This is Todd Love. I met him when I spent time at The Walter Reed Medical Army Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Todd is a triple amputee who was injured when he was serving our country in Afghanistan. Todd made me laugh every day that I saw him and the kid had more energy than I ever have! He zooms down the hall in his wheelchair, mainly because he always has somewhere he needs to be quickly! Since becoming an amputee, Todd has been skydiving, snowboarding, surfing, and scuba diving. I am sure his to-do list of things to do is even longer than that. I met him for only a week, but have not stopped thinking about him since. He has been one of my biggest perception changers.
Oscar Pistorius. A household name since becoming the first ever challenged athlete to compete in the Olympic Games. I have been lucky enough to be close to the company who makes Oscar's "blade runner" legs - the Ossur Cheetah leg, so I have known his story for many months. Seeing a picture of Oscar crouched down in the blocks at the stadium in London gives me chills, but this picture makes my eyes well up. Everyone is always telling their children they can be or do anything they want when they grow up and this picture says that to me. This little girl running next to Oscar is running next to an Olympic athlete who looks just like her, she is going to grow up believing that she can dream as big as she want and she will accomplish those dreams. I love this.
This is my friend Dan. He is a wounded warrior too, and a double above the knee amputee. He is at a wedding in Florida and I just love the simplicity of seeing him walking on those legs down the beach to the ocean. No matter how many times I see the ocean, I am always in awe of the beauty of it and I think that is what this picture makes me feel. You see this big beautiful ocean and a guy who lost both his legs at war and yet holds no bitterness, still wants to "feel the sand on his toes" and go stand in awe of the ocean. No matter how powerful the ocean is, I am more in awe of Dan's strength and perseverance than standing in front of those waves.
This is just one of the many pictures from camp this year that melted my heart. Just two teenage girl friends strolling down to our next activity. There is nothing fancy about this shot, they are not doing anything particularly brave or ground breaking, but it just makes my heart smile. I love the camaraderie and bond that having limb loss brings to these camp goers. My thought is that they do not lack any confidence back in their real lives either, I was amazed at how self-assured these 16 year olds were - that was definitely not me at their age, but I know how much being around other amputees means to them and like I said in my previous post, it was just an honor to be a part of the whole experience.
Lauren Scruggs - Lauren is a former model and current fashion blogger who just happens to be from my native state. That is how I know of her - she attends a church in Dallas that a lot of my friends attend. Lauren was in an accident last year where she walked into the propellor of a small plane and lost her left eye and left hand. This is a picture of her on The Today Show in London a couple of weeks ago at the Olympics. She has a prosthetic eye and a prosthetic hand and is still obviously very beautiful. She has a new book coming out about her experiences and I am really looking forward to reading it. I have followed her story for months, reading updates on her health and her recovery and have been moved by it from day one. The grace and faith shown by Lauren and her family make you rethink the things that we all tend to place great value on in our lives - she is happy to be back to living her life and the injuries she sustained are far less severe than they could have been.
These are just a few of the people that I think have wonderful stories and something about each one of them has affected me personally - whether I actually know them or not. I think it is worth taking the time to read their websites or look up their personal stories because they all have a story to tell. Each one of them have families and they all had lives before living with limb loss...it makes me so grateful for today because you never know what tomorrow might hold and I want to live a life reminding myself of that every single day.
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