While families rang in 2026 with champagne and fireworks, retired LPGA pro Jane Park spent New Year’s Eve in the ICU watching her five-year-old daughter, Grace, fight for breath. Two days later, on January 2nd, she broke the silence with a series of Instagram updates that revealed just how dire the situation had become.

Grace was wearing a BiPAP mask to force air into her struggling lungs to keep them open. Park shared that the previous night, Grace had vomited while wearing the mask, triggering concerns about fluid entering her lungs. A chest X-ray confirmed the damage.

“More crap in her lungs than the last X-ray,” she wrote on Instagram.

Grace was still vomiting. She hadn’t received formula in nine days. Her small body was burning through reserves it didn’t have. By the next update, the medical team had made a critical decision. They inserted a PICC line—a catheter threaded through Grace’s arm into a large vein near her heart. It would deliver IV fluids, medications, and calorie-dense nutrition directly into her bloodstream, bypassing her stomach entirely. The goal was to help her body fight back while giving her GI tract time to recover. But Park’s relief was tempered by reality.

“A PICC line infection could mean the worst of the worst,” she wrote, “but I’m trying not to think about that.”

The reality struck in, too, as she noted that she is going to be in the hospital for a long time. Her coping mantra through this difficult time was to “think happy thoughts.” However critical it might be, this pneumonia crisis didn’t come out of nowhere, given Grace’s health history.

In 2021, Grace was diagnosed with epilepsy that couldn’t be treated after having significant seizures and brain swelling. She was given a lot of meds, but they haven’t worked very well. And every seizure hurts. Every time she goes to the hospital, she gets weaker. By the end of 2024, her doctors were still looking for a treatment that would help her stay stable.

Now, that underlying condition has made everything worse.

Pneumonia is extremely harmful for Grace since her immune system is weak, and she also can’t breathe properly. The 39-year-old said the infection isn’t spreading quickly, but it’s also not going away. She stated that the hospital staff was working quickly and that she hoped the IV fluids would help Grace regain her strength. But there was no way to know for sure. There was just hope tempered by exhaustion.

Amid all this, Park’s New Year’s Eve post had an unexpected sense of thankfulness. She said that spending NYE  in the ICU amid the chaos was “the thing I feel most thankful for.”

In between all this back-and-forth, Jane Park found herself one hobby that helped her through difficult times.

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Art became former LPGA pro Jane Park’s anchor

Park found an unexpected escape from the turmoil of hospital rooms and treatment plans: painting. She learned art by watching YouTube videos. What began as a way to pass the time turned into a lifeline. In an article for Golf Digest, she wrote about how making art helped her cope with the pain of watching her daughter undergo numerous medical procedures. The bright, abstract drawings let her express feelings she couldn’t say out loud.

She wasn’t aiming to develop this new interest. All she was trying to do was stay alive. The art let her escape being a scared mother, even if only for an hour. It gave her something to hold on to while everything else was going wrong. Park has shared some of her work with the public, and the response astonished her.

In her final January 2nd update, Park acknowledged the whirlwind. “I hope I explained things well,” she wrote. “This is all happening so fast, but also so slow if that makes sense?” She promised to keep followers updated as best she could, then added a vulnerable plea: “I am also delirious. Thank you for your patience and love.”

No empty words. No false hope. A mother asking for tenderness while her daughter struggles.