One week post-ankle surgery. I really thought I was going to tough this one out. I told myself I’d be brave, stay strong, keep pushing, maybe even get back to the gym right away. But somewhere between determination and common sense, reality kicked in. Why would I push myself for two weeks and risk aggravating the stitches on my ankle when healing is finally within reach? Going to the gym would mean constant transferring, constant friction, constant irritation to an area that desperately needs rest. And after everything I’ve already been through with my amputated leg — the open wounds, the spitting stitches, the endless setbacks — I just couldn’t justify sabotaging my own healing again. I had finally reached a point where I could start wearing my prosthetic again at the beginning of May, only for everything to come to a complete stop because of this ankle surgery. Yesterday, I decided to try anyway. I put the prosthetic on just to see if I could do it. But because my ankle currently has...
My Journey From Rock Bottom to Guiding Others Out of the Darkness I’ve been in the depths of despair more times than I can count. And every time, somehow, I’ve found my way back to the light—not because someone handed me a roadmap, but because I learned how to crawl, scrape, and claw my way out. That’s the only path I know: out of the darkness and toward the light. After my stroke, I hit rock bottom in more ways than one—physically, emotionally, spiritually. Life wasn’t just hard. It was suffocating and we were in the middle of a pandemic. I was exhausted from surviving. Tired of struggling. Tired of feeling trapped in circumstances that didn’t reflect who I truly was inside. And so I did the work. Not the kind of work where you journal for three days and suddenly manifest a Ferrari. I’m talking about the deep, gritty, ugly work. The kind where you face your anger, your fear, your trauma, your toxic patterns, your self-sabotage, your resentment, your victimhood, your grie...