I can’t believe that today marks 15 years since the car accident that changed my arm (and me) forever. 💪🏼 These days my scars aren’t necessarily the first thing people notice anymore, but that wasn’t the case for years. On my way home from my internship at an ad agency in Dallas after my junior year in college, my car got hit and rolled, my arm went out the broken window and the car landed on top of it. My arm was pinned underneath the weight of my sideways car until the paramedics could arrive and figure out how to safely get me out of the vehicle. I remember it all so vividly. They used little balloons to lift up the car just enough to get my arm out from underneath, they cut a hole in the front of my windshield so I could climb out of it. As the paramedic took my (other) hand and lead me out, I turned to glance back and saw that another paramedic was carrying my left arm in his hands but I couldn’t feel it. I turned back to face the first paramedic and he just said “don’t look”. Flash forward a 2 week hospital stay, 10 surgeries, and countless trips back and forth from Fort Worth to Dallas for occupational therapy later, and here I am celebrating the 15th re-birthday of my arm. The doctors didn’t expect me to leave the hospital with an arm at all, and that fact fills me with gratitude every day. But the most important changes weren’t physical ones. I was changed as a person through this whole ordeal in the best ways. I learned what I was capable of enduring in a way that you only can when you absolutely have to. I learned to get creative with the physical limitation of only having one functioning hand and arm for years (trying to tie my shoe or put my hair in a ponytail was almost the end of me 😂) I learned to live with chronic, excruciating nerve pain. When the adrenaline and the shock and the wonderful flood of support from loved ones wears off and you’re left to get back to a new normal on your own, in so much pain mentally and physically, in a way that’s hard to describe and hard to relate to, you see what you’re really made of. What got (gets) me through is gratitude, and I am so grateful for how far I have come over the last 15 years! 💪🏼