For Melissa Strong, dedication has never been abstract. It has been physical, personal, and relentless—etched into the long days of restaurant work, the discipline of climbing, and the hard-won recovery that followed a life-altering electrical accident in 2017 that charred her hands and took parts of several fingers.
That same year—just months after the accident—Strong, an elite rock climber, opened Bird & Jim, an upscale restaurant with a scratch kitchen that focuses on locally sourced, seasonal Front Range and high-country cuisine. The name is an homage to Isabella Bird, who climbed Longs Peak on Sept. 30, 1873, with her guide “Rocky Mountain Jim” Nugent. The setting is a blend of Colorado casual and mountain chic.
The restaurant debuted in October, on her birthday, after months of waiting for construction to wrap. “It was the same year as the accident,” she recalled. “April was the accident. October we opened.”
Nearly a decade later, Strong is releasing a memoir that traces that improbable arc—one that includes trauma and recovery, entrepreneurship and burnout, creativity, and reinvention.
“Climbing Through: A Courageous Story of Grit, Healing, and Second Chances” will be released today, Tuesday, March 3, with a casual, community-focused signing at Bird & Jim’s at 5 p.m. She will also have a book signing at the Tattered Cover on Colfax Avenue in Denver on March 5 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Douglas County Libraries on April 11 at 6 p.m., at the Estes Valley Library on April 24 at 6 p.m., and at the Boulder Bookstore on June 10 at 6
A labor of love—and survival
Strong is candid about the realities of the restaurant business. “It’s a true labor of love,” she said. “The profit margin in restaurants is zero to nine percent. You don’t do this because it’s easy—you do it because you believe in people and in your community.”
That belief carried her through the pandemic, wildfire evacuations, and staffing challenges that stretched well into 2021. Operating not just Bird and Jim’s but The Bird’s Nest, which opened in 2022—a café, bakery, pizza, sandwich shop, and event space that offers scenic views of Long’s Peak—required managing a huge team of employees, as many as 60 to 90 people at just the restaurant. Strong worked days on the business side, then rushed in at night to be on the floor.
The cost was steep. By 2022, the stress had triggered debilitating migraines. “I couldn’t even drive myself in a car,” she said. Hiring a general manager became not just a business decision, but a health imperative.
In the memoir, Strong describes this reckoning as a meeting between two selves—the “new Melissa,” forged by crisis and sheer willpower, and the “old Melissa,” who had to step back in and insist on balance. “I pushed so hard that I wasn’t healthy anymore,” she said. “The old version of me had to come back and save the new one.”
Civility, criticism, and keyboard warriors
Strong doesn’t shy away from the emotional toll of public scrutiny. As a restaurateur, she has faced the sting of anonymous online criticism—what she calls the entitlement culture of one-star reviews.
“People feel like they can hide behind a keyboard and just rip you apart,” she said. “You don’t go to the post office unhappy and demand free stamps—but somehow in restaurants, people feel entitled to that.”
Her memoir engages these moments not as complaints, but as part of a larger reflection on civility, resilience, and what it means to keep showing up for a community despite the noise.
Writing as recovery
Long before restaurants, Strong trained as a writer. She studied literature at Loyola University New Orleans and has published articles in climbing magazines while building a parallel life as an athlete and server.
While preparing to open Bird & Jim, Strong was restoring chairs and tables for the restaurant. She decided to use the Lichtenberg wood burning technique to create branching, tree-like patterns on the legs. The process involves high-voltage electricity, an electrolyte solution made with baking soda, and a microwave transformer.
While Strong knew what she was doing, she missed a critical safety step and received what might have been a life-ending electrical shock – about 20 seconds and 2,000 volts – if not for an electrical breaker tripping.
The accident cost her the fingers on her left hand and her thumbs. She endured burn treatment care, amputations, and “extensive and excruciating” reconstructive surgeries.
After her accident, Adidas sent her to the 2019 John Long Writing Symposium, a five-day classroom-style writing camp in Carbondale, Colorado, organized by the editors of Rock and Ice magazine. Strong credits the symposium as a turning point that helped her shape the larger narrative of her book.
“I told them I was writing a book,” she laughed. “They said, ‘That’s great—but you’re here to write an article.’ And they reminded me that ‘Into Thin Air’ started as an article.”
Strong wrote “Life and Limb,” originally published in the November 2019 issue of Rock and Ice. That article provided a template for “Climbing Through.”
The memoir draws deeply from earlier blog posts Strong wrote about climbing, food, and deeply personal chapters of her life, including marriage, divorce, love, marriage, infertility, IVF, loss, and grief.
Revisiting those writings allowed her to recover emotional details that time might have erased. “I could feel the heart of the person who wrote it then,” she said.
Strong, vulnerable, exciting
Today, Strong relies on a trusted team while focusing on the long view of sustainability—both personal and professional. “No one understands how hard small business is until they’ve done it,” she said.“
The memoir she hopes will resonate not just with climbers or entrepreneurs, but with anyone navigating loss, reinvention, and the courage to keep going, “I lay my pain, heartache, tragedy, and triumph at your feet, hoping you will also find the strength you need in dark hours to pull yourself out of despair, shining a light on your path.”
As she prepared to open the first box of finished books—seeing her story in print for the first time—Strong described the moment simply: equal parts vulnerable and exciting.
“You put your whole life onto paper,” she said, “and then you hand it over.”
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