Be-YOU-tiful Adaptive Warrior

Knowing Your Identity and Accepting It   We, as a society, place a lot of value on how we look. A first impression, sort of thing. A “judge a book by the cover” value. But we all know that the physical makeup of a person doesn’t give us the whole picture. As women, we are bombarded by makeup ads, weightless products, fashion trends for petite sizes and magazine covers showin...

Faith and Connections   Just the other day I met a lovely woman in a wheelchair. My first instinct was to smile  but then I looked down, only to see that this kindly older lady was missing part of her limb. She was a below knee amputee. She was being pushed around the store by a younger man, a caretaker, in her wheelchair when she noticed me and my prosthesis.  She asked him to back up and pu...

Goal Setting and Climbing Your “Mountain”   Nothing in life that’s worth achieving is going to come easy. Working toward a goal, putting your best foot forward and sweating through it makes achieving it all the more sweet. Why would becoming an amputee be anything different? If you were active before your amputation, then you know what can be done with a lot of work, grit, a...

Building Strength For a Better Future     If you are a new amputee or an amputee who hasn’t been wearing their prosthesis for one reason or another we need to talk. What are you doing to prepare your body for movement? Balance is so important in preventing falls, even when being silly!   After becoming an amputee you spend weeks healing only to find yourself getting use the we...

Making Mobility Great Again, One Prosthesis at a Time   When I walked into The Limb Center office prior to amputation I met Randy West and David Banks for the first time.   They are a Phoenix based company   From that moment on, they were there for me, reassuring me that I could do this, that they would make sure I had the best fit and they asked about my hopes and dreams as I enter...

Morning Routines to Get Motivated   Life as an amputee is already hard enough just learning to live without a limb that, for most of us, we were born with.  However, what you don’t know is the little things, the minutia of everyday tasks that can sometimes be enough to halt you in your tracks. I got an interesting question the other day, one I haven’t been asked before: “How...

It’s Always “No” If You Don’t Ask When it comes to the world around you, the old adage, “You catch more flies with honey, than vinegar”, still holds true. As an amputee, I have seen this firsthand. When I smile at someone, they smile back. If I say Hello with a smile, I start a conversation and usually educate someone who is curious. And when I ask questions, th...

Healing and Finding Purpose   This Illinois, born and raised, girl never knew she had a connection to the ocean. It’s a beautiful thing to find in yourself so late in life. It was surprising, and breathtaking when it happened. Many years ago my family moved to Florida for a job. I never thought I would leave Illinois, EVER! All of my family and my husband’s family live there. That...

Do You Have These Two Ingredients?   My people, My “Why” Chicago Family: My roots and the people who believe in me   You need People and you need a positive mindset! It’s that simple… OK, maybe it’s not simple but the solution to getting the most out of life usually comes from these two things and you can make the changes for yourself, not having to rely on...

Getting Through the Tough Times   Oh the nights are so tough! Have you been there? Have you laid in the utter darkness and the quiet is deafening, the pain is unbearable, and you feel like you will ever get through this moment of phantom pain? Yep, the reality is, we all go through it at some point or another, to varying degrees. The last two nights, for me, have started great, I feel asleep...

Time to Challenge Yourself     As 2024 fades away and 2025 takes control let’s take time to look back and reflect on the ups and downs of the past year. We all have had those moments we achieved some sort of milestone, we have also had those moments we never want to relive. I’m hopeful that you had some time at the end of last year and the first week of this year to relax, re...

Start Today!   Start Now! Today! What are you waiting for?   I know, I know, it’s the holidays. You are busy and can’t find the time. Me too! But, if you are serious about your goals, and know your ‘WHY’ then get to it. I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of “New Years Resolutions”. For a majority of people it is a procrastination technique to get th...

Tis the Season     As we enter the holiday season: Special gatherings and parties, Gift giving and making, Cooking and baking, And traveling and to see friends and family create a very busy month or two.   As amputees it can have a toll on our bodies as we try to do it all. If you are new to being an amputee, try to remember that it’s ok to ask and accept help, it’s ok to not have e...

Moving Into the Right Mindset This Holiday   As an amputee I have so much to be grateful for in my life. I am blessed to be alive.   My horses make me be present   I am thankful for my husband, two healthy sons, and a family who loves me.             I am grateful to be able to walk again, just to name a few.     Do I ever look back on the day...

Bionic Skins: Working Towards the Perfect Fit We all want to feel our best, and live a life without pain, but at times it seems so out of reach for us amputees. Donning a prosthesis that is suppose to emulate a real leg gets the job done but, trust me, it is far from comfortable and often it becomes such a painful devise that amputees choose not to wear it for too long, even taking days off from w...

New Socket and What To Expect     Here we go again! Last week I told you all about a huge blister that formed in my socket on the end of my residual limb, well, after talking to my prosthetist about that and a few other things that I was ignoring, he decided that it was time to make a new socket!   UGH!!   Where great sockets are made!!   Randy West and I getting ready to...

  Let’s discuss Anticipation and Expectations as an amputee. Every journey is different, every path navigated in life is unique, so why would anyone think that becoming an amputee that we would share the exact same journey? We will have a similar structure as to what steps come first, second, third, etc, but wWHEN they come, HOW quickly you move from one step to the next, AND when setba...

Dealing With Negative Emotions Post-Amputation   Anger, Guilt, Shame, and Fear are all such destructive emotions. They hold us back from realizing our full potential and no one is immune to feeling them at one time or another. As amputees, we face unique challenges, including fears about our new life, future uncertainty, failures, prosthetics, and adapting to physical limitations. As a wife a...

Through The Eyes of a Horse Horse Therapy-the horse who started it all: Cherokee   What can I say, I LOVE horses! I have always loved horses, just seeing them makes me smile. Yet as a girl growing up in the suburbs of Chicago I was never around any horses. The attraction is a mystery. Never in my WILDEST dreams could I have imagined that at my age I would be surrounded by them every single da...

How Can You Know What You Don’t Know?   Yep, like clockwork! Like life itself, being an amputee throws you curveball after curveball, no matter how seasoned you are. My time is now, I guess. I am almost six years out from my amputation, life has been great! I have been traveling, active, enjoying mobility and no (knock on wood) phantom pains worthy of discussion. This is the good stuff!...

Live in the Moment and Experience Your Best Life     Take a breathe. Now slowly let it out. Breathing is an automatic response by our body, it knows that we can’t survive without oxygen, but have you ever noticed your breathe being shallow or worse yet, you held your breathe? We tend to do this in times of stress, anxiety and fear, and yes, we all face some sort of and some level o...

Finding Peace and Comfort in This Hard Season   How does a warrior prepare for battle? They need the right kind of armor to protect themself from harm. They need weapons to defeat the enemy, too.   What is your armor? What weapons do you wield as you go into this new season, this battle, for your health and livelihood? Yes, you CAN prepare. There are things you can do to build yourself u...

Freedom and Joy in Movement   What do you dream about doing or accomplishing? As amputees we tend to struggle with getting back out there, worried that we won’t be able to live full lives filled with goals set and conquered, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth! Yes, the first couple of years there is a lot of changes taking place with your body, and a whole new routine of...

Finding Peace in These Moments   These are the times I struggle with the most. Yes, it can be nice to have down time but for someone like me downtime can become a bad habit and turn, quickly, into a new way of living. I realize how hard I push myself, daily. I know I pack my schedule full, every single day. If I don’t keep that pace I truly become an all or nothing kind of person. Well,...

Practice Makes Permanence It was 1 year post-amputation before I felt confident enough to go out and try a 10K   Let’s cut to the nitty gritty. Practice makes permanence not perfection. As an amputee it takes daily, mindful practice placing one step in front of the other to get comfortable in your prosthesis. To take time to practice what feels right and looks right is important to lear...