taking control of what you can control.
It’s about taking 12 steps in a church basement. It’s about taking five minutes to breathe before opening your email on Monday morning.
Sims did eventually become an author. Because she learned in order to be there for others, you need to be there for yourself.
It felt like being born.
That’s what the young boy told Sims after listening to the New World Symphony during morning announcements. This was in a Cleveland school, where the child told her he didn’t feel emotions.
Now, he had. And he knew how to feel them again.
This was part of Sims’ Mindful Music Moments program. Essentially, it supplements morning announcements in schools and gives children a few minutes to relax before starting their day.
“We want to disrupt time itself,” she says.
That sounds like the plot of a Christopher Nolan movie, but Sims says it’s not that complicated.
In her mind, time is the enemy. But it doesn’t have to be. Because time, she says, is a state of mind.
Time is the morning announcements. It’s the classical music of Bach.
Sit back and close your eyes.
Breathe.
“I don’t meet a person who doesn’t think they can feel better,” she says.
The pandemic only heightened the stress Sims already saw. In students. In adults.
It's her job to help.
Sims is an Enquirer Woman of the Year, in large part, because of her work with veterans experiencing homelessness, human trafficking victims and at-risk youth.
But she doesn’t like that description. In her mind, we’re all at risk – just like she was – of not living the life we imagine for ourselves.
Back in school, after implementing her music program, another young student approached one of Sims’ colleagues. He was shaking because he wanted to punch a classmate.
And he wanted to learn how not to.
About Stacy Sims
Birthplace: Cincinnati
Current residence: Bellevue
Family: Son Nick Sharp lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and works in public health; brother and nieces are in Austin, Texas; dad and stepmother live in Glendale
Education: Three years at three universities (Indiana University, Georgetown University, University of Cincinnati), then a lot of life lessons and many, many movement, mindfulness and trauma trainings
Occupation: Founder and director of The Well. Author. Mind-body educator. Wellness activist.
What she says
What inspires you to give back? "Most of the time, I am not thinking about my activities as 'giving back' since they are so nourishing to me and a part of the work I get to do every day. Yet I suppose what inspires me is knowing how important it is to be seen, truly seen, particularly when you are suffering. When I was living in Cleveland, I was part of group family therapy sessions for my then-partner's son. The facilitator of this group was completely masterful at making everyone feel fully seen and heard in the kindest way, even if only for a few seconds. I think I've been trying to model this since then."
What need in the community would you like to see addressed? "Empathy. Humility. Nuanced thinking. The space between us is widening, fueled by algorithms, exhaustion, disparity. Yet I know from experience that when we can gather and learn about one another, when we can put the rhetoric aside in favor of personal stories and generous listening, we can not only heal the divide, but begin to conquer serious community challenges."
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