shooting pain coming down from the top of my head from my neck all the way down
to the back of my hand
and I can't really move my ankle my knees to touch the gas pedal over the
brake pedal
that dry home was excruciatingly long and very very painful and at that moment
I kind of
thought about ending my life as soon as i got home i just fell fell to my knees
and I started crawling and
- the Ottoman of
my living room and I just told my boyfriend like I can't do this anymore
like
and then so much mean
I can't be all these drugs anymore
things you can change your medicine let's just go to holistic route
I changed my diet completely to an organic anti-inflammatory diet at
removes a lot of dairy and gluten which really implements my body I meditate
into yoga and I do a lot of acupuncture and so that's a lot of the homeopathic
stuff that I do and holistic stuff to treat Mary
that's the really kind of a big thing was living with you know
autoimmune arthritis is that it is so different than just you know your
grandma has a funky it's really good
stomach issue that dictates much my life
when you stop and start listening to yourself and when you start taking stock
of where you are in that moment and allowing yourself to just be in that
moment and home in that moment for yourself in
that moment is for nobody else in this really magical thing happens where you
can just sort of let go and you
you know I i I've happens at Tiffany's well you know sitting and meditating and
starting to understand the past two things that happen in my life for things
that are dealing with right now and it's amazing new just carve at that time for
yourself
you know what it can do for you
what is beautiful in your
point of view right now
it's just like for me as soon as I start running like I think I get in the zone
where it's just like I guess
it's automatic
the station
it's just me and
pavement my own thoughts and it's just
my doctor stain
run again you're never gonna do this
never going to
we are too weak
you're never going to
the last
my race we're running
and I see the finish line
in the back of my head I always have that
understand
I hate you you're ready grace
you are meeting our a
because look at you you ran this raised
those are really awesome
you know I wrote my first blog post in the middle of the night to start putting
it together and you know we're at first it was really just cathartic
because i was going through so much of the time with my own health that it was
really healing for me to just put it out there and just sort of creatively write
about it in my experiences and hope that others have learned from it and you know
I thought okay you know i started this blog and I've got my name
the hurt locker and everything I thought well I might as well reserve Twitter
whatever that thing is
I love blogging and writing and you know what I've been able to grow it into but
yeah I mean blog and started as a way for me to mint and grew into a way for
me to help support my community to help people understand what it's like to live
with the two types of arthritis that I have with rheumatoid arthritis and so on
the lights and no let them understand that he and keep living
despite these i find this real beauty in the struggling parts of nature like I
love taking photographs of you know these weird little plants that will crop
up in the middle of the sidewalk that
by all means look like they shouldn't live there but you know somehow they're
they're growing their plans that are somehow thriving in the midst of like
all this adversity in the obvious metaphor is there you know with me
living with my disease and so forth and me we're really helps me find
perspective about you know my place in the world and
how how I deal with you know my disease in other ways
yeah i mean that the term you know being a you know right exactly re actually I
mean it's super empowering to me and I think a lot of being an athlete is
setting those goals and you know finding ways to meet them so i think it's much
more about a mentality that it is necessarily about you know the
physicality of it
in sperm
over
inspiration
hope I inspire before
you know whatever challenges and
whether it's ra whether it's trying to live a healthy lifestyle whether it's
something completely different for me a big part of it is just committing to
trying every day and you know I try to tell people is that if you're trying
each day you're succeeding
when someone
you have to tell yourself that try it
yeah