It has been 15 years since I had my spinal fusion surgery. As of June 2nd of this year, I am 30 years old and loving it! I feel very blessed and I’m thankful for the path that has gotten me here. About four years ago I made exercise a priority. I knew working out a couple times a year was not going to cut it. So, as I tend to be with most things, I attacked this new interest aggressively by doing the Insanity workout. I loved it. You get all sweaty and disgusting and you feel amazing. With that change, I noticed my lower back would feel stiff and I knew that if I was going to push my body, that I needed to listen to it and take care of it. I had a friend refer me to a chiropractor to see if they could do anything to help me given my spinal curvatures with the lumbar (lower curve) being fused. This decision changed my entire outlook on life. Not to be dramatic… but really, I went from a reactive mindset towards my health to a proactive one. I had always viewed my body in a passive way, that it would do what it was going to do and I would just deal with it as it came. I had no idea the real truth was just the opposite. My experience with chiropractic taught me that body alignment is closely related to mental alignment.
I’m very familiar with the noisy thoughts of wondering “why is this happening to me?” and asking God “can I be done?” because from my diagnosis of having scoliosis at 13 years old all the way into my late 20s I felt ‘less than’. I’ll be honest, spine surgery was a traumatic experience that I normalized as best I could, and that self preservation served me well and is starting to wind down.
My hope, my dream and my drive is to share what I’ve learned, and what I hope to learn. I want to be a part of the dialogue of what adult scoliosis looks like and what a healthy lifestyle means for an adult with curves. When I was 13, I wanted to know what my life would look like when I was 30, how my body would hold up. Now that I’m here, I want to share my experience with young girls and boys who might be asking themselves the same thing.
I believe our perceived weaknesses are our greatest strengths. We go through things that are difficult in order to find our strength, to find our voice and to find our passion. Thank you for being a part of my journey. I’m looking forward to sharing my heart with you!
