The health insurance provider that I’ve been using for the past year and a half is becoming increasingly impossible to deal with. For the second time I’ve been denied an appointment with my doctor because the office was incorrectly told by my insurer that my coverage had been canceled. Not what you want to deal with in an emergency.

Since I have asthma, and I’m income-limited, I have relatively few options for affordable insurance that won’t deny me for pre-existing condition. And since I consider health insurance a necessity for myself, it’s moments like these that I see my bigger dream of this life on the water as very precarious and vulnerable.

When things like this happen, it’s easy to feel prematurely defeated.  But then I think about the most important thing I learned in my Personal Survival course this week. That is the power of the will to survive. Will to survive doesn’t just exist when you’re floating around in a life-raft waiting to be saved. It’s a day to day way of being. It’s staring adversity in the face, whatever it is, and saying “I will not let this stop me without a fight.”