Humbly Courageous

Hello and welcome back, or if you are new around here welcome! I’m glad you are here. I hope my blog sheds light on what life can be like for a person who has lived with a lifelong disability. If you’ve been around, you know that I decided to give the world of stem cell treatments a try. At this point in my life, I have been offered very few “treatments” for my muscular dystrophy.  So, here we are and I’m preparing to receive my 4th round of SVF stem cells. This just means that they are my own stems cells that were extracted from me, processed and preserved, and I chose to bank them for future use. If you would like to know more, please refer to previous blog posts titled Unexpected Opportunity, A Meaningful Gamble and Moments Like This, as I went into detail about how each treatment went.  This time, is just like the last. I have already gone through the hard part of this treatment during treatments 1&2 where the cells were extracted, so now and future treatments really are a bree

Hello and welcome back, or if it’s your first time to Humbly Courageous, I’m glad you are here! Living in Indiana most of my life, aside from a 5 year wonderful hiatus in Memphis , TN, I am very accustomed to the 4 distinct seasons. There is something to love about each one if you ask me, but one in particular stirs up a lot of anxiety in me. Yes, it’s true. Summer causes me a lot of anxiety.  It’s not that I hate sunshine and warmer temperatures. Quite the opposite. I love the beauty and feeling of summer. It’s magical! The sunsets, butterflies, fireflies, blue skies and lush green trees.  The reason for the increase in anxiety is pretty simple. With summertime, comes a big increase in physical activity. When the boys were younger and in school, we had a routine. My body got used to the demands, and it was manageable because I knew what to expect, and how things would work for the most part each day. As summer break approached, I would hear other moms excitedly talking about how they

Hello and welcome back, or if you are here for the first time, welcome! As my oldest son approaches the end of his senior year, I find myself feeling a wide range of emotions from, oh my gosh I’m so proud of him, to oh my gosh he’s leaving home soon, and then the tears start falling. I’m not really surprised by these emotions because I’ve witnessed many moms I’m close to go through this already. Hearing about it and feeling it are two very different things! My mom was telling me she was sad too, but then she said, while it is sad, this is what you’ve been doing all this time as his mom. Preparing him and equipping him to leave and be a successful individual of society. She, as she usually is, was exactly right.  After that conversation, I had a lot of memories of my senior year surface. The second half of my senior year was actually a really difficult time for me. I doubt I was shedding much light on how difficult it really was for me to my friends, and probably not even my family. I l

Hello and welcome back, or if you are new here, thanks for stopping by! Part of what has been life changing for me, since finally being diagnosed about 3 1/2 years ago, after 44 years of searching, is by far, connecting with others who share my same struggles. Finding others who truly understand what life is like with a disability, really can make all the difference in the world! Especially when it’s the same diagnosis. It fills a void that so desperately needs to be filled, in my opinion. So, what do a 22 year old Australian woman and 47 year old American woman have in common? Turns out a lot actually. I met Rhi online (the memory of exactly how is a bit fuzzy for both of us 😊), and ever since we have had a great connection. We try to video chat regularly, and will usually talk for about 2 hours. We’ve also done an Instagram Live together, which was a lot of fun!  It’s fantastic. We not only talk about life with a disability, but loads of other things, as any friends would. We have a