Mend | Tammi Nowack Photography

. I’ve always been curious about scars. I notice them on strangers, and wonder how they got them and the narrative behind that tear of the flesh. The idea that our bodies serve as a map of our lives is one that fascinates me. What stories lie behind these present reminders of events from our past? A few months ago, my mother called me with some devastating news regarding her health. The days after that news had me thinking almost incessantly about Sonder – The profound realization that everyone, including strangers passed in the street, have a life as complex as your own that you will never know about. I was at the grocery store, buying bananas and thinking how strange it was that I had received such hard news that morning, and no one knew it. What other things were going on in the lives of those strangers wandering the market? What scars – emotional or physical, map our lives? From this collision of thoughts came MEND; an ongoing project that explores scars and the people and stories behind them. To mend is an intentional bringing together. It is not perfect, it is functional. It’s rich with nuance and pain, tragedy and triumph, flesh torn and mended, and a perfect picture of the resilience of the human spirit. The stories I was entrusted with were a gift to me. I hope you find them equally as beautiful as I did. .

I’ve been a dancer since I was 3 years old. It’s my passion, and what I love. In my early 20’s I started to feel pain in my right shoulder - I had never been able to fully extend it, but it wasn’t anything I ever thought much about - just figured it was a thing I couldn’t do for whatever reason. After it started causing me pain I went in for an MRI, and the doctors determined I had bone spurs and a birth defect that caused me to have extra bone in my shoulder. The first surgery shaved down the bone and gave me full range of motion that I had never had before. I was able to fully stretch my arm out for the first time ever. After that surgery when they took out all the bone, apparently it made it so that there was too much room and my arm would just dislocate all the time. Doing every day activities, going through my day, I’d look down and there’s my arm, just hanging. They had shaved off so much bone, but not tightened the muscles and tendons enough, so the arm would just fall out. In 2015 I went in for a second surgery to have all that tightened up. During the surgery, the surgeon told me he’d pull my arm and it’d fall out, so he’d tighten it up and then he’d pull it again, and it’d fall out, and he’d tighten it more. It took 3 times to get it right. After the surgery, physical therapy didn’t go very well and I got frozen shoulder - it’s where the arm just locks up. That’s gotten better, but I still don’t have full range of motion and I have permanent loss of feeling throughout the arm. In the beginning I was definitely in denial. I tried to come back to work the day after the surgery. I couldn’t accept the fact that things were going to be different, but I found out real fast that things were never going to be the same for me. Before these two surgeries I was at the height of my physical ability and as a dancer I was able to do things I had never done before - but that just pulled the rug out from under me. I’m still trying to regain that confidence from before. Mostly, it’s affected my artistic creativity and my ability to do my passion. It’s made me more cautious of aging, of the way I move through life - injuries are harder to bounce back from and I feel more aware of that now than ever before. I think I’ll always dance, and I’ll always teach, but just not like I used to.

black and white photo of surgical scar on woman's shoulder

color portrait of beautiful black woman with scar from shoulder surgery

had just turned 16 in March, and that fall I was starting my sophomore year. We were at a Christian school in Maryland where my dad worked as a coach and a pastor. The school shared a campus with our church so the pastor and the associate pastor had houses on the land. We could easily walk from the school to our house and back just by walking across the property. It was the first week of school and my dad had just spoke at the first chapel of the year. During his sermon he paused and talked a bit about angels - he had said something like ‘Isn’t it weird that we’re always surrounded by heavenly hosts? We all have guardian angels’. My family had already heard his sermon before and he didn’t normally do that - it was a strange tangent, an unusual sidetrack. Normally after school, I’d pick up my baby sister from her daycare on campus and hang out with her at home. That day my parents had picked her up and taken her with them to my brother’s football practice in the next town over so I was free to be on my own. It was just my 14 year old sister Kelsey and I at the house. I had left a book at school and was on my way back over. It was after school, I didn’t even have shoes on - I was going to run back over to the school to grab the book from my locker. There was no thunder, no lightning, no rain, nothing - it was just a misty, overcast day. The next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital with my mom sitting next to me. That was 3 days after the strike”

lightning strike survivor with burn scars from necklace

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In our yard we had this massive oak tree - I was just passing under the tree to go to the school and the bolt hit me directly in the head and threw me 30 feet across the yard. The crack of the lightning was so loud it scared my younger sister Kelsey enough that she came outside looking for me. She saw me wobbling around in the yard and said ‘Katie? Are you ok?’ Apparently I said yes so she went back inside. About 10minutes later she came back out and I had made it closer to the house but I was facedown in a puddle at that time. She got me upright and called my dad. She said ‘Something’s wrong with Katie. She’s bleeding from everywhere on her face and she’s covered in mud’. My dad knew. He knew immediately that lightning had struck me and he called a family friend who lived close by to get over to our house to help and get me to the hospital. When I got there I wasn’t stable, my organs were starting to shut down. It took them about 5.5 hours to get me stable and even then they said I had a 50/50 chance of survival. Between the doctors and the surveyors, they think when the lightning struck, it hit my head and then dispersed into the tree and other areas around me. There were no marks on the tree or anything. Normally when people are struck by lightning, there’s an exit wound on the feet, but they think the brunt of the force went into my necklace because my feet were completely unmarked. It burnt off a strip of my hair. It ruptured my ear dream. When it struck me the necklace actually melted into me because the bolt was so hot. The force of it shot everything off - my earrings shot off, it melted my retainer in my mouth, my watch burned off, the underwire in my bra, my bracelet, the zipper on my skirt. Anywhere metal touched my body I had burns - all 2nd degree, except my necklace, which was 3rd degree. I had a sweet 16 charm on my necklace that survived, the rest of it literally burned into my body. When my parents arrived at the hospital, the doctor told them I was running about 20% of my own accord, the rest was machines. They wanted to transfer me to the Washington Hospital Center’s burn unit in D.C. and they were going to life-flight me but the storm had come in so quickly and was so bad they decided to transport me by ambulance instead. My heart stopped while I was in the ambulance and they had to use a defibrillator to bring me back. Later testing showed that the bolt stopped my heart, but when I hit the ground it ruptured my adrenal gland, sending a bolt of adrenaline through me and restarting my heart. So technically I’ve been dead twice

shirt worn by lightning strike victim survivor

lightning strike survivor wearing the shirt she had on when she was struck

remember when I woke up in the hospital I felt really panicked and my mom was trying to talk me through it to help me understand what happened. The doctor came in and talked to me about it too- they didn’t really know the long-term effects. They didn’t know if there would be long-term cardiac damage, or if it damaged my brain or organs, or if I’d be able to have kids. I remember being in pain, but also in a fog of panic - these medical professionals saying, ‘We don’t know, we don't know, we just don’t know what it means for you’....that’s a long time to not know if you’ll be ok. I just kept thinking ‘I’m 16, this shouldn’t be happening’. I was in the hospital for 5 days total. I didn’t go back to school for about a month - I didn’t have the energy. My system had such a….well, shock. (laughs). I have a hard time placing about 3 months after that time; the memories are very broken. I remember going back to school, I remember my first shower at the hospital because it was so painful, I remember them trying to use a special brush in my scar to make sure I didn't have debris or metal in my wound. Later we found out that 2 other guys on a golf cart had also been struck that day, and a horse. I was the only one who survived. My arms were in bandages and I wore this mesh covering on my neck for several months. As soon as my 2nd degrees were scabbed over I didn’t have to wear bandages anymore, but I was embarrassed of them so I wore jackets and long sleeves all the time to cover them. I was so insecure about it. The further from the accident, the more pronounced the pigment became. When gold melts on human skin it’s more of a brown coloring, and when silver melts it’s more black pigment. I don’t wear necklaces anymore- the skin around it is still really sensitive. On the scar itself I can’t feel anything, but the skin near it is super sensitive so I just don’t wear them. I call this one my perma-necklace. For quite a while after the strike I would set off metal detectors because I had traces of metal in my neck. That was always fun to explain to security! I had to learn how to rotate my head again because my skin had healed so tight. Had to learn to talk with burns on my tongue. It was a long process of healing, but the psychological part was harder. Things changed after that; I had to be careful about sitting in the sun, for example, or I’d have to think twice about small things - could I drink a soda? What would caffeine do to me or my heart? Would my heart heal on it’s own? Would I be able to have kids - what does that mean for a future partner? Would they be ok with that? I’d have to tell them. There were so many unknowns. Fortunately, none of it has really held tight - the further we’ve come from it, they’ve fallen into place, but they were heavy unknowns that I carried for a long time. In a way it was the end of that carefree feeling of my youth.

black and white image of lightning strike survivor with burn scars from necklace

As a teenager, I struggled with WHY? What did I do to deserve it? At that age, you focus so much on what other people think of you. I was worried about people seeing it, or having to explain it all the time. I remember my senior year I was in an elite choir and we had to take formal choral pictures. I took concealer and tried to cover the scar to hide it, but my skin had a reaction to it and it made a rash so bad I actually had to go home. I was always trying to cover it up. Once I got into my 20’s - and there were friends, and beach trips, bikinis, short skirts, going out, having fun… I got to the point where I was like, ‘You know what, I don’t care anymore. I want to LIVE'. I didn’t want to always be thinking of covering them up. I had to learn how to have confidence with it. Not being stuck on what everyone was seeing, but how I was presenting it. A lot of dermatologists and doctors said it would fade with time, but about 5 years after the strike we did a biopsy and saw that it went through all 7 layers of the dermis - that really made me step back and realize, ‘this is literally a part of me, it’s not going away or fading and I can’t hide this unless I wear turtlenecks every day. I have to allow it to be a piece of who I am, but not all of me’. I think when you have prevalent scars, you get to a place where you’re either living WITH them, or you’re living PAST them. I don’t want to not live fully just because I have a mark on my body. I was a 16year old girl going to get a book from her locker - a simple task - and my life could’ve stopped at that point. There are days when I’m frustrated or overwhelmed and sometimes I'll catch my reflection in a mirror and it’ll stop me in my tracks. Life is very, very momentary. The scar helps me remember, helps me stop and keep it all in perspective”

necklace struck by lightning in open palm

lightning strike survivor katie knapp smith

$I think my entire life story is a surprise to most people. I was born in Ireland. I learned to be a midwife there. I’ve lived on a remote lake you had to fly into- 200miles north of Fairbanks in the Arctic Circle. I birthed my babies at home. Life is always changing, always new. I’m super adventurous. In 2018 I rode my motorcycle around the country for 2 months and camped out the whole time. I rode all the way to northern British Columbia and back; 9000 miles on the road. And then 1year later on Sept 9, 2019 I was involved in an accident 1/2mile from my own house. I came around a bend and a FedEx truck had crossed the centerline into my lane so I went off the road into the ditch. I was driving in the ditch fine, trying to get myself back onto the road but I hit a driveway culvert and was launched 44 feet. There was a woman sitting on her porch who saw the whole thing and she came running down from her house. I remember laying on the ground being surprised I was conscious. I did a head to toe body check. ‘Ok, my neck hurts a little - no communication from my left shoulder and arm, back hurts a little, not bad. I can move my legs, that’s good’. After I decided I was fine, I panicked, thinking ‘How long until someone finds me’ and at that moment I heard the woman coming down. I broke my ankle, had a hematoma the size of a baseball on my knee, fractured sacrum, fractured my t12 vertebrae, herniated 2 discs in neck, crushed head of humerus and it dislocated all the way through my chest under my clavicle. I broke and dislocated my wrist and a few fingers. I had bad bruising everywhere, enough to lose 40% of my blood supply. My pectoral muscle was completely torn off and rolled up under my breast. The biceps tore off the bone, and the top of the bone was totally crushed (9 pieces) so all the muscles and ligaments connecting them were very disrupted. All the injuries were internal - I didn’t have a scratch on me because I had on all my gear. But they said that shoulder had a 30-40% chance of healing. I asked about a shoulder replacement and they thought since I was young it would be better if my body could try to repair itself on it’s own but my ability to heal from it was always in question - it was in so many pieces, it was significantly dislocated, and the time that had lapsed from injury to surgery were all factors working against me. So I had two surgeries. The surgeon said he had to go in under my chest and pull out bone fragments because they were so stuck. I was in the hospital for a week. The pain of the shoulder injury was mind blowing.$

black and white image of woman with scar from shoulder replacement surgery

$There were times I felt like I would have been better off dead and other times where I felt a profound gratitude to be alive. The pain was mind blowing, completely and utterly all consuming and something that I could not fathom prior to that experience. It was so painful and I felt so broken. I had extensive nerve damage on top of the bone and tissue trauma that was about to throw me off the proverbial cliff. When a bone is damaged there’s acute pain and aching and sensations with motions and mobility but when a nerve is damaged, it sends all the information it’s capable of sending all at the same time. 24hrs a day my brain was processing stabbing, burning, cold, hot, needles, numbness, ripping sensations - just insane amounts of pain - as the nerves healed. Nerves grow really really slowly so it was such a comparatively slow and painful process. I remember just sitting on the porch - if the wind blew, it would cause me pain. If I was sitting on one end of the couch and someone sat on the other end, the slight shift in the cushions would hurt me. Excessive noise would cause physical pain. Everytime something picked up on that nerve channel it was like a brain overload. I felt like the entire world was hurting me. I even spoke to the doctor about amputating that arm. I just knew that if my life from that point forward was going to be living with that kind of pain from that arm, then that arm needed to go. It did get better, to a more functional state of healing. My range of motion, my strength improved. Then sometime in June everything started getting worse: more pain, decreased range of motion and strength. My physical therapist said something had changed and he sent me to a specialist at Emory and he said we needed to go ahead with the shoulder replacement. It wasn’t until after I had the second surgery in December that I realized how much pain I was in constantly. I had gotten so used to that level of pain that it was just my new normal. They said after the shoulder replacement that my bone had fractures in it - that was my new threshold. When I woke from the surgery I was in a thousand times less pain. It was like my whole world woke up. I had no idea how much of a fog I was living in because of the pain I lived in every day. I can’t even describe it - It was like being reborn. I think if I was an artist - I would’ve taken many, many self-portraits through my lifetime and then tore them into bits and put them back together, fragmented. What I felt in my heart, body, mind, emotions, felt completely torn apart, completely fragmented. And physically I was very literally fragmented. And this last year and a half of healing has been the process of putting all the fragments back together”$

I’ve always known I’m strong and resilient but prior to my accident I put that into outside places - what I had accomplished, what I built, how strong I was physically, my talent. My sense of self was in the things I could do, or the person I was for other people, or the projects I could complete. If I don't accomplish, I’m not good. So when everything was taken from me and I was so broken, I had to find the strength and resilience in me that was completely unrelated from the outside world and be ok with simply existing. I literally couldn’t move, cook dinner, nothing. There were so many things I couldn’t do that just existing was a skill. When you go from conquering the world to that, you have to become comfortable with an entirely different sense of worth. And that was the biggest work I did - my work became very internal. Finding that sense of self-strength and resilience inside myself that is anchored within myself and not anything I DO in the world is possibly the biggest sense of freedom I’ve gained.

woman holding titanium plate with screws from shoulder surgery in her hand

portrait of woman recovered from shoulder replacement surgery from motorcycle accident midwife

My friend invited me to his house in spring 2019. We were bored so we decided to build a bike ramp. His backyard is situated on a steep hill, so we made a track in the woods and a ramp from scrap wood. It was alright, but we weren’t getting the airtime we wanted so we shoved more dirt under the ramp to increase the angle. I was the first one to go down it, and when I hit the ramp I pushed down to bend my arms enough to yank up and get as much airtime as I could. But as soon as I hit the ramp and pushed down, it gave and all my weight and momentum sent me head over heels and I landed on my shoulder. It hurt so bad I couldn’t even stand up at first. My friend asked if I need him to call a parent and I said, “no, I’ll be ok” but when I tried to stand up to go inside I realized I was probably hurt pretty bad. He helped me up and got me back to the house where his parents called down mine and my dad came to pick me up. By the time he got there, I think all the adrenaline had worn off and I almost passed out when I stood up to go to the car. My dad took me home first and I stayed in the car. My mom stabilized my arm with a scarf and then my dad took me to the ER. When we got there, they said it was definitely broken and to follow up with an orthopedist in a few days. They put it in a sling and sent me home. When we followed up with the orthopedist, they took an xray and said it was really bad - it was actually shattered into several pieces - and I would need surgery asap. 2 days later, I was in surgery and they had to rearrange all the pieces and put in a metal plate and 7 screws. I guess some people can leave in their plate and screws forever and be fine, but mine was an irritant on my skin because one of the screws was so close to the surface of the skin - you could see and feel the bump from it. So about 6months after the first surgery I went back and they took it all the hardware out. I don’t regret it at all - now it’s a funny memory with my friend. It was probably the most painful thing that’s ever happened to me, but I guess the upside is I’ve got a badass scar” (laughs).

black and white portrait of teenage boy with scar from clavicle surgery repair muscular

black and white portrait of teenage boy with scar from clavicle surgery repair

When I was 5 years old, I was with my two older brothers. We were playing in boxes building forts. There was a hole in one of the boxes and he told me to look in the hole. When I did it he stuck an ink pen in the hole. It traumatized him for sure. All I remember was my mom screaming and my brother screaming and I just thought “my eye is poked out”. She kept telling me to open it so she could look but I couldn’t do it. It was like a natural reaction to clench your eye and it wouldn’t open. The surgery was at LSU and it was one of the first surgeries of its kind. They put a lens from a deceased donor over my eye. The recovery was long. I still can’t see out of my eye. The scar is right across my cornea so there’s no repair to fix that. I can see shapes, and color, but I can’t see detail or read or anything from far away. It took about 2 years to get it to a point where the eye looked relatively normal. When something like that happens to you when you’re so young, you just adapt to it, you know? I can never see a 3D movie, but that’s just normal for me (laughs). I’ve lived my entire life through one eye. Sometimes I wonder what other people are seeing or how things look to other people but it’s just how I am. I don’t really know anything different.

closeup of woman's eye with scar from corneal transplant surgery as a child.

$quote from 13year old boy about breaking arm double compound fracture$

$black and white portrait of teenage boy with scar on arm from compound fracture at trampoline park$

portrait of teen boy in leather jacket studio

I remember being in the grocery store with my mom and looking at other kids and thinking, “I’m so ugly”. And as a teenager, there’s so much insecurity for everyone - you’re supposed to be a certain way, look a certain way. It’s such a hard time.I’d look in the mirror and not look at my lip - I’d look at my eyes, or my hair - but learning to look at myself and see my whole face and appreciate it is something I’m learning to do. I lived in South Africa for a year and I was mentored by a woman named Yvette who would catch me saying things about myself and challenge them. She would say “How can you expect to love other people if you can’t even love yourself?” and it helped me realize how much self-hatred I had. I realized I don’t want to be 40 years old and have all these insecurities and hate myself. That’s not who I want to be - constantly tearing myself down. She had a big impact on that area of my life and made me start taking steps to love myself. So I’m learning to embrace the beauty of my imperfections and loving myself and who I am. At some point I had to just realize there’s nothing I can do change it and I have to embrace the ‘imperfections’ that I have. It’s ok that I don’t look like everyone else. I’m learning to see myself differently and I think I’m more sensitive to others who have insecurities like mine, especially a cleft lip. ‘You can love yourself, you won’t feel like this forever’, you know? Flaws are beautiful and what makes you unique. I love my scar because it’s part of who I am

image of young woman with cleft lip palate scar

black and white image of woman with cleft lip palate scar

I was born with a cleft lip palate. Cleft lips can vary in severity, and mine wasn’t the most extreme, but it was pretty involved. When I was baby I couldn’t suck so my mom would spend hours dropping milk into my mouth to feed me - and that was with a 2 year old and 5 year old at home too. My first surgery was when I was 2 or 3 months old. My lip was completely apart so that one was to sew it back together. There was multiple surgeries from the time I was 1-4 years old on my lip and mouth and plastic surgery on my nose when I was 7. My last surgery was when I was 9 and I remember that one the most because it was painful. I had 2 holes in my mouth, and the surgeons took out some of the bone from my hip and used that to fill in the holes in my mouth. That was a hard recovery - I couldn’t walk for a while, I had to go on a 6week liquid diet. I remember that it was painful to laugh and I had to train myself to not laugh, which was so hard. As a child I laughed a lot but it was so painful when I would. And when I could start laughing again, it’s almost like I forgot how. My mom passed away a few years after that surgery so some of the details about those surgeries and that time in my life I don’t really know a lot about. I was always so insecure about it, always looking in the mirror wondering what I’d look like without this, or comparing myself to my sisters. At school, other kids would ask me what happened to my lip and I would say I fell off a bike or something. I was so self-conscious about it, I didn’t want them to know the real reason

woman with scar on hip from surgery to graft bone to cleft palate

It started out with left knee pain that wouldn’t go away. I hadn’t injured it, there was no explanation for it, so I got an MRI and it showed a small spot in my hip. I was sent to the hospital in Macon where they did an MRI of my back as well and found a softball sized tumor on my t8 vertebrae and a small spot on my lung. They said bending, twisting, and even moving was putting pressure on my spinal cord and that’s what was causing my knee to hurt. They did the biopsy for the spinal tumor at the hospital there in Macon and discovered it was Ewing's sarcoma - it’s a rare pediatric bone and soft tissue cancer. From there we went to oncology and orthopedics specialists at Emory. I had 8 rounds of chemo before surgery in Dec 2016. It was a 3-level spinal fusion and a lobectomy of the lower portion of my left lung. First they took out one of my ribs, giving them a clear way to my lower lung so they took that tumor out first. Then they had a good shot to the lower spine, so they took that rib and ground it down and made bone cement out of it. They used that to fuse the artificial vertebrae. After surgery, I had a port in on my right side, but it got infected after a round of chemo so they took it out and put another one in on the left side of my chest. I had 2 more ounds of chemo after surgery, then 5 weeks of radiation, then 6 more rounds of chemo. I wore a clamshell brace for 6 months - it covered my torso front and back, with 2 bars in it to keep my shoulders upright. I never looked up statistics or survival rates or anything. I didn’t want to. What’s the point? I had no interest in that because I knew it would just make me worry. I had a strong faith in God that he was going to bring me back to health. We would pray over each chemo before it was administered. There was a lot of answered prayers. My very last round of chemo was on the exact day I started chemo one year earlier. At the 8month mark after my surgery my doctor said everything looked clear and great and I didn’t need to come back, but a few short years later I started having trouble keeping my breakfast down. An MRI of my brain showed a spot on the back left side of my head...”

man with scars from surgery to remove cancerous growths

bare chested man with scars from surgical ports

We are very faith-based family, so from the very beginning I’ve said, ‘God’s got this. He’s in control’. I never had any doubt I would make it through - I knew He had bigger plans for me so I always tried to stay positive about everything. I think that’s half the battle - your mental outlook. They hit the brain tumor with one day of radiation which kept it at bay for 6 months or so. In late 2019 it showed up again, and they hit it again with radiation. I was about to finish up welding school and had just increased my class load so I could get done sooner when a scan showed the brain tumor was back again and it had showed change. At that point, the oncologist said the next step was a craniotomy to get it out, I had 18 staples across my forehead - they came out after 2 weeks, then 2 more weeks of rest and I was cleared to go back to the shop and finish school. It sounds cliche, but you really learn not to take anything for granted. You really do live each day like it’s your last. Be thankful for what you have, the family you have, and the support and friends you have. I’ve had a blessed life, but I’ve had a lot to deal with too - I try to maintain a positive outlook on everything. If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen. If it’s meant to be it’s gonna be. There’s a reason for everything, I truly believe that. This past Tuesday I had another set of scans and they were all clear. I’ve been cancer-free since August 2017”.

surgical intervention from ewings sarcoma bone fusion

black and white image of man with scars from surgery to remove ewings sarcoma cancer

black and white image of man with scar on his head from brain tumor surgery

College was a great experience for me - the independence, the freedom, having choices, everything. I was a music major, and as a sophomore, I had an opportunity to go out west to California to work at Yosemite National Park in a music worship ministry. I loved it so much I went back the next summer to do it again in 2000. At the end of that summer, my friend suggested we have a cross-country road trip home to end the summer with a bang before our last year of college. It was a Saturday, and she had to be home by Monday for work. 2 days to get across the country from California back to Georgia is crazy, but when you’re 21 it sounds awesome so we did it. We packed up all our stuff and left in the middle of the night. I’m a night person so I drove first and then we switched in the morning and I went to sleep. 2 hours later she wakes me up and says “Alyson - I think we’re going the wrong way” so we stop and pull out a map and figure out this road that cuts across from where we are would help save us some time so we didn’t have to completely backtrack. This road was in the middle of the Mojave desert. There’s nobody out there, no other cars - it’s super early on a Saturday morning. So we got that figured out and headed back in the right direction, and I went back to sleep. The next thing I remember is her screaming that we’re swerving. I don’t remember anything after the swerving and the blur of the landscape moving by and we started to flip.

color image of woman's back scar from spinal surgery

What are you supposed to do? 21 years old, 2 females in the middle of nowhere, 2.5 hours from the nearest hospital, no one around to help, your friend is about dead. My friend Jennifer landed upside down, got herself out of the vehicle and came looking for me. I was 500 feet down the road. She ran back to the car and got her Bible, and started praying over me - there’s no cell phones at this time of course and we're completely alone in the desert. A few minutes later, an 18-wheeler truck came up on the scene and Jennifer flagged him down. He had CB equipment to call for help and the ambulances came and put us both on backboards and I was flown to Las Vegas University Medical Center. Whenever I question my purpose in life, or wonder why I’m here I think about that trucker. There is no record of him anywhere. Police dispatch had no record of him calling, no police report, no paramedics, no one spoke to him, no one else except Jennifer saw him. I believe he was an angel. I should’ve died. I know I should've died. It took a long time of rehab and therapy just to learn how to do the physical things, but it was the emotional and spiritual and mental pain that was the worst for me. I’m about to graduate from college, I’m figuring out who I am, I’m in the prime of life and then everything, EVERYTHING changes. I’m a violin teacher. Even that was a difficult adjustment to make - you don’t realize the core strength required to play the violin - to sit upright and balance. Paralysis as a definition has changed for me over the years. It used to be just the physical aspect- being unable to walk. Trying to come to terms with that was anguish. I used to pray at night “please God, don’t let me wake up in the morning, I can’t go on anymore” and I still have days like that sometimes, but I’ve come to realize that this is just a body. My soul, my spirit, my integrity, my morals - that’s who I really am. That’s what really matters. Real freedom comes with realizing who you are inside and loving who that person is.

black and white image of female violinist parapalegic

It’s hard when something life changing like this happens. Yosemite is where my heart is - it’s where i was happiest, the last place I was walking. That place will always render an emotional response from me. I love exploring, hiking, and being in nature. And I can still experience it, just in a different way. Letting others help me, and realizing that I can’t do everything myself has been a process but I’ve learned it’s ok to ask for help. I’ve become a more authentic me. After the accident, I tried to control everything in my life from that point, because everything felt so out of control, but doing that ended in a very dark place for me. I had to realize that I don’t have control over people, I only have control over myself. Stop playing the victim, enjoy the process, and who you are. Now I try to just allow life to be as it is and enjoy it - because we only get one. I take joy in the life I have now! I take it for the moments I have. Experience love, experience pain, but keep going. The silver lining has been to be able to help others and help myself. It’s taken me 20years since this injury to feel like I’m finally coming into who I am. I love my body because it allows me opportunities to experience life. I need this body. I’m ok with the scars. It’s freeing to know that you don’t have to be able to walk to be able to live.