There's a particular kind of silence that falls over a room when doctors leave the room to consult each other. The quiet hits you harder, sitting on a crinkled paper sheet, watching a screen that shows your unborn child. If you’ve been there before, you know exactly what I mean. When my son was diagnosed with hydrocephalus at 20 weeks in utero, I didn't know what to do with the word. I barely knew how to say it. The pamphlets they gave me were quickly crammed into my pockets, staying there until I was brave enough to read them, to accept the version of his life the doctors were already sketching out for me before he had even taken his first breath. I know now that you are allowed to walk out of that room and refuse to accept a fixed ending. You are allowed to fight, to research, to ask hard questions, and to seek out the doctors who give you hope. That is what I did.  This post is for the parent sitting in that room right now. Or the one who just got home from it, not knowing what to do with the pamphlets they gave you.  My son at 4 months old. What Is Hydrocephalus? Hydrocephalus, often described as "water on the brain", occurs when cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) builds up in the ventricles of the brain. Normally, this fluid flows through the brain and spinal cord and gets reabsorbed. When that process is disrupted, pressure builds. It can be present at birth (congenital) or develop later in life. It can be mild or severe. It can be caught prenatally, as in our case, or diagnosed months after birth when subtle symptoms emerge. Common signs that may prompt further evaluation include: An unusually large or rapidly growing head circumference Bulging fontanelle (soft spot) in infants Eyes that appear to gaze downward ("sunsetting") Irritability, vomiting, or poor feeding Developmental delays In older children: headaches, vision changes, or difficulty with balance Prenatal diagnosis, like ours, often happens during a routine anatomy ultrasound when enlarged ventricles are detected. A follow-up scan and specialist consultation will typically follow. In our case they were monthly for the remainder of my pregnancy.  What Comes Next: Understanding Your Options One of the most disorienting parts of a hydrocephalus diagnosis is the amount of information thrown at you in a very short time, often by specialists who are focused on the medical facts, not on how those facts land. Back in the early 2000s, we were given a much grimmer outlook than what many families hear today. Some children, like my son, have arrested hydrocephalus where his body adapts to the excess fluid. My son is 22 years old today living a normal life.  Here is what I wish someone had told me: The range of outcomes is wide.  Some children with hydrocephalus diagnosed prenatally are born with minimal or no symptoms. Others require intervention. The ultrasound alone cannot always predict how a child will fare, and doctors who deal in probabilities are not dealing in certainties. Treatment has evolved significantly.  The most common treatment is a shunt, a small device surgically implanted to drain excess fluid and relieve pressure. Shunts have improved dramatically and, for many children, allow full, active lives. Another option for some patients is endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV), a procedure that creates a new pathway for fluid to drain without a permanent implant. Your neurosurgeon will help determine which approach fits your child's specific anatomy and presentation. A second opinion is not a betrayal of your first doctor.  It is simply good medicine. I sought a second neurosurgeon, and that conversation gave me both clarity and confidence. You are your child's best advocate, and advocating starts here. The Emotional Weight No One Prepares You For Getting a prenatal diagnosis means grieving and hoping at the same time, which is one of the more exhausting emotional experiences a person can have. My coping mechanism was just stunned silence. Then came the guilt. The guilt, in particular, can be insidious. Parents, especially mothers, can fall into the belief that they caused this somehow, or that they failed to protect their child before they even arrived. I know that feeling intimately. It is a lie. Hydrocephalus is not caused by anything you did or did not do, felt or did not feel, prayed or did not pray. It's also worth acknowledging: the stress of a medically complex pregnancy or a child with a serious diagnosis doesn't end at birth. It often continues through surgeries, follow-ups, unexpected complications, and the long stretch of waiting to see how things unfold. You are allowed to struggle with that. You are allowed to fall apart sometimes. What I learned is that "falling apart sometimes" and "showing up every time" are not mutually exclusive. How to Advocate Effectively When your child has a complex medical condition, advocacy isn't optional, it's essential. Here's what helped me most: Come prepared.  Bring a notebook, and/or bring a friend. It often helps to have another person there to hear what the doctor says. Write down your questions before appointments. Don't leave until you understand the answers, or at least until you know what you don't yet understand. Build your team intentionally.  Your pediatrician should be a partner, not just a checkpoint. Find doctors who take your observations seriously. A parent's gut is a diagnostic tool. You know your child. Ask about the full picture.  Hydrocephalus can come with related conditions or complications that aren't always volunteered upfront. Ask about developmental monitoring, speech and occupational therapy, and what signs should prompt a call or a visit. Get connected.  The Hydrocephalus Association ( hydroassoc.org ) is an excellent resource, offering support groups, research updates, and guidance for families navigating this diagnosis. You don't have to piece together information alone.  Document everything.  Keep records of scans, test results, surgical reports, and physician notes. Medical history matters, sometimes years later. The doctors who gave us our son's diagnosis were not wrong about the condition. They were wrong about the future. His story is one I'm still telling, because it didn't end in that appointment, or in the surgeries that followed, or in the years of monitoring that stretched after that. That was just the beginning of his story.   This post is part of a larger story, a memoir about family, resilience, and the kind of love that keeps showing up. Hydrocephalus was just the start. More to come in The Unbreakable Anchor.

AI has become one of the most debated topics in creative spaces, and for good reason. But somewhere between the extremes, there’s a quieter reality that doesn’t get talked about as often: how it’s actually being used by writers trying to tell meaningful stories. This isn’t a defense of AI, and it’s not a warning either. It’s simply an honest look at how I use it in my own work, the good, the bad, and the ugly. AI has existed for a long time now, longer than it’s been a household word. It started in the 50’s and 60’s with things like Eliza and even the infamous Clippy. When I think of AI, I think of cylons from Battlestar Galactica or Skynet from Terminator. But for most of us, AI didn’t feel real until it showed up in our homes, Siri and Alexa. That was my first real experience with it. I didn’t actually start discovering how useful it could be until about a year ago, when I used it to help my husband navigate a long job search in this new AI-driven world. Since then, I’ve learned a lot. I use it now for all kinds of things, wedding planning, recipes, troubleshooting my computer, planning camping trips, and yes, as an assistant with my writing. ChatGPT generated that took me 6 prompts to do. It is changing the world as we know it, and for writers it opens up avenues that didn’t exist before. There are people with stories to tell who did not have the means to put pen to paper. Think of someone battling rheumatoid arthritis, dyslexia, or any number of conditions that might make writing difficult. AI gives them a way to get those stories out. For me personally, it was a confidence boost. I’ve been writing my whole life, but I lacked the confidence to do anything with it. It wasn’t until I pasted a chapter into AI and got instant feedback that it could actually turn into something, that I started to believe in it. As a writer of historical fiction, it’s also been an invaluable research partner. This is also where I have to be careful. I’ve seen AI confidently present information that simply isn’t true, and worse, present it in a way that looks completely legitimate. In one case, it even generated what appeared to be a real newspaper article that didn’t exist. That’s a problem. When you’re working with real history, accuracy matters. AI can help point you in the right direction, but it can’t be trusted as a source on its own. Everything still has to be verified. Most of all, it’s a sounding board, helping me catch plot holes, tighten structure, and even notice things like overused adverbs or commas. As someone deep in a long editing process (I’m currently on edit four of The Unbreakable Anchor , with a 5th to go), that kind of feedback is genuinely useful, and is much needed for times when I suffer through writers block or my eyes just get tired and everything blurs together. It's not a magic button however. I spend a lot of time going back and forth with it, clarifying, correcting, rewording, and yes, occasionally yelling at it because it’s not listening or completely missing the point. It can be frustrating. It gets things wrong a lot of the time. It goes off track and it doesn't remember anything. It is programmed to be a "yes man" and in trying to reach that goal it will hallucinate details. But that’s part of the process too. Sometimes it even adds more work for me by getting facts wrong and I base chapters on these facts only to find out later on they are incorrect. The other way I use AI is in graphic design. I’ve been doing that as a hobby for years, long before AI tools existed. I’ve made my own graphics, logos, cards, newsletters for a long time, and I still do. AI has just added another layer. A lot of people don’t even realize they’re already using AI, it’s built into Photoshop, Canva, and most modern design tools. My book covers were made in Canva. My memoir has no AI involved at all, the cover is from a photo I took at Cape Disappointment but for my historical series, I did use AI to convert my photos into paintings. I took those paintings into Canva and then added all the other elements to them. Now I could've done all that in photoshop but AI is better at it and faster then I would be. As someone with time constraints it is a relief to be able to spend more time on my writing then fiddling around in photoshop. Top photo is my original photo, bottom is AI assisted. This is the cover images for The Sunstone Path. I’ve also used AI to help me visualize a world I can’t actually see. I uploaded real photos of my great grandmother, my grandmother, and myself and asked it to create an image of what my great grandmother might have looked like in 1905. When that image came back, and I could see all three of us in one face, it was emotional. It helped me connect with Regina in a way I hadn’t before and you can get it to do that exactly ONE time cause any other request turns into something like this. You can get a beautiful image back, and then realize it gave her three arms. At that point, you just have to laugh and start over. It's one of the many limitations there are with AI image generation. You can't just say "paint like Picasso" and a masterpiece will appear. AI thinking humans have 3 arms This is where things get complicated. There are people who will shut down anyone who uses AI at all, and on the other end, people trying to make a quick buck by letting AI write entire books. I’ve seen both sides. AI is scary for a lot of people, and not without reason. It is taking jobs. My husband has been out of work for almost two years, a veteran, with 30 years of executive experience. My son, with a master’s in IT, can’t get a single interview. The entry-level jobs that used to build careers for him are disappearing to AI. So when people raise those concerns, they’re not wrong. But at the same time, AI also creates opportunities. There’s also a financial reality that doesn’t get talked about enough. Breaking into writing can cost thousands of dollars, editing, covers, formatting, marketing. That is a big ask to invest that kind of money for something that may never make any of that back. For a lot of people, that’s simply out of reach. AI doesn’t replace those things, but it lowers the barrier enough for someone to start. And sometimes, that’s the difference between a story staying in someone’s head, or finally making it onto the page. All the talk about AI taking over the world is premature though. It’s not there yet, not even close. We are nowhere near a Battlestar Galactica scenario, and here’s why: AI has no soul. It cannot create with intention, and honestly, it’s not great at storytelling. I ran an experiment and had AI write a chapter about my husband’s accident overseas. It came back with something technically impressive… but completely over the top. I’m calling it: "AI GONE WILD" “The humidity—a damp, suffocating wool blanket soaked in the spicy tears of a thousand street vendors—clung to Alex like a desperate ex-girlfriend who refused to accept the breakup of the season. He gripped the handlebars of the scooter—his mechanical steed, a plastic-clad Pegasus of the Orient—as the engine let out a high-pitched whine that sounded like a vacuum cleaner trapped in a blender. Bangla Road was a kaleidoscope of chaos—a neon-drenched fever dream where the lights pulsed like the heartbeat of a frantic rabbit—and Alex was the carrot. "Stop!" a voice thundered—a sonic boom of authority that shattered the humid air like a brick through a stained-glass window—as the Thai police emerged from the shadows like jaguars in khaki. “ As you can see, AI can sound impressive, but it doesn’t know when to stop. It leans into patterns, overuses metaphors, and mistakes “more” for “better.” This is not useful unless you're planning on going on writing comedy tour. Over time, you start to recognize those patterns, and you realize just how far away it is from replacing real writers. That said, there are people who make it their mission to tear down anyone who even touches AI. But AI isn’t going anywhere. Just like computers didn’t, or cars, or cell phones. Progress happens whether we like it or not. I don’t use AI to write my stories. I use it to support the process of telling them. I write every word that makes it into my books. AI helps me refine it, shape it, fix mistakes, often over multiple drafts. AI is not the storyteller, I am. AI is just an tool. And like any tool, it can be used well or misused. The difference isn’t in the technology, it’s in the person using it. For me, it’s about preserving stories that might otherwise be lost, whether they’re family histories, lived experiences, or something entirely imagined. In my case, I write to leave a legacy for my family, the one thing that carries on after we are gone. As a storyteller, I use the tools available to me to help bring that vision to life, while staying transparent in the process. My hope is that comes through to my readers in The Unbreakable Anchor , in the Before the Anchor series, and the stories still yet to come.

A Character Profile · March 2026 Regina Lien, as she might have been in the early years on the prairie. When I first started writing The Unbreakable Anchor , it was meant simply as a gift for my children, something they could hold onto long after I am gone. What I didn’t expect was where it would lead me: deeper into my own history, into the lives of those who came before me, and into a question I hadn’t thought to ask, where does strength really come from? “She learned early that strength was not something you spoke of, it was something you carried.” Regina Lien is one of those answers. She is my great-grandmother, a woman I knew only in fragments growing up. My grandmother, Regina’s daughter, rarely spoke about her childhood. What was passed down instead was something quieter—strength, steady and unquestioned. Regina was born in Jämtland, Sweden, in 1883, near the Norwegian border. In 1902, she made the journey to America with her family, eventually settling on the South Dakota prairie. The South Dakota prairie is not a gentle place. The winters are punishing, the work is relentless, and the community of Norwegian immigrants around her is held together by faith, stubbornness, and the unspoken agreement that you show up for your neighbors the way you hope they will show up for you. Regina is woven into all of that. She belongs to this place, even as the place keeps costing her. Regina is not a woman who talks about her feelings easily. She is the person her family turns to. Not because she volunteered, exactly, but because she is simply the one who shows up, and people learn, over time, that she will always show up. A life shaped by the prairie; quiet, relentless, and enduring. That quiet reliability is both her greatest strength and, in many ways, her heaviest burden. But she is not without joy. There is warmth in her, and humor, dry and understated, the way Norwegian humor tends to be. She notices beauty: the particular light on the fields in late afternoon, the way a newborn smells, the sound of her native language spoken by someone who learned it the same way she did, at a mother's knee far from here. For a long time, Regina existed for me only as a name in a family tree and a few faded photographs. I knew the broad outline of her life. But the woman inside that outline, what she carried, what she feared, how she made sense of the things that happened to her, was lost. The Sunstone Path  is a work of historical fiction rooted in real lives, real places, and real events. It is my way of preserving and honoring a story that might otherwise have been lost. Regina’s path in this book is not an easy one. I will not say more than that. But I will say that by the time I finished writing the chapters I have written so far, I understood something about her, and about the women in my family, that I had not understood before. I hope, when you read her story, you come to love her too. — TJ Nilsdatter

Some places stay with you long after you leave them. Lake Wenatchee is one of those places for me. Nestled in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, it’s where towering pines meet clear blue water and the world seems to quiet down for a while. Over the years, trips to Lake Wenatchee became more than just camping weekends; they became chapters in our family story. The crystal blue waters of Lake Wenatchee. Lake Wenatchee sits on the east side of the Cascade Mountains, an hour and a half drive from my hometown of Snohomish, WA. Carved out of glaciers, the crystal blue, ice-cold lake stands in bright contrast to the tall pines of the Wenatchee National Forest. Campers and tourists alike flock to the state park to take advantage of the white sandy beach and cool waters to escape the heat of Eastern Washington. In the winter, the layer of snow insulates the noise and creates a pristine winter wonderland for recreation. For my family, Lake Wenatchee was a second home. Every summer we would pack up and head up here for weekends of camping, adventure, and just time spent together as a family. Weekends were spent hiking, horseback riding, and swimming, or taking a trip into Leavenworth, 30 minutes away. The vast majority of it was simply spent being a family: roasting marshmallows, playing cards, or sitting by the creek or the lake. Sitting by the lake was its own adventure. Perfect days spent by the water's edge. Swimming in the lake was not something for the faint of heart. The water is crystal clear; unlike some lakes on the west side of the mountains, there were no lily pads, no ducks, and no mosquitoes; well, I take that back. Mosquitoes could be a problem depending on the month. That meant the wind was welcome to keep them at bay, along with creating recreation of its own. When the wind picked up, Lake Wenatchee turned into a surfing haven. Well, what we called surfing. The waves were massive. If you could survive the cold water, there was nothing better than the thrill of the windy water. My cousins and I dove right in, of course, until our whole bodies turned blue. Right in the thick of it was always my grandma, surfin' like she was sixteen. The lake was the start of the Wenatchee River, yes, the same river they give white-water rafting tours on further down. It was along this river that one of the moments from my childhood unfolded. That memory eventually became the first chapter in my book, The Unbreakable Anchor . "I was seven or eight years old the first time the river tried to take us. Old enough to remember the details, but too young to understand how close we’d come to something worse." The bridge over the Wenatchee River. This is the bridge we anchored to that day, fighting the current of the Wenatchee. You can read the full story of what happened next in Chapter 1 of my memoir, The Unbreakable Anchor . Coming Soon.

People often ask writers why they write. Some will tell you it's about creativity. Others say it's about expression, or the simple joy of storytelling. For me, it's deeper than that. For me, it's an escape. When I started The Unbreakable Anchor , it was a distraction, something to occupy my mind so I didn't dwell on what my family was going through. My husband had lost his job, the third time corporate restructuring had upended the company he worked for. There we were in our early 50s, our children beginning to leave the nest. This was supposed to be our time. Life had other plans. Looking back now, the signs were everywhere. I ran a camping blog for years. I write letters to my boys. Even in the video games that used to fill my spare time, I was telling stories. Every Sim I created in the Sims games, had a backstory and a legacy. In other games I was always more drawn to the lore than the gameplay. I just never connected the dots. The Unbreakable Anchor  gave me a sense of purpose. It was a break from the stress of my husband's job search, from the quiet ache of an emptying nest, from the weight of caring for my senior, disabled pugs. I found myself at my desk for twelve hours at a stretch, completely absorbed. People who knew my story had long told me I should write a book about it, so I did. My messy, beautiful life, anchored by family, faith, heritage, and the resilience to weather whatever came next. When I finished, I felt an unexpected emptiness. So I kept writing. And in doing so, I discovered something I never could have imagined, that the stories I needed to tell didn't begin with me. I'm now working on Before the Anchor , a series of five books following the ancestors who came before me. In researching their lives I have found heroes, mentors, and people I wish with my whole heart I could have known. What I really discovered is that this is my calling. For the first time in my life I have a purpose that is entirely my own, and a deep understanding that what matters most when we leave this earth is what we leave behind. A legacy. That's what I set out to create: something that will last for generations. I hope to pass on the lessons I've learned, the strength I've found, and the stories that made me who I am. And in the end, I hope you'll find your own anchor, and know how to hold on to it. — TJ Nilsdatter