Mimi Hayes

I do a lot of things in my career. I'm a stand-up comedian, and I perform on stages, do one-woman shows, and appear at festivals around the world. I'm also a brain injury survivor - I had my first brain bleed in 2014 when I was becoming a high school history teacher, and it was really out of the blue. I ended up having to stop teaching for a while and have brain surgery, and I had to relearn how to walk. That experience oddly enough led to my comedy career because I was kind of making dark jokes out of it. Then I had another brain injury in 2023, the same thing in the same place, so it's a reoccurring situation. I still deal with having a disability while being a very high-functioning person who has a lot of goals. I do keynote speaking at conferences, corporate events, and stuff like that, speaking to survivors, caregivers, and medical professionals. I also have a writing business where I'm a writing coach, and I coach future authors and help them put together their manuscripts for publication. I'm a published author - my book 'I'll Be Okay, It's Just a Hole in My Head' came out in 2018 and details the first brain bleed, the diagnosis, trying to be a teacher, relationships, and stuff like that. I just finished my second book and I'm looking for an agent to get a bigger publishing deal this time. I started by going to open mics in Denver, which is where I'm from, and I would get on stage and talk about hospitals, my symptoms, and trying to be a regular person again in a very fast-paced world. I was back into teaching and taught for about 2 years before I really just burned out. At that point, my comedy was getting better and my book was becoming a real thing, so I moved to New York City in 2017 to pursue stand-up and get my book published. I was doing clubs and was kind of getting to the top of my game around COVID, which led me back to Colorado for a few years. My comedy has evolved - I have these one-woman shows now that are not quite stand-up, they're more storytelling, character work, and dark humor. I got to open for Jim Gaffigan once in New York City, and he was super sweet. His wife had had brain cancer, so when I met him I was able to give him my book and say this is for you and your wife, I heard you were her caregiver. That was a big moment. I did a TED talk in 2021, which has gotten me some gigs just based off of having that on my resume. I've always been a performer, always been on stage - I'm a middle child, I like attention, I was a theater kid. Teaching prepared me for comedy because it was a very unpredictable environment with lots of hecklers - teenagers are rough to work with sometimes - and I think that really helped me be a better comedian, preparing for the unpredictability of a comedy club or someone interrupting your set. I've been on stage for most of my life, and I'm always just trying to be on stage as often as I can and reach as many people as I can, because that's what teachers do - they reach people, talk to people, help people make choices and understand their lives better. I still feel like a teacher in a lot of ways, but I'm just doing it in a different way now.