After a Life-changing Trip to Coastal Mississippi, I Underwent a Major Health Scare. Here's How the Power of Travel Helped Me Heal.

It was a bright November morning, and I had just flown back from the endless coastline of the Mississippi Gulf, my skin still dewy from the humidity. I’d sat down at my neighborhood café in Charleston to write this very essay, and borrowed a charger from a man drinking an Americano. In return, I’d loaned him my pen. It was, you might say, just like any other day.

But minutes later, life as I knew it was over. Something clapped in my head and before I could place my hand where I felt the thunder, the floor and walls were above me. Everything was in orbit: the charger, the pen, my coffee and laptop. The sun burned my eyes and suddenly even the blue light of my computer was unbearably bright. I tried to turn away but my neck was locked in place. I closed my eyes. Feeling around for my phone, muscle memory allowed me to text my husband an SOS. Four hours later, at the ER, he was told I’d had a brain aneurysm. Hospital staff told him to gather himself, his things, and our daughter and follow the ambulance to a larger hospital’s neurological ICU.

Today, one year later, I’ve fought to regain my strength, my ability to write, and my sense of self. I live with short-term memory loss. I sit here now, reading the words I’d started to draft on that life-changing day, and realize many sentences fail to make sense, because they were being written as my brain was being flooded with blood.

But this is what coastal Mississippi taught me: that to be creative is to hope. Those four days spent traveling the 30-odd sparkling miles from Bay St. Louis to Biloxi and Ocean Springs and then back are my last long-term memory. The experience would guide me in recovery. Here are the things I’ll never forget.

When Michelle, my Lyft driver, pulled up outside Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, she greeted me like I was an old friend, and insisted on loading my suitcases into her trunk. “Let me help you,” she said, then joked, “What you got in here? A million dollars for the casino?”

“If I win, I’ll share with you,” I told her.

“No you won’t,” she laughed, like we’d grown up together.

We rode the 40 minutes to my first stop in Bay St. Louis quipping back and forth. Michelle had encyclopedic knowledge of what had been made and remade on the coast after each of the hurricanes — most notably Katrina, which decimated this part of Mississippi in 2005. She showed me new boardwalks that connect glittering resorts and mom-and-pop shops and narrated the sustained cycles of destruction and rebuilding.

Everywhere I turned, I saw creation, re-creation, and a heart-first, full-throttle philosophy of getting on with life. I started to believe that, try as others might to reduce coastal Mississippi to a narrative of survivorship, this place was defined not by the calamities it had overcome, but by the openness it maintains, in spite of the storms.

Michelle dropped me off at the Pearl Hotel, a boutique property near the marina in Bay St. Louis. I had a late lunch and wandered around town in search of a souvenir shop. Many stores were in the process of closing when I arrived, the owners sweeping or rolling up rugs. And yet — there was that openness again — most shopkeepers said “Come in, it’s alright.”

Morning came, and with it the sounds of seabirds cawing and boats slicing through the water outside. From my balcony, I watched nautical flags and banners for charity events flapping in the breeze. It was November, and most homes hadn’t yet taken down their Halloween decorations. Celebrations are big in Bay St. Louis, I learned once I sat down with Ashley Planchard, a manager of the Mockingbird Café, for a chat over a house-recipe chai and a cinnamon loaf. The café had become the town’s public living room after Katrina, Planchard told me. She has an outrageous love for her hometown and its festivals — she attends the town’s Dolly Should Festival (a tribute to Ms. Parton) and Frida (Kahlo) Fest, which the café also sponsors, and is an annual participant in the “Witches Walk” on the Saturday before Halloween. I regretted having come a week too late, without my tween daughter — my own mini-witch. But Planchard assured me next year’s walk would be here before we knew it.

While she continued to tell me about the town’s rituals, I multitasked (one of the last times my brain would be capable of this feat), jotting notes while scheming about a possible return with my girl. And that’s when I knew that I’d made a connection with the place, which is to say, its people. Isn’t that what a worthwhile destination is? A place you’d like to come back to with a beloved someone from your life — someone whose worldview you’re helping to shape?

The worldview in Bay St. Louis was clear: destruction is sure to visit us in this life, no matter who we are or where we live, and the only way to weather it is to have an open hand and borrow from our neighbors. To remake life many times over, if we must.

Next, I ventured east to the city of Biloxi to see not what I could find, but what could find me. When I arrived for lunch at McElroy’s Harbor House, a seafood joint right on the Gulf, my gaze alighted on a fleet of nearby shrimp boats.

I was born in the Philippines and moved to South Carolina in my early twenties, and when I set out on this trip, I’d said to the wind that I wanted to meet fellow Asian Southerners. And Mississippi once again rewarded me. I wandered over to the docks, and there I met Kim Pham, a shrimper from Vietnam, who was pleased to learn where I’d grown up. Pham had been a refugee in the Philippines in the late 1970s, after the war in her own country.

The worldview in Bay St. Louis was clear: destruction is sure to visit us in this life, no matter who we are or where we live, and the only way to weather it is to have an open hand and borrow from our neighbors.

We talked about her journey from Vietnam to the Philippines to Atlanta, and finally to Mississippi. She’d worked at a factory in Biloxi until it shifted operations to Mexico, then turned to shrimping. She told me that the past couple of years had been the hardest in her two decades in the industry. Now, she said, her kids were grown and she planned to follow them wherever they go, learn a new skill in yet another new trade if she had to, reinvent herself again. As I was stepping off the boat, Pham practiced the Francophone syllables of my name and gave me a thumbs-up.

I’ll never forget that gesture. In fact, I repeated it when I woke up after the surgery that saved my life, and my husband said the one word I needed to hear: Cinelle.

Pham wasn’t the only inspiring woman I met in Biloxi. I also took time to visit the ceramics center at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, where I talked to a podcast producer and potter named Georgia Sparling. During the pandemic she, like many people, boomeranged back home to Mississippi, and threw herself into a life full of wholesome activities like kayaking and crafting.

I mentioned that I wanted to see the Pascagoula River. Sparling was at the ready, calling up her kayaking group, the Pascagoula Paradise Paddlers. By that evening, she’d arranged for me to have an afternoon on the river with two of her friends, brothers Eric and Brian Richards.

With them that next day, I learned to say bah’ou instead of bye-you, and that wood treated with brackish water will withstand a storm better than anything you can buy at Home Depot. Cans of beer were popped open and raised, and while one of the brothers suggested entertaining us with his bluegrass-y tenor, we all decided the sounds of pluff mud and Spanish moss swaying in the breeze was music enough.

Because of my injury, I’ve lost plenty: sensory tolerance, physical stamina, mental focus. But I’ll always have those episodic memories from the trip that turn off my brain’s “fear mode” almost automatically. My trip to Mississippi, with all its serendipitous interactions, pulled me away from my domestic and journalistic routine, focusing my cognitive resources on all things peripheral yet essential: my Lyft driver’s jokes; the diva energy of Dolly and Frida; the kindness of strangers like Sparling and Pham. I came to feel that these happenstance social connections are what activate the reward circuits of our brains — especially when we’re at our weakest.

My therapist puts it this way: you become what you have, not what you’ve lost.

After my aneurysm, the doctors and nurses asked me the same question several times a day for weeks: “Can you tell us who you are?” My answer changed every time, save for this one: “I’m a writer who makes friends on travels.” After brain surgery, whatever you’re able to recall becomes your new self. I was relearning. My therapist puts it this way: you become what you have, not what you’ve lost.

Ocean springs was my last stop on the trip. I stayed at Gulf Hills Hotel & Resort, a 57-room waterfront property that was originally built in 1927 and was being restored to its former glory, having been partially destroyed by Hurricane Camille in 1969 (and, after being rebuilt, destroyed a second time by a fire in 1974). It fell into neglect over the following decades, but reopened in the fall of 2023, a few weeks before my visit.

The new owners worked meticulously to revive a property where Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and Jayne Mansfield once swam, waterskied, and sundowned with cocktails in hand. As part of the restoration process, the team reached out to former guests and asked what they remembered. Most replied not with architectural details, but interactions. There was a teen, now a retiree, who’d hung out with a young Elvis, who loved staying in Villa 9 in the early 1950s. It’s stories like this that Condrey and the team used to reclaim what the property had.

At the nearby Bozo’s Too, I met up with my dear friend Rénard’s family for lunch. Although he now lives in Charleston, Rénard had arranged for me to meet up with his mother, sister, and niece, who live nearby. The three of us shared a plate of hush puppies and chatted about Rénard’s daughter, who is best friends with mine. We swiped through photos of this generation of Southern girls of color, who are so very much products of the coasts that raised them, as well as their mothers’ immigrant heritage.

Just as I had at the start of my trip, I was again plotting a return with my girl to the pristine white sands and full embrace of the Mississippi Gulf. Today, that desire resurfaces. But travel is harder now. There are assistive gadgets to bring, logistical considerations to be made. My doctors tell me to set small goals, and to rely on other people for help when I need it. By the time this story goes to print, I’ll have outstretched an open hand many times, and received so much care in return.

I’ll have, for inspiration, looked up famous brain aneurysm survivors and see what they’ve achieved. Sharon Stone graced the Saturday Night Live stage again. Emilia Clarke went full Targaryen in the series finale of Game of Thrones. Joni Mitchell picked up her guitar and kept making music.

As for me, I’m here, remembering what coastal Mississippians taught me. I’m here, about to add a period to a sentence. I’m here, writing again.

Where to Stay

Gulf Hills Hotel & Resort

Beloved by celebrities in the 1950s, this 57-room waterfront property in Ocean Springs was recently restored and reopened.

Pearl Hotel

This charming 59-key inn in Bay St. Louis has a sophisticated seafood restaurant, Thorny Oyster.

Where to Eat

Bozo’s Too

Perfect for a lunch stop in Pascagoula, this no-frills spot serves po’boys, steamers, and a loaded Bloody Mary with an oyster, shrimp, and crawfish garnish.

McElroy’s Harbor House

A Gulf-side Biloxi restaurant with crab cakes, gumbo, fried clams, and more.

Mockingbird Cafe

This Bay St. Louis institution serves Southern brunch classics like biscuits and gravy, plus sandwiches, salads, and pastries.

What to Do

Gulf Islands National Seashore

Stretching 160 miles between Florida and Mississippi, this national park site protects barrier islands, marshes, and wildlife.

Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art

Frank Gehry designed this institution, which focuses on Mississippi ceramist George Ohr and other regional potters.

Pascagoula River Audubon Center

Get out on the water with a kayak or paddleboat rental to look for bird species like magnolia warblers and brown pelicans at this center.

A version of this story first appeared in the February 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "Let It Wash Over You."

Read the original article on Travel & Leisure