I’m going to ask you a series of questions during this post and I need you to answer them in your own mind. Honestly please. Imagine yourself when you were 15 or 16 years old. What did you foresee your life to be like when you were/are 27 years old? Graduated from college? Grad school even? Married? Single & traveling often?Holding down a full time job that you love? Kids? Own your own house? Move to a big city? Settled down in your hometown?The sky is the limit for who you dreamt and/or are dreaming you will be when you turned 27. And that is because every person dreams a bit differently and steps of life are not steps that are poured in stone. Anyways, take that list and circle any of them that two legs is required to have in order to be achieved. I’m sure there are some, don’t get me wrong. There has to be some in the limitless possibilities that life grants us. But I’m very confident that the list will be small. What are they? Do you have any circles? Why is 2 legs REQUIRED?

When I was 15, I dreamt of a Josie that would be graduated from college. She would have a couple kids, a home in the country, and would be teaching her oldest how to play baseball or basketball. She would be working full time and would come home to a husband that loved her, kids that laughed about 95% of the day (I would say 100% but 15 year old Josie was realistic), and talked to her mom just about daily to tell her how green the grass looked today or how she got a big ketchup stain on her shirt during lunch and what was the best way to get it out. She’d go on long bike rides with her kids often and run 2 miles daily. She drove a pretty nice car and would get in water fights with her kids & husband on Sundays when they washed it together as a family. 15 year old Josie had a pretty amazing idea of 27 year old Josie. And dang did she have some high ambition. And I’m pretty pleased to inform you, after going down the list, how dead on she was.

Despite being down a leg, my life is practically the way I pictured it would be when I turned 27. And that’s mostly because I didn’t let my dreams die with the flesh of that leg (Kind of a bad analogy, I know). I didn’t let my dreams get cut in half because I now need half as many shoes (yah, corny analogy again. I can’t help it). I can name maybe one or two things on that list that having one leg makes a bit more difficult but it doesn’t make them impossible. Don’t think one legged people can do races or marathons? Wrong. I haven’t personally, but my Peg Leg Dad friend has. Have “walk down the aisle” circled on your list? Wrong. Don’t let the term “walk down the aisle” fool you. I will say it’s more of a hop, but you make it down the aisle. I’ve done this first hand a couple months post amp at my sisters wedding. As long as that fire is still there to be your 15 year old idea of your 27, 37, or 107 self, no amount of limbs missing or loss of senses is going to cause you to lose that dream. Is it going to be hard? Of course. But dreams aren’t made to be easy even if you have all your body parts intact. And if they are inevitable, I don’t really think can really be called dreams. Are there some dreams that are highly likely? Of course. Like meeting someone & falling in love & getting married. Very likely for many. But not guaranteed. Unless you work for it and work at it. Someone with mental illness might have even wrote down make it to 27 on their dream list. There will be people that will find that to be a “goofy” dream, but for people who have to fight with their mind to be happy on the daily, it’s not. It’s a big dream. And a good one.

15 year old you imagined a life that is pure perfection for you. They dreamed big and went with their gut. Don’t let the now you stop chasing the big ones. Because just because you dreamed you would be somewhere specific in your life by the time you turned 27 and you aren’t, doesn’t mean you failed. It just means you developed new dreams between now & then and your heart knew how to prioritize. Failure isn’t hitting a theoretical deadline. Failure is being the person that extinguishes your own fire. So light it up my friends. The brighter the better. Impress the 15 year old you. And know happiness is out there. It’s obtainable. And you need to fight like hell to make sure it’s yours.

#TheOneLeggedMommy #Amputee #FifteenYearOldDreams #YoungDreams #NecrotizingFasciitis #DreamBig #HipDisarticulation #MentalHealth #Awareness #PEB #ProjectEverybodyBeautiful #GirlsWhoWearHats