Stricken With A Debilitating Tick-Borne Illness, The First Female Thunderbird Pilot Shares Her Resilience Secret

By any measure, Colonel Nicole Malachowski (USAF, Ret.) has had a remarkable career distinguished by enviable achievements including 21 years of experience as an officer, leader and fighter pilot in the United States Air Force (USAF), commanding a fighter squadron, flying as a USAF Thunderbird pilot, serving as a White House Fellow and an advisor to the First Lady of the United States (Michelle Obama), and being inducted into the 2019 National Women’s Hall of Fame. But her meteoric rise came to an abrupt, unexpected halt when a devastating tick-borne illness left her struggling to speak or walk for almost nine months in 2016. After years spent searching for an accurate diagnosis, she found herself struggling internally—forced to reinvent herself to accommodate her “new normal,” but how? “Overnight, I lost my identity as an Air Force officer, my career as a fighter pilot and the means of providing for my family,” recalls Malachowski. For a career fighter pilot now medically retired, the thought of crafting a new professional identity was a daunting one to say the least.

Change is hard for most of us, but change forced upon us by unexpected illness is particularly debilitating. If the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it may be that resilience is the ultimate key to success. In Nicole’s case, she certainly allowed herself time for a good old-fashioned pity party asking herself, “Who am I if I’m not flying and can’t provide for my family?” Then, the answer suddenly came to her…yield to overcome.

Applying her fighter pilot mental framework, she reflected on an aerodynamic principle where she sometimes needed to loosen her grip or “fly loose” in order to embrace change, and fly through turbulence with ease.  She began to apply this yield to overcome principle to her new, unsettling and complex medical predicament. Instead of wallowing in what she could no longer do, she started asking herself some hard but transformative questions:

“What is it that I can do now?”

“What tools and resources do I have at my disposal today?”

“What do I need to be doing right now that will give my life purpose and meaning?

This process of yielding helped illuminate a new path forward marked by distinct advantages. She recalls the profound satisfaction she felt when she realized (before her medical retirement as a military officer) that as a squadron leader who wasn’t logging hours flying, she could instead pour herself into the coaching and professional development of her squadron team. This unique situation didn’t just allow her to double down on the role of leader as coach that she most cherished, but also provided a unique opportunity for her squadron team members to get a rare level of personalized attention to support their professional development. Once medically retired, she decided to reinvent herself professionally as a professional speaker which not only offered her an opportunity to leverage her unique personal and professional skills and experiences but also provide the flexibility she would need to accommodate the realities of day to day life with her illness.

“Yielding is not about quitting, weakly surrendering, or giving up,” explains Malachowski. “In my mind, yielding is all about accepting the present moment.” This acceptance of her new limitations helped her pivot into an exciting new career as a keynote speaker sharing her life lessons and advice on not just how to be resilient but how to be resurgent. In fact, she now views her military career as a bit of a stepping stone for the work she does now. “I used to think my destiny/legacy lay in having been an officer and fighter pilot,” she explains. “The severe illness taught me that being a fighter pilot gave me the skills and traits I needed to survive my illness and turn to my new mission of advocating for others.” Ultimately, she feels a tremendous sense of solace and satisfaction in the fact that she’s able to impact more people on a grander scale now than she would have if she’d stayed in the Air Force. In her words, “It all worked out.”

As one who continues to struggle with the debilitating effects of her illness, Malachowski recognizes the importance of allowing time to grieve. She explains, “It’s ok to reminisce about the past, but not ruminate about it.” Malachowski reminds her audiences, “The runway behind you is always unusable; all we ever have is the runway in front of us.” She encourages those facing hardship—personal or professional—to dig deep and take decisive action. “Only you have the power to reinvent yourself and write your own story,” she insists. “When the unexpected happens, are you asking yourself the right questions?”

Today, Nicole still experiences persistent symptoms from her late-stage tick-borne illness. She struggles with chronic fatigue, persistent pain, and executive cognitive dysfunction. She’s not yet regained the ability to read and write with ease or exercise to past standards, but she’s redesigned a life that accommodates her physical limitations and is both truly rewarding and brimming with enviable achievements.