Be-YOU-tiful Adaptive Warrior

Facing Fear One Step at a Time   Fear doesn’t disappear just because we’ve healed, received a prosthesis, or reached a new milestone. Sometimes it’s still there when we try something unfamiliar, or return to something we used to do. This Halloween week, I’m talking about the fears that can hold us back and how we can begin moving through them, one step at a time. I love Halloween, especially...

Finding Balance When Life Keeps Moving   For my birthday, I went to Park City to fly fish with my family. I love being outdoors, but wading into a river as an above-knee amputee challenged me in ways I hadn’t expected. The current pushed against my prosthesis, the river rocks shifted underfoot, and every step required focus. I was trying to find stable footing, listen to my guide, learn to ca...

Finding Hope Beyond the Pivot   Part Five of My Pivoting Series In this final episode of my Pivoting series, I’m sharing the reminder I’ve had to learn again and again: the road forward may look different, but it can still be meaningful, beautiful, and full of possibility. Life changes for all of us. We can make the best plans, prepare for every scenario, and still find ourselves facing a cur...

Honoring What Was, Before Reimagining What’s Next   What if moving forward requires us to first acknowledge what we have lost? In Part Four of my five-part series on pivoting, I’m exploring a side of change that we don’t talk about enough: grief. We often celebrate the courage it takes to pivot, rebuild, and begin again, but every new direction may also require us to release the life, body, i...

How to Adapt When Life, and Travel, Don’t Go as Planned     What do you do when you have prepared for everything, and life still throws you a curveball? In this episode of BAWarrior Podcast, I’m continuing our Pivoting series with one of the most personal lessons I learned from international travel as an above-knee amputee: preparation matters, but adaptability is what carries us t...

Power of the Pivot: Part 2 of 5   Sometimes the hardest part of a setback is not the pain itself, it is realizing that the plan you were so ready to chase suddenly cannot happen the way you imagined. In Part Two of my pivoting series on the BAWarrior Podcast, I share what I am learning in real time after pulling a muscle in my residual limb just as I set a new fall goal: one million steps by...

When Your Body Changes the Plan     What if pulling back is not weakness, but the very thing that keeps you moving forward? In this episode of BAWarrior Podcast, I’m opening a new five-part series called The Power of the Pivot. This first conversation is about one of the hardest pivots for me personally: when my body says, “I’m done,” even when my mind still wants to push ahead. After re...

  From Phantom Pain to Freedom Walking Paris Streets     What happens when the prosthetic leg you depend on suddenly will not charge-thousands of miles from home? In this episode of the BAWarrior Podcast, I’m sharing the honest story of my first international trip as an amputee. Returning to Paris carried special meaning for me because my previous trip there in 2018 ultimately led t...

Travel withLimb Difference You Don’t Have to Be Ready, to Be Read       Confidence Comes After the First Step What if confidence isn’t what carries us toward the first step, but what waits for us on the other side of it? In this episode of the BAWarrior Podcast, I continue my series on traveling as an amputee as I prepare for my first international trip since losing my leg. La...

Traveling With Confidence as an Amputee   What if every new thing you accomplished earned you another stamp-not just in your travel passport, but in your confidence passport?   Solo flight to Chicago, O’Hare Travel has always been a big part of my family’s life, but traveling as an amputee has been an evolving journey. Seven years into life as an amputee, I’m still lear...

Advocate and Rise   What happens when the people responsible for helping you move forward stop listening? You learn how powerful your own voice can become. In this episode of the BAWarrior Podcast , I step back from the idea of constantly pushing forward to talk about one of the most important skills every amputee must develop: advocating for yourself. Self-advocacy has been a major part of m...

Building a New Version of Normal       What happens when the life you want to return to no longer works the way you remember it? After amputation, we are often told that we can get back to doing the things we love, and I believe that is true. But I have learned that those activities may look, feel, and function differently than they did before. Recovery is not always about returning...

Learning When to Push and When to Recover     Have you ever started making progress with your fitness, only to be stopped by skin irritation, socket discomfort, phantom pain, fatigue, or an injury? As an above-knee amputee who loves working out, hiking, skiing, and staying active, I understand how frustrating it can feel when your body suddenly forces you to pull back.     In t...

One Step at a Time: The Power of Small Steps Toward Big Goals     Have you ever looked at a goal and felt overwhelmed before you even started? Whether you’re learning to walk with a prosthetic, chasing a lifelong dream, beginning a new career, or simply trying to make it through a difficult season, sometimes the destination feels impossible. In this episode, I share a personal story that...

Feeling Alone After Amputation? Why Community Is Part of Healing     Have you ever felt completely alone—even while surrounded by people who love you? For many amputees, loneliness isn’t about the absence of family or friends. It’s about carrying a journey that very few people truly understand. In this heartfelt episode of the BAWarrior Podcast , I share an honest conversation about isol...

Understanding the Types, Triggers, and Coping Strategies     What if the most intense pain you’ve ever felt came from a part of your body that no longer exists? As an above-knee amputee, phantom pain is one of the most difficult parts of my journey to explain. It’s invisible. It’s unpredictable. And unless you’ve experienced it yourself, it’s almost impossible to fully understand. Yet fo...

Reclaiming Independence   What if the thing holding you back isn’t the possibility of falling, but the fear of what happens if you do? As amputees, we talk a lot about mobility, prosthetics, and recovery. But there is one challenge that often doesn’t get enough attention: the fear of falling. In this week’s episode of BAWarrior Podcast, I share my own experiences as an above-knee ampute...

Join the Movement for Above Knee Amputees       What if joining the movement means becoming part of the future of amputee care? In this episode of the BAWarrior Podcast, I had the honor of sitting down with Jake and Hiva, two PhD students from the University of Michigan, who are working on research that could help shape the future of prosthetic technology for above-knee amputees. Th...

What I Wish Every New Amputee Knew   Seven years ago, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life: to amputate my leg. Looking back now, I can honestly say that journey has taught me more about life, resilience, and myself than I ever could have imagined. In this episode, I share seven of the biggest lessons I’ve learned through seven years of living as an above-knee amputee. These lessons...

Rewriting Your Mindset After Loss       What happens when something you spent years building disappears in a single moment? In this deeply personal episode of BAWarrior Podcast , I open up about the emotional aftermath of being massively hacked on social media and losing access to over twenty years of connection, community, memories, and support systems I had built through Facebook....

Join the Warrior Effect-Get Involved Today   What if one story had the power to help someone walk again? After seven powerful weeks of interviews during Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness Month, this episode of BAWarrior podcast becomes more than a reflection-it becomes a movement. In this heartfelt finale to the “Survivors to Warriors” series, I take listeners back through the incredibl...

Stride Robotics Lightweight Power Knee Redefining Movement     This episode wrapped up Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness Month in a powerful way by looking toward the future of mobility, technology, and what it truly means to help people live again after limb loss. After a month full of stories about trauma, cancer, amputation, grief, fear, faith, and resilience, I wanted to end th...

Limbs For Humanity: Restoring Hope One Leg at a Time     In this powerful and perspective-shifting episode of Be a Warrior Podcast, I sit down with two men who have not only walked alongside me in my own journey as prosthetists, but who have also chosen to step far beyond the walls of their profession to answer a much bigger calling. Randy and David, co-founders of Limbs for Humanity, jo...

Faith Fueled Resilience: Abri Bentley’s Story   There are moments in life when everything slows down just enough for you to hear what truly matters. This episode was one of those moments for me. As I sat across from Abri, I wasn’t just interviewing a guest-I was witnessing a living, breathing testimony of what it looks like to hold onto hope when everything else tries to take it away. “...

A Daughter and Mother’s Story of Resilience   This week on BAWarrior Podcast , I had the absolute honor of sitting down with Bridget and her mom, Jamie, during Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness Month, and I can honestly say this conversation will stay with me for a long time. Bridget is only fourteen, but the strength, maturity, and perspective she carries are far beyond her years...