Today my blog friend Jeanne posted a video to her site. I implore you to watch this video, because the person speaking in the video – Aimee Mullins – elaborates in the best way what I have been thinking for the last few years since my surgical diagnosis – “…there’s a difference between the medical condition and what someone might do with it.”
Aimee Mullins said that there’s been a shift in her thinking over time “in that if you’d asked me at fifteen years old if I would have traded prosthetics for flesh and bone legs, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second. I aspired to that kind of normalcy back then. But if you ask me today, I’m not so sure….and it’s because of the experiences I’ve had with them, not in spite of the experiences I’ve had with them.”
I have been feeling the same way about how I view life and look at others – had I not had to live with the disabling pain of endometriosis, I might not be the empathic human I am today, who is able to see and understand the silent suffering in others, and who can as a result reach out to people. I firmly believe that who I am today – for the better I might add – is because of the experiences I’ve had with my painful illness, not in spite of the experiences I’ve had with my painful illness.
The year I had my surgical diagnosis, I began reading hundreds and hundreds of stories of other women who go through what I go through on varying levels. I then launched this website in order to educate myself and others – to learn more coping skills, to find out what research is being done out there to try to find a cure for this debilitating illness. I began making friends with other women who suffer as I do.
In that time, I’ve come to refer to us as warrior women. We are fighting the good fight towards achieving global awareness and understanding of our condition, as well as fighting for receiving humane treatment. We can do this. We have to do this – not just for us, but for our sisters, our cousins, our nieces, our daughters.
Aimee Mullins is also a warrior woman. Please watch and listen to her lecture below, as what she says encapsulates my own thoughts, and she does a fantastic job of getting the point across.
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1 user responded in this post
Steph,
Thank you for passing this video along! I’m not surprised that you had a similar reaction to it to what I had. Aimee Mullins really did a marvelous job at capturing the notion that so many of us believe… (my words): that we are the way we are for a reason and that it makes us stronger.
Adversity truly can present opportunity! 🙂
Jeanne