00:00I knew instantly in the air that something really bad was going to happen. I never blacked out,
00:04but all I could hear was my coach in the corner just yelling at me to get back up.
00:19I used to be a Canadian national gymnast, and on July 15, 2008, I went to a very regular day
00:25of
00:25training, and my coach, who had been my coach for many years, asked me to do a skill that I
00:30had never
00:31heard of. It was something that we definitely fought about back and forth over the course of
00:36an hour, but because of the dynamics in our gym and me appreciating and respecting authority,
00:43I eventually broke down, and unfortunately, the second time I tried that skill, I landed headfirst,
00:49falling from the high bar, breaking my neck, and instantly becoming paralyzed. As a gymnast,
00:55you fall all the time, but you always get back up, and when I realized I couldn't, that's when I
01:01yelled back, and I said, I can't move, something's wrong, and he came over to me, and he's like,
01:08I've been touching you this whole time, and you can't feel it, and I said, no, and I was taken
01:13to
01:14SickKids Hospital, where I had immediate spinal surgery, and the rest of my life kind of changed
01:21from there. Reality of what I was going through, and just the nature of needing help to do everything
01:27was a lot, but I started treating my everyday physiotherapy like training, and I think that
01:34mindset of being an athlete really helped me to get through some of the most difficult parts of
01:40physical rehabilitation. In that whole journey, the hardest part was the mental struggles. I was also
01:48a teenager who was going through so many changes, and seeing my friends have a lot of firsts, and
01:56me not experiencing some of those milestones, so it was really difficult to love the people around me,
02:02but also struggle to see them live a full life that I would probably not be able to experience in
02:09the
02:09same way. In high school, I had an amazing teacher who suggested that I could use my voice, and so
02:16he suggested that I join the Toronto Metropolitan University program for radio and television arts,
02:23but I realized that the landscape for somebody with a disability at that time, this is about 10 years ago,
02:30wasn't necessarily set up for a person with a disability to succeed and really thrive in an
02:36entertainment reporting position. So that's when I decided to start my own podcast because I felt like
02:44it was my opportunity to use all of the skills that I had acquired, tell the stories that I wanted
02:50to
02:51tell while still remaining in entertainment. I feel so lucky that I can call this a job because it really
02:57does blend all the worlds that I love. It's storytelling, it's reporting, it's content creating, it's accessibility,
03:07it's advocating for my community, it's... I love it.
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