E402 — Crash Landing: A Mother's Journey Into Grace

Jody Gelb had a calm, healthy pregnancy — and then, in the span of a single hospital stay, everything changed. A rushed delivery. Forceps. A baby who wasn't breathing. An emergency trip to the NICU before Jody had even held her daughter. Days later, a nurse handed her the poem "Welcome to Holland," a metaphor often given to parents of children with special needs. You planned a trip to Italy, you landed somewhere unexpected, and it turns out to be lovely too. Jody appreciated it. But it didn't fit. Holland was calm. This was a crash landing. In this conversation, Jody — a stage actor with 40 years on New York and San Francisco stages, and author of the memoir She May Be Lying Down, But She May Be Very Happy — tells her daughter Louisa's story on her behalf. She and Cody trace the slow climb from that terrifying first year — hoping for a limp, then a wheelchair, then simply that her daughter would know she was loved — through years of real joy, a tracheostomy, and a worldwide community of families who taught her how to keep her heart open. It's a story about how much a person can survive, and how grace tends to show up exactly when it's needed — in a husband's words, a stranger's kindness, a stage manager who drove a grieving mother home.