What Coming Back Taught Me

I had a second stroke.

I don’t lead with that to be dramatic. I lead with it because the people I work with in this community deserve honesty, and because pretending it didn’t happen would feel like a betrayal of everything I believe about how we should show up for each other.

I spent nearly a month in the hospital. For someone who’s spent 35 years building things, connecting people, and staying in motion, lying in a hospital bed is its own kind of education. You figure out quickly what actually matters. You figure out who you are when you’re not busy being useful.

What I learned is that I am exactly who I thought I was — just quieter about it for a while.

While I was in the hospital, my son stepped up and ran the Salinas Farmers Market. All 90 vendors. Every coordination call, every setup morning, every problem that came up and needed somebody to solve it on the spot. He did it.

I can’t tell you what it meant to watch that happen from the sidelines. I’ve spent a long time in event management and community organizing, and I know how hard that job is even when you’ve been doing it for years. He walked into it and held it together.

That’s not something you plan for. That’s the result of the values a family carries and passes on without always naming them — show up, do the work, take care of the people counting on you. I’m proud of him in a way I don’t have the right words for yet.

I’ve had health scares before. A stroke in April 2022, a heart attack that August. Each one asked me the same question: what are you going to do with the time you have?

This one asked it louder.

The answer hasn’t changed. It’s just sharper now. I believe in the Salinas Valley business community. I believe in small businesses and the people who build them, and in the kind of deep local knowledge that only comes from decades of being in the room, at the event, at the table. That’s what Abrava Consulting exists to offer — not generic strategy, but real, earned perspective from someone who’s been here and stayed.

I’m not ready to slow down. I’m more committed than ever.

My first step back out into the community is the Chamber event, and I won’t pretend I don’t feel something being back in that room. There’s something clarifying about almost losing something. You stop taking for granted the connections, the conversations, the introductions that quietly change someone’s trajectory.

Even if I’m in a wheelchair for a little while, I’ll be there. Because that’s what showing up means.

I’m grateful to be back. And I’m ready to get to work.

If you’re a business owner in this valley who’s trying to figure out your next move, or if you’ve been waiting to have a conversation you haven’t had time for, reach out. I’m here.

That’s what I’m here for.

Brett Reed is Senior Consultant at Abrava Consulting in Salinas, CA. Abrava Connect, Support, Promote.