Be-YOU-tiful Adaptive Warrior

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...

Risks and Rewards, Tips and Tricks Traveled to the “Happiest Place on Earth” as an amputee   Traveling is exhausting for anyone. Spending a day in an amusement park can take the most energetic person and turn them into a melt down of epic proportions. Add in the heat and humidity of a Florida summer AND thousands of people and it becomes an challenge that the ordinary person strug...

Setbacks Happen, You Are Not Alone   The reality is that after your amputation the journey is just beginning. The journey is filled with ups and downs and everything in between. I wished I could tell you that once your limb physically heals, from the surgery, that it’s all downhill from there but that wouldn’t be accurate for 99% of the amputees. Most of us will deal with 2-3 year...

Enjoy YOUR Journey   Enjoy YOUR Journey     This is YOUR life. It looks like no one else’s and YOU are like no one else in the world….. so why do we compare our journey to everyone else’s? I understand, when life gets hard, and we see someone kicking butt and everything appears to be amazing for them, we wish that was what we had, but don’t be mistaken. Everyone has valleys as well...

Staying Present to Live Fully   I played sports all my life and the one take away from all of those years was that if I wasn’t focused on the moment then I wasn’t going to perform at my best. You’ve heard the saying, “Keep your eye on the ball” or “Keep your eye on the prize” and you have probably understood it in the context it was told to you. I hea...

Normalizing Phantom Pain   No matter what you think, every amputee has issues at some point or another. No one is exempt from phantom pain or phantom sensations even though it appears as they do. Most successful people, meaning those who appear to be living their best life after amputation, do not sit around thinking about phantom pain or wallowing in it, they keep moving, they keep pushing t...

Prepare Yourself! Your steps backward are prepping you to be rocketed forward. Ever feel like you are being held down, pushed backwards, not making forward progress? I’ve been there and it can be so frustrating! Sometimes it feels like you are never going to get back to where you were or progress any further What I have learned over these past 12 years of setbacks and surgeries, backward movement...

Breathe In, Breathe Out   Sometimes we forget one of the most basic of human needs, breathing. Yes, of course we continue to breathe everyday, I’m not saying we stop breathing, what I AM saying is that we forget HOW to breathe. I know I can get caught up in emotions and stress and only do shallow breathes or even hold my breathe, at times. This is not good for us, we must practice takin...

How to overcome adversity to reach the top   The view from the top is always amazing and one we all strive for but that isn’t how life works, is it? What happened when we fail, and fall into a valley? Maybe you have a medical issue, or are struggling in a relationship or job, or maybe you became an amputee, like me. What then? This is the time to focus on what’s in front of you. You need to f...

What to Expect as a New Amputee   As with anything new there is a learning curve. Becoming an amputee is no different. However, since few people know of anyone that’s an amputee before they, themselves, become one, there are so many questions without answers. It seems overwhelming, confusing and quite scary. Have no fear, even though each one of us is very different as we deal with our...

How to Challenge Yourself Through Life’s Storms   What do you when you’ve lost your motivation? What has you derailed? This is often a problem for anyone going through a medical issue, including amputees. As a 5 year amputee myself, I have a different story, one I want to share. I spent most of my life participating in sports of one kind or another, only taking a break when we sta...

The Real Mental Side of Phantom Pain   Ok, let’s talk about Pain. Not just any pain, but the “real” phantom pain. It comes on without warning. It can destroy our mood, our productivity, and our confidence. When it does happen, and for amputees we will all have the pleasure of experiencing it at some point on our journey, it’s enough to cause us to doubt we will ever be...

    Like a little kid excited and waiting for Christmas morning with great anticipation only to be sad when the presents are all opened, stockings are emptied and bedtime arrives once again. We too, can find ourselves wrapped up in waiting for life. We wait for the next appointment, the next fitting, the next promotion, the next relationship, the next thing to be excited about. But what...

An Equine Analogy For Your Motivation     You must look the part. You need to rise up, clean up, and organize yourself if you want to achieve and succeed. Trust me I know! Today I found myself entranced on how much time I spend with my horses grooming them. Why do we do that? Why do we spend so much time brushing them, wiping their faces down, conditioning their mane and tidying them up?...

Find Your Purpose, Set Goals, and Get to Work This is me BEFORE my knee injury that led to amputation Competition gives you focus and direction in life. It helps to define your day, provides a sense of purpose, and helps build character and resilience. All my life I have been competitive. I had big brothers around always “toughening me up”, and sports were an every moment event, whethe...