Living on Borrowed Time

What Cystic Fibrosis Taught Me About Uncertainty, Mindfulness, and Moving Forward

By Erin Mark, Keynote Speaker
Teaching Realistic Resilience | How to Navigate Uncertainty

I was born with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening illness that, in 1984, came with a life expectancy of just 18 years.

One of my earliest memories is overhearing my dad say that number out loud on the phone.

I was five years old.

He didn’t know I could hear him. But I did. And something in me understood, even then, that time might look different for me.

So I made a decision early. I was going to live with urgency, intention, and as much meaning and joy as I could fit into the time I had. I wanted to leave the world better than I found it.

That mindset shaped everything.

It carried me all the way to 35, when I entered end-stage disease.

And in a strange way, there was clarity in that.

I wasn’t discovering what mattered, I already knew. And I was deeply grateful for that perspective, even in the middle of something so hard.

I remember feeling grief and gratitude at once. Grief for what I thought might be the end, and gratitude for all the years I had already been given.

But at the last moment, a breakthrough drug was approved and it saved my life.

Instead of an ending, I was given more time, a new beginning.

What followed was unexpected, not just relief, but confusion.

I had spent my entire life preparing for one version of the future, and suddenly I was handed another.

The uncertainty wasn’t new. But the question was.

Now what?

For many people, this shows up in different ways. A role changes, a goal falls apart, a season of life ends unexpectedly, and you’re left trying to understand who you are without it.

In psychology, this is called identity foreclosure, when we attach too tightly to a version of ourselves and struggle to see what comes next.

That was the real shift for me. I had to go from preparing to die to learning how to live again.

And what I realized is this: everything I needed for this next phase of my life, to live, to really live, I had already learned while I was dying.

Because struggle has a way of teaching you things comfort never does.

It forces awareness, sharpens perspective, and teaches you how to keep moving when nothing feels certain.

Despite all the uncertainty I had lived with, life kept moving. And I had learned how to move with it.

It wasn’t about pushing harder. It was about staying calm.

Not passive calm, but grounded calm that allows you to respond instead of react.

That’s where CALM became my framework:

C ontrol what you can.
A dapt
L ean on others.
M ove forward 

It sounds simple, but it changes everything about how you move through uncertainty.

Because most of us try to think our way out of the unknown. We wait for clarity before we act.

But clarity doesn’t come before action. It comes from it.

And when you shift from needing certainty to taking the next step, something starts to open up.

You stop feeling stuck, and you start moving.

Today, I’m on a mission to bring this message to audiences across industries navigating rapid change, uncertainty, and pressure.

In organizations, that uncertainty has a cost. It shows up as burnout, disengagement, and teams that are physically present but emotionally checked out.

That moment, when people stop feeling grounded, is where everything I’ve lived becomes relevant in a very real way.

Because uncertainty is not just personal. It is collective.

And without tools to move through it, people don’t just struggle. They disconnect.

Today, I live with what I call “bonus years.” My lung function is still limited, and uncertainty is still part of my life. That hasn’t changed, and neither has my mission to leave this world better than I found it. I now do that through keynote speaking.

Cystic fibrosis has given me a perspective most people don’t arrive at until much later in life, if at all.

Dying taught me how to live, and it taught me that ordinary days can still become extraordinary when you are fully present.

It showed me that you don’t need certainty to make your life count, only the willingness to keep showing up for it.