The Crash in the Notch That Gave Me My Life—and My Joy—Back

In the center of Littleton, Eleanor H. Porter’s Pollyanna smiles eternally from her place on Main Street. People stop to take pictures, some with genuine delight, others with a hint of irony. The name “Pollyanna” has become shorthand for someone with a blind, excessive optimism, a person who looks at the world through rose-colored glasses and refuses to see what is real. But that version of her story has never sat quite right with me, because it strips away the courage at the heart of who she was.

The real Pollyanna Whittier did not live in a storybook world without shadows. She was an orphan sent to live with an aunt who didn’t want her. She learned what she called “The Glad Game” from her father after a crushing disappointment one Christmas. She had hoped for a doll from the missionary barrel, but instead she found a pair of crutches. Her father told her to be glad she didn’t need them. That single reframing, born in a moment of loss, became a practice that carried her through years of hardship. She would play the game when sent to a cold attic room by finding joy in the view from its high window, or when punished with bread and milk by relishing the company of the servant who joined her. Even when a car accident left her unable to walk, she eventually found her way back to the game by being glad that she had ever been able to walk at all.

Pollyanna’s gladness was not a denial of pain or an ignorance of reality. It was a conscious decision to meet the world as it is and still search for what is good. That decision is not easy. It is not passive. And it is not without cost.

I think about this often in my work as host of North of Normal, my weekly community radio show here in the North Country. The whole purpose of the show is to create space for the people who live here to tell their stories—their joys, their struggles, and the ways they are making life better for themselves and their neighbors. Every week, I sit across from someone whose lived experience reminds me that choosing joy is often an act of defiance against the forces that would rather see us worn down.

I understand that choice in my own bones.

Six years ago, in the in-between season when winter clings to the mountains and spring can barely push through, I found myself driving toward Franconia Notch in the middle of a sudden snowstorm. The roads, which had been dry only hours before, were glazed with a thin sheet of ice. The wind funneled through the mountains and shook my car. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles were white, and I could hear my own heart pounding even in the silence.

I had no business being on the road that day. I was new to the area, but I had grown up in New England and knew the signs of weather that demanded respect. Still, there I was, heading toward someone who had spent years draining my life of joy and peace. In those years, my life was not fully my own. Abuse doesn’t just bruise your body or your spirit—it rewires your sense of choice. Even when I knew he was harming me, I still felt pulled to answer his calls, to show up when he demanded. Heading toward him that day wasn’t about wanting to—it was about the reflex of survival I had learned in the shadow of his control.

The voice in my head was screaming at me to turn around, to leave him behind, to run. But there was another voice, quieter but just as persistent, telling me to keep going. Then my phone rang. The number was restricted.

“This is Officer Newbury with the New Hampshire State Police,” the voice said when I answered. “We have Mr. Drago in custody for violating the restraining order you put in place. Do not come pick him up. You need to turn your car around right now and go home.”

I pulled off at the next exit, still in shock. My first thought was that I must be in trouble, so deeply had fear and shame taken root in me. My second thought landed with the force of a door finally breaking open: I might be free.

And I was.

Only later did I learn what had happened. That afternoon, he had been driving north through Franconia Notch when a thin glaze of ice on the road sent his car out of control. He flipped the vehicle and crashed. The state police responded to the scene, and while they were there, he called me to come pick him up. An officer overheard him say my name. When they ran his record, they discovered the restraining order I had filed with the state of Maine six months earlier—a desperate but failed attempt to end the cycle of abuse and stalking. That was when they placed him under arrest.

That moment was the beginning of a new life, one I was determined to treat with care. I chose to stay in New Hampshire, just fifteen minutes from the Notch. Over the past six years I have spent countless hours hiking, climbing, biking, snowshoeing, and fishing in these mountains. I have connected with people whose stories have deepened my own understanding of resilience and joy. The Franconia Notch has been both a physical and symbolic place of freedom for me, a reminder that life can turn in an instant, and that what we do with those turns matters.

This week, during North of Normal, I spoke with Janie Arquitt of Pantry Posies, a small flower farm in Easton that grows blooms for both paying customers and for free distribution at food pantries, community dinners, and senior centers. Listening to Janie talk about her work, I could hear her version of the Glad Game. She knows storms can flatten her flowers. Drought, pests, or even a wandering moose can undo months of tending. And yet she plants again. Not because she believes those things will never happen, but because she believes that beauty and connection are worth the risk.

Janie spoke about flowers as a bridge—how they open the door to difficult conversations, how they remind people that something good still exists in the midst of hardship. Her joy is not naïve. It is deliberate. It is chosen. And it is contagious.

That conversation reminded me of my own responsibility, the one I felt as soon as I hung up the phone in that snowstorm. Choosing joy is not just an act of freedom, it is also an act of resistance. It pushes back against fear, cynicism, and despair. It does not erase the hard parts of life, but it makes space for something else to grow alongside them.

Littleton calls itself The Glad Town because of Pollyanna, but the gladness here is not automatic. It is cultivated—in gardens, in conversations, in the ways we show up for one another. My freedom began with a phone call on an icy day, but it has been sustained by thousands of small decisions to keep choosing joy and building a life that makes space for it.

That is the real Glad Game. And it is one I intend to keep playing.

I wonder what it might look like for you. Maybe it is planting a seed you are not certain will grow. Maybe it is pausing long enough to notice something beautiful you usually rush past. Maybe it is finding something to be glad about in a moment that feels impossible.

Whatever it is, I hope you find it. And when you do, I hope you protect it. Because in a world that offers plenty of reasons to give up, choosing joy—your joy—might just be the most radical thing you can do.

-Amanda