COURTNEY GABRUS: Being a girl boss means that you have to put yourself first.
We started a start-up called MEEP. Now looking back at it, I’d literally accomplish anything. It’s resilience, power,
compassion and a lot of lessons.
COURTNEY GABRUS: I’m Courtney Gabrus, I’m 24 and I have muscular dystrophy and my rare disease
is one in a million.
COURTNEY GABRUS: Muscular dystrophy causes the muscle to weaken over time.
COURTNEY GABRUS: My mom is my role model. She’s a true girl boss.
MADELINE COURTNEY: Courtney’s form of muscular dystrophy is actually a very rare form. Only 3% of the
world’s population actually have her type of muscular dystrophy. The body is lacking a significant protein that
restores your muscles. With Courtney, the body is lacking that protein so it doesn’t restore it.
So, by the time Courtney turned 16, she didn’t have the muscle mass to be able to stand any longer.
This muscular dystrophy is so well known but yet my paediatrician had no kids in the practice of 4000
and Courtney was the only kid that ever had muscular dystrophy.
COURTNEY GABRUS: She taught me young to stick up for myself and to stick up for my disease.
Yeah, she’s my idol.
JAMIE LEVY: I met Courtney at North Shore High School, we had bakeshop class together and she was just a
spark of joy. She didn’t really even notice that she was disabled.
We did literally everything anybody else our age would do.
COURTNEY GABRUS: My voice was like, my actual like, love.
COURTNEY GABRUS: I took public speaking in college.
COURTNEY GABRUS: I woke up three days later with no voice.
COURTNEY GABRUS: Nothing! So, I was like, “What the hell happened?" And I couldn’t speak.
I was like, literally; I wanted to say like, “Why?”
JAMIE LEVY: I know for Courtney, it was probably the hardest thing. She’s so strong and acts like
it's not a big deal.
JAMIE LEVY: For her, because she has muscular dystrophy, she wasn’t able to move her body the way that
other people do. So, her voice was her way of communication, that’s how she was able to express
herself for who she was.
COURTNEY GABRUS: My family and my friend's kind of, literally went to the education store to buy me like,
flashcards.
COURTNEY GABRUS: So, there are like, we have an amount in time that we need to teach Courtney to literally
learn everything.
JAMIE LEVY: It all really came down to her mind-set, she could not control her physical life, her physical body,
she could not control her surroundings. She couldn’t control anything and even though she had a stroke
and couldn’t talk, she had to rewire her brain to speak.
COURTNEY GABRUS: Jamie said, “We have to do something.” We started a start-up called MEEP.
JAMIE LEVY: So, Courtney and I have been trying to think about how can we remove this stigma about
mental health, about disability, about talking about vulnerable things, about being real and genuine.
COURTNEY GABRUS: Ever since the stroke, I’ve been more grateful than anything about my friends and my
family because they stood by me when I was alone in my head.
COURTNEY GABRUS: You know, our age of people don’t really like going to the therapist.
JAMIE LEVY: It's a stigma.
COURTNEY GABRUS: Yeah, it's a stigma and if we can post real facts on the internet, it’ll probably cheer up
some person and that’s really what we wanted.
JAMIE LEVY: Yeah, help people help themselves. COURTNEY GABRUS: Yeah.
COURTNEY GABRUS: I think my message is like, live in the present. We’re so worried about the future that like,
we forget where we’re at, what we’re doing and like, how lucky we are to wake up this morning and breathe.
So, I’m here to spread it.