More Than a Chair: Ryan Rae Harbuck – Paralympic Swimmer, Mother, Author & Survivor

When the people that you love are gone, when gifts that you didn't even know that you had are taken from you?

What then?

What are you to do at that moment?

When everything is wrong, you're now in a place you never asked to be and you want so badly to escape.

What then?

What do you do at that moment?

Welcome to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and I'm excited to welcome you inside.

What's happening, my friend?

And welcome back to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

How are you today?

It is episode number 185.

I am your host, Kevin Below, as well as a transformational life and business coach.

That's my fancy little titles, but you know, I'm just basically your ordinary 30-something still trying to find my place in the world.

I'm just hoping to make a difference in as many people's lives as possible along the way.

And to me, that's what living is all about.

Along this thing they called life, otherwise resembling the worst, craziest, funnest roller coaster you've ever been on, we no doubt experience the ups and the downs, and sometimes the double loops.

And along that way, we of course go through some good times and bad, but we have a heckload of fun and we come away with some stories to share.

Matter of fact, I've always realized throughout life that life really is just there for us to talk about later.

Because whatever it is that's happening, good or bad, is going to make for an awesome story later on.

When you're sitting around the table with your family or your friends, depending upon who the crowd is, you can embellish a little bit more than others.

But they all make for a really good story.

Today's guest, Ryan Ray Harbak, she was faced with the same predicament: a life full of stories.

Stories that needed to be shared with the world.

So what is a girl to do?

A girl like Ryan Ray Harbak, who has had this crazy life, has done some amazing things, has been through some really dark periods, also.

What is she to do?

Well, the only thing she can do, and that is to write a book.

That's right.

Today I am in the studio with Ryan Ray Harbaugh, a mother, a swim coach, an author, an incredible woman who I am truly blessed to have had the opportunity to meet.

At a time in Ryan's life when everything was going great, life was easy, carefree.

She was in high school.

Life didn't have the stresses.

It literally just had the hopes and the dreams for the future, the plans for life after school.

You can basically just say that Ryan, she was just a teenage girl having fun with her friends when then the blink happened.

The blink of an eye.

The blink of an eye when everything has changed.

When everything she ever knew was taken from her in an instant.

But in this life, change brings about both heartache and love.

It brings about triumph and tragedy, loss and gain, blessings and curses.

Because change was a change in direction, a change in your hopes, a change in the future.

And we may think that change is bad.

But the fact is that just because things may not be like they used to be, that doesn't mean that they still can't be great.

Ryan's story is highlighted by the blink.

It would rip her life apart from those she loved and from a part of her that she never even knew was a gift until that gift was taken away.

The gift of being able to walk.

Because this blink would leave Ryan Ray Harbaugh paralyzed.

But as you're about to discover that Ryan is a soul who is unstoppable.

She is a woman on a mission.

And today, Ryan is a beautiful example that sometimes when the road gets rough, the only thing we can do is to keep pushing, to keep moving forward, to keep traveling down the road, to not stop, to not give up, to not be focused on turning around.

Because as you travel down that road, you're gonna eventually come to realize that, oh, okay, I see now.

I see how this piece fit into that puzzle.

I understand why this happened and that happened.

Whether it was good or not, whether you wished it had happened or prayed that it didn't, it all was part of the journey.

And it all fits together in the end to form this beautiful picture of a person's life, of a person's journey.

Now there's gonna be a moment in this interview today when you're gonna think to yourself, wow, this woman is incredible.

At that moment, I want you to pause.

I want you to stop.

And I want you to think to yourself, who do I know who needs to hear this?

What person in my life do I know who needs to hear this story today?

And when you have that thought, at that very moment, I want you to share today's episode with them.

Scroll down and find the share button.

Share the URL if you're on the computer, send it to a friend.

Because I believe that the entire world should hear Ryan Ray Harback's story.

And I don't want people to hear Ryan's story, to be fearful about the what if, what could happen.

No, because Ryan's accident is just the bullet.

What makes Ryan who she is is what happened after the bullet.

After the moment that changed her life.

She then had a series of choices to make.

She chose to keep pushing, to keep moving forward, despite how different her life may be.

So with that said, I encourage you to step back, to turn up the volume, and leave it as I introduce you to Ryan Ray Hart.

Ryan, welcome into the podcast.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you so much, Kevin.

I'm so glad to be here today.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'm thrilled to have you here.

I'm thrilled to kind of really unpack your story for my audience today.

And and I would love, before we ever even get to kind of that pivotal point in in your teenage years, I would love to kind of look back at maybe life, you know, right before the accident.

Because at the time you were 16.

So would that mean you were maybe like a sophomore or junior in high school?

SPEAKER_01: Yep.

I was a junior in high school.

And right before my accident, it was winter.

I was competitively swimming for the high school.

I had grown up being a competitive swimmer, and that was really the thing that I excelled at.

I was inherently clumsy and never really good with ball sports and things, and swimming just seemed to be my niche.

And the high school that I went to is the largest in the state, and my graduating class had like 750 kids in it.

And so it was really easy to kind of get lost in community that big.

And so swimming sort of gave me a little bit of a community, but I was also kind of a shy kid.

I had a good strong friend base, but I wouldn't say that I like sat with the popular kids or anything like that.

And I definitely would have rather played the part of a wallflower in most social settings.

But I took pride in my work and I got good grades.

And I, you know, I was a fairly typical high schooler in my own view.

SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.

I love it so much.

Now, at that point in your life, did you have any kind of dreams at that point beyond high school?

Because at that age, we're starting to think about college, career paths.

Did you have any of those ideas in your head?

SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.

I think looking back, I it loved swimming, but I had been doing it for so long, I was feeling a little bit burnt out.

And so I remember thinking about like, ooh, in college, you know, maybe I could join a crew team or something to kind of like expand and and do something athletic that was a little bit different.

And so I remember kind of dreaming about that.

And before my accident, I really was drawn to like my English class and writing and reading, and and that was really where my interests were, which is, and I say that because it's kind of bizarre what happened after my accident and spending so much time in the hospital and having to learn about biology and anatomy and all of these things.

My interests really changed from that.

And so I ended up, when I actually went to college, I ended up studying biology after, you know, and and it's before that, I would have never considered that.

Science is not my strong suit and never has been.

It's never come easy, but I was just so interested in it after my accident that some I kind of like changed my path for myself in that regard.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Yeah.

The beautiful thing about life when we're forced into a pivot that we don't even don't even see coming yet kind of can set us off in a trajectory that things, like you said, that you never even knew you were interested in.

SPEAKER_01: Totally.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Well, take me back, if you would, and and kind of unpack for me the day of your accident, what was going on leading up to the accident, and then, of course, talking to me about the accident itself.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

My disclaimer on this whole conversation is that I have no memory of my accident.

And I also have no memory of even like the day before until about a week after.

And your brain does this beautiful thing of blocking out things that might be too traumatic for you to really process.

And so I have like little bits and pieces from the day and the day before my accident, but I don't really have a strong memory leading up to it, even.

And the little memories that I have are almost like little photographs, you know, less actual memories.

But I do know that my friends and I were getting ready for a high school dance.

It was the winter dance, which is uh girls ask the boys.

And at the time I had a boyfriend that I really wanted to invite to this dance.

He went to a different high school, and so he was also kind of shy.

And so I luckily was friends with his friends that went to his high school and was able to convince some of my girlfriends from the swim team to invite his friends to the game.

And so it was, I thought it was like pretty slick, and I had it raised because I had it was myself and two of my girlfriends from the swim team, and then three boys from this other school.

And we had planned to do kind of like the typical, this was back in the 90s, and so typical dinner, dinner, and we went and played laser tag, I think, and then headed over to the dance.

And from there, we were, I believe we were our plan was to go back to one of the other girls' houses and watch a movie.

But while we were at the dance, we ran into another friend of this group of boys that they they all went to the same school and they said, We're gonna go midnight bowling.

Do you guys want to join us?

And so that's when we changed our plans and and we decided that we were gonna go midnight bowling with them after the dance.

And in route to go bowling, that's when our accident happened.

Like I said, I have little, I have no memory of it, and really nobody else does.

They don't really know why the car did what it did, but it was we were riding in an SUV, the six of us all fit in, it was a suburban in the 90s, so you can, you know, pretty big vehicle.

I was in the very back seats with my boyfriend.

There are smaller seats.

I had a belt, a seat belt, but somehow the car ended up flying across a grass median on the highway and hit another car head on.

And everybody was injured.

There were two fatalities that night.

I ended up, the paramedics told me later, that I broke through the side window of the car.

And it's really eerie because I was so far away from the scene that they knew that I existed, but they couldn't find me.

They knew, and talking to the kids that were conscious at the time, that there were three girls and three boys, but they couldn't find me.

And finally they followed spots of blood on the pavement from where I had bounced to locate me.

And when they got to me, the paramedic said that I wasn't breathing, I had a very weak pulse, I wasn't responsive.

And so they didn't really know what how much they could do, how much life was left in me.

And so really what I was told was that they just kind of plopped me on to a gurney and sent me to the hospital and hoped I made it there.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

How quickly life can change.

SPEAKER_01: Right.

Yeah.

And, you know, and especially as a 16-year-old, that's not that's not the thing that you're thinking about as you're driving down the road that your life really can change at any moment.

But I think that because I don't remember the tragedy of it, it certainly made it easier for me to kind of separate and truly believe that I've lived two lives, one before my accident and one after.

And they don't intermesh a ton.

Sometimes they do, but just sort of, it was like I was given a different chance and I had to learn what that new life was going to be like.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Now, now before we continue on with your own story, if you don't mind me asking, what happened with the other people in the car?

I know you said that there were some people who lost their life.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

So the driver of the vehicle that we hit was killed instantly.

And as was my boyfriend who was sitting next to me in the vehicle.

When the crash happened, he ended up flying through the back cargo space and was killed instantly that way.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Now you said there were there were six people total in the suburban.

Did the rest of them sustain injuries?

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

In fact, there were two people, a boy and a girl from that night who sustained traumatic brain injuries, which was something that I hadn't even had heard of in my 16 years.

And, you know, it's you think about injuring parts of your body, but you never really think about what would happen if you injured your brain.

And so both of these individuals are okay today, and they live a fairly normal life.

But one of them was in a coma for quite a while.

And when she came out, she couldn't, she didn't know how to eat, talk, walk.

She basically had to relearn how to live again in every, you know, from an infant stage.

And the other person, he his brain injury really affected his temper.

And so he really had to learn how to navigate life in a different sort of emotive way.

Both of them deal with memory loss and, you know, just day-to-day struggles that way.

And so, you know, that's really, really difficult.

And you don't really think about injuring your brain in that manner.

And and your brain and your spinal cord sort of work the same way in that if you injure one of those cells or some of those cells, they don't grow back the way that your skin does, or that, you know, some other part of your body that you injure, you know, can kind of grow back fully and and renew itself.

And your brain and your spinal cord just don't work that way.

And so that's why those injuries are so much different.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

So now talk to me about the extent of the injuries that you sustained.

SPEAKER_01: So obviously, my most notable injury was that I sustained a spinal cord injury from what they assumed was from bouncing and hitting the pavement.

They said it looked like I had sat down really hard, and I had pulled and stretched my spinal cord so much that those cells were injured and were not going to grow back.

I have a complete spinal cord injury, which means I have no feeling or movement from about my rib cage down.

But beyond that, I had just torn up both of my legs to where I have skin grafts on both of my legs now.

My lungs were collapsed.

I had broken both arms, my hips, my shoulder, pretty much I think anything that you can think of.

And I do recall probably the first week after being in the hospital in the ICU, I had been given like the long list of the my injuries.

And I remember asking the doctor if I broke any toes.

And he was so confused and said, I don't, I don't know.

You probably did.

You know, as a 16-year-old, that you focus on some silly things sometimes.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

Now, this might be a difficult question, you know, looking back at it now, but can you remember the first time that you you actually like have memory following the accident?

SPEAKER_01: So I sort of do.

And it was this very bizarre, almost like an out-of-body experience where I knew I was in the hospital.

I also knew everything that had happened.

I knew about that night.

I knew about the loss of my boyfriend, but I also knew that nobody knew that I knew that.

Okay.

So I recall telling myself, like, I better ask what happened, because that's what you do.

That's what you see on the movies.

You know, somebody wakes up and they say, What happened?

And so I actually remember that.

I remember, you know, having to ask the doctors and the nurses and and my parents what had happened, but I already knew.

And it and so it was kind of silly and a little bit bizarre in terms of just like what you think you're supposed to do in a in a tragedy.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

So let me ask you, because I'm kind of curious about this.

So so how do you think you knew that your boyfriend had died?

SPEAKER_01: Well, later on, after well after the accident, well after I got out of the hospital, we were able to meet with the paramedics that were there that night.

And one of them did share with me that I was conscious on the way to the hospital, and I was explaining to them that I couldn't feel my legs, and I don't even know what else.

But and so I think there was a, you know, a part of me that was extremely aware of everything that evening.

And my brain wasn't willing to soak it all in, but I was going to be able to be present enough to survive.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so here you are.

You're a 16-year-old girl, you've been in this traumatic car accident, your boyfriend has died, you've been left paralyzed from the chest down, you're in the hospital with all these injuries.

What's going through your head?

What's swirling around in your head at that moment?

SPEAKER_01: You know, I I think that I I've always said this.

I've always said that I think the fact that I was so young when my accident happened, I think that it served me really well because I didn't know much beyond what I knew, which was, you know, from an athlete's perspective, if you practice something, you get better.

And you know, kind of like a routine.

And so I really sort of just took it in as like, okay, well, this is my new life now.

And so how do I get to do this again?

How do I get to go to the mall with my friends?

Because that's what I care about.

How do I, how am I going to go to the movie theater and where am I going to sit?

That's what, those are the things that I started to focus on.

And it wasn't, I didn't go backwards.

I think that when you're young, you don't really have that ability to dwell and to really like go backwards on on regret and thinking, why me?

And and so it was more like, well, okay, so this is my life.

I get it.

It's whatever, but how do I get to them all?

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

It's it's ignorance is bliss.

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So how long did you end up staying in the hospital?

SPEAKER_01: So overall, I spent about four months in the hospital.

The first month was in the ICU.

I was hooked up to a ventilator machine because of my collapsed lungs.

And so until my lungs were well enough and until I could get off that machine, I was going to sit in the ICU unit.

And so then from there I moved to what they just called a multi-trauma unit in the hospital.

And then I spent about three weeks there.

And then after that, I moved to a rehab facility literally next door.

And it happens to be one of the best brain injury and spinal cord injury hospitals in the country.

It just luckily it was about five miles from my house at the time.

And so there I spent the next two plus months, sort of, it sounds silly, but sort of learning what life was going to be like in a wheelchair and learning how to do things like open doors or put pants on and it, you know, all the little things that you take for granted every day.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.

No, I mean, that's crazy.

Now, during this time in the hospital and rehab, was there anybody, maybe, I don't know, a hospital staff worker or maybe even another patient who like you stands out in your your memory of maybe being somebody who I don't know, maybe you made a connection with or somebody who gave you encouragement, hope, anything like that?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.

And immediately a nurse stands out in my mind that was at the rehab facility.

And she had kids my age at the time and just sort of really took me under her wing.

I remember she drove me to her house to have dinner one night as an outing, and she really just went above and beyond to just care for me and make me feel comfortable, you know, as if I were in her own home or my own home.

I do also think that at the time of my accident, there were a lot of other teenagers in the spinal cord injury unit of the rehab facility, and I think that that really helped too, because it was kind of like, oh, there's all these kids here, and we can hang out and play and be silly and sort of reminded me that I was still me, no matter what.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

You're still just a kid, just a teenager.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any of those other teenagers connected with or stayed in touch with?

SPEAKER_01: No.

And it's it, you know, I it was such this sort of like emotional pull because it was so great to be connected with them and to be able to be going through similar things with them.

But every single one of the teenagers that were in there with me, they started getting feeling back or um being able to move their foot.

And and I was the only one that didn't get any sort of return.

And so there was actually a, you know, a lot of of jealousy associated with it too, because it was like, well, when is my turn?

When when am I going to move my foot in the therapy pool today?

And no, it's not, it's not my turn.

Okay, well, all right.

And so I think that I don't think that's why we didn't keep in touch, obviously, but I think that everybody sort of like has their own path.

And especially uh thinking about what hospital life is compared to what real life is.

And no matter how much the hospital tries to prepare you for, you know, leaving their doors and living your normal life, it's it's never the quite the same.

And so I think that, you know, once you do sort of step outside the hospital for the first time and and you start to live what's going to be your new life, you just you just go, you move forward.

And so I think that I lost touch with these people because I was I was just going.

I was moving.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

Now we'll get to your book later on the conversation, but but I want to ask you about something inside of your book.

And it talks about an outing that you do with another patient where you guys kind of, I don't know if you're allowed to leave on your own, but you left and went to the mall.

Tell tell me about that story because I found it so just like a reminder that we're talking about teenagers here.

Yeah.

And so unpack that story for me.

SPEAKER_01: So this is actually the first chapter of my book, and I intentionally started it this way because I think that it's a great way for a reader or for somebody that's interested to really understand what my life was at that point.

You know, I like you said, I was a kid, I was a teenager, and I was gonna make stupid mistakes and, you know, for the the sake of adventure and figuring out what I could do.

So it was a Saturday morning, and in hospital world, nothing happens on the weekends.

There's no physical therapy, there's no special, you know, game sessions or anything like that.

And so one of the other inpatients who was a wheelchair user, he was a few years older.

He had knocked on my door that morning and said, Let's go to the mall.

And I said, What do you mean?

And he said, Let's just the bus dropped, you know, you we can catch the bus down the street and it'll take us right to the mall.

And so I said, Okay.

And that was clearly not something we were allowed to do.

But we did it anyway.

And at this point, like I had, I was barely pushing myself on a consistent basis in my wheelchair.

I still had a back brace, a big, I call it tortoise shell plastic back brace, so that I couldn't even like lean forward all the way to you, you know, really use my whole upper body for strength.

I recall this poor guy in his own wheelchair having to push his wheelchair against my wheelchair to get us up a hill.

And um, but it was I it was such a formative experience for me.

And, you know, so much more than I could ever realize at the time, because it was me gaining some independence and realizing that my life was whatever I was going to make of it.

And and it could it be the same.

It couldn't be the same, but it be could be just as rewarding, if not more rewarding, in the end, because I was able to have this new perspective about what life really is about and what you know, the kind of courage that your everyday takes and being proud of myself.

And those were all like really profound things for a 16-year-old to sit with.

And so it all just transpired because we wanted to go to the mall and and and we did it, and we had a great time and we got completely scolded when we got back, but it was like it was such an open door for me into what what my life really could be moving forward.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I and I think that it is so powerful.

This this fun story of just teenagers being teenagers, breaking out of the hospital and going and having fun for the day.

It's a powerful, you know, just powerful representation of exactly what you just said, that your life wasn't over.

It was just gonna be different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now talk to me getting back into quote unquote real life after the hospital.

What was this transition like?

Did you go back to high school?

How did that all go?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

So by the time I got out of the hospital, it was the end of May that year.

And so I really had the entire summer to kind of navigate my new world and figure out what it was going to be like, what sort of mistakes I was gonna make, trial and error stuff.

And so I'm really blessed with that.

I uh was able to get my driver's license that summer, and I think that that was a really big move in terms of in independence.

I learned to drive with hand controls.

SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01: Because I I mean, before that, I think I had had my driver's license for just a couple months when my accident happened.

And so I was able to, you know, get that driver's license, and that gave me a lot more mobility in terms of just being able to get myself around places.

And, you know, I said like trial and error stuff.

I had these like wheelie bars on the back of my wheelchair so that I wouldn't tip backwards.

And I think it was I think I had been out of the hospital just a few weeks, and I was with a friend and we were, I don't even know where we were going, but we ended up leaving the parking lot with my wheelie bar sitting on her roof of her car, and so I lost them.

And so then from that point on, I had to learn how to navigate life without wheelie bars, you know, and it's just just little things like that that occurred over that time.

And then uh going back to school, I went back to school in the fall for my senior year.

The high school that I went to was really, really accommodating, and I got different school credits actually for the time that I spent in the hospital.

They gave me, I think, like math and science and gym credit just for being in the hospital.

And yeah, I read a couple books and they gave me English credits and social studies credits, and so I was on track still to graduate that year because our so the high school I went to was like a very small college campus.

It was four buildings long, essentially.

And so navigating that from a wheelchair was very exhausting at first.

And so the school worked it out that I only had to go to school the first four periods in the morning, and then I could go home.

And I remember going home and just sleeping the rest of the afternoon.

Yeah, I was just so exhausted.

My body just wasn't prepared for you know all the pushing that I had to do, and even just like sitting upright after uh spending that much time in a bed, it really, really depletes you very quickly.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

Curious.

The wheelchair itself.

Now, I'm asking this question out of my own experience when I went blind.

Our stories mirror each other in so many different avenues.

You know, from me becoming blind when I was in my junior year of high school from a, you know, uh, you know, brain tumor totally unexpected, going back for the start of my senior year, but only going back for a portion of the day and then the rest spent at home.

But one thing though that I'm curious about is were you ever embarrassed of the wheelchair?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.

I mean, I used to being a teenager and especially I, you know, I mentioned before my accident, I was really content just being kind of like a wallflower and just fitting in and not being noticed.

And then all of a sudden I went back to school, and not only did everybody know who I was and what had happened, but if they didn't, then they sure did when they saw my wheelchair.

And a lot of the classes that I sat in weren't really equipped for a wheelchair user.

And so I remember there was like one class that I had to sit at my teacher's desk because it was the only place I could fit.

And, you know, they had all most of the classrooms had those desks that have the chairs that are attached with like a metal bar.

And so that was like kind of goofy.

I would just like sit next to it.

And yeah, I write about in my book how I had this like huge internal turmoil about how was I gonna carry my backpack to make it cool.

And nobody could nobody could tell me what the answer was, what was going to actually be cool.

And so, yeah, I think that I think I actually probably spent several years just trying to make my wheelchair as small as possible.

You know, maybe somebody wouldn't see it if I could get like invisible paint for it or something.

You know, I just it just I just didn't want to be in the public eye in that regard.

But I think I also learned early on that that wasn't really a possibility.

Yes.

And just just by the nature of it.

And so I really had to sort of like swallow hard and embrace that I was gonna have to, it was like my job from then on to let the world know that I was okay and that, you know, they didn't nobody had to worry about me, and I could be, you know, quote, a normal person.

And so because I, you know, I had that that single year in high school left as a senior, and then I went off to college.

And so that's when I really started realizing that this is it's kind of my job to make everybody know that this is this is okay, this is gonna work.

And I could no longer really play the role of that wallflower.

And I had to really sort of like transition my true self.

I couldn't be shy and an introvert.

It just, it wasn't gonna work.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.

And I I wanna, I wanna come back to that.

And and I just have to say though, you know, with with my previous question, you know, I had to ask it because I know when I went blind, that's how I felt about the cane that I was given a mobility cane.

And especially, especially when I found out that it was white with a with a with a red tip in my head, it was black.

It was a black.

And then they tell me it's white.

And I'm like, and I remember just crying and being so upset, like, this is absolutely horrible.

Now, now, as the years went on and I finally came to understand that, you know what, I don't have to be like every other quote, blind person.

And so now my cane is a really cool blue-gray color.

And I don't care if it goes against what mainstream is supposed to be.

I'm like, you know what?

Y'all get to change your outfit colors, I get to change the color of my cane.

So, so yeah, so that's why I had to ask that question.

But but back to kind of, you know, where where you left off is as you kind of said earlier, is it truly the significance of this is truly like you say kind of a new life, a 2.0 version.

You know, a reinvention of yourself.

So now you've you've made it back to high school, you graduate high school, you go off to college.

Was college there where where you lived, or did you go away?

SPEAKER_01: So I actually stayed in state for college, some partly due to the fact that I missed half of my junior year, and that's when you take all of your standardized tests, like the ACTs and SATs.

And and so I I had to pick one of those tests because I was so behind.

And so I picked the one that I thought was easier, but then it was gonna be the one that the in-state colleges looked at.

And at that point, it was like, I don't care, it doesn't matter, I don't care.

I just I'm just gonna go somewhere.

And I recall picking there was too we have two major in-state colleges in my state, and I picked the other one because my dad worked in the same town as the one I didn't choose.

Because I was like, well, I think I could I could be a little bit farther away.

SPEAKER_00: I mean that's okay.

I love it.

I love it.

We get we got to get some independence here, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I love it.

So talk to me, and you can fast forward however fast we need to fast forward, but kind of at that point, what's the pivot point where where life really starts taking off, leading you down the road that you're on today?

SPEAKER_01: Well, I think through a lot of just, you know, growing experiences, growing up experiences, I started to pay attention to the fact that I felt like I was just following a path that was sort of laid out for me.

And I, you know, and perhaps I developed that thinking because it made my accident easier to swallow, thinking like everything happens for a reason and you are meant to do certain things.

And so I think I sort of adopted that way of thinking.

And but because of that, I also think that I just sort of like let go to the universe and was able to open a lot of doors for myself because I allowed those doors to be there.

I wasn't going to fight to be something that I wasn't.

After I graduated from college, I was coaching swimming, and from there that led me into teaching.

I taught high school for nine years.

During that time, I went back to swimming for myself because I realized that I felt like I had a lot of sort of like unresolved regrets, maybe from just like my own personal quest is in swimming.

And so that led me to train and swim for Paralympics, and I went to the Paralympic trials.

That was sort of like my big goal to back up just a little bit.

I had had suffered from a pretty bad health scare in the middle of my teaching years where I had to stop teaching completely.

I had to basically withdraw from everything that I was doing.

I was on bed rest for eight months.

And during that time, I just kept dreaming about swimming.

And it was like the one thing that kept me sane.

It kept me thinking about the world ahead of me.

And so once I was well enough, once I was healed, I got back in the pool and I made a promise to myself that I was going to be sort of an example for the world of what would happen if you put 100% of yourself into something.

You know, what comes of it?

And so I went back to teaching and I loved sharing that with my students and sort of like my journeys to travel to go to different swim meets and my progress, and and I just really put my full self into it, so much so that I was getting up at 3:30 every morning to go swim before I went to go teach.

There were days where I'd swim also in the evening, and then I was I was essentially footing the bill for me to go to different swim meets all around the country and even in Canada, and I swam.

I ended up swimming four Paralympics at the Pan Am Games in Guadalajara, Mexico that year.

And so then I had really set my sights on the Paralympic trials, and that was back in 2012.

And that was sort of like the pinnacle of this is my goal and this is what I'm trying for.

And, you know, and as I say, like I kind of fell into that, and you know, the world sort of opened up for me a little bit to allow me to kind of reach these goals and and get what what I r really desired out of it.

And I went and swam at this meet and I did really well.

And I, you know, I really did through all of this put a hundred percent of myself into it.

And so when the time came and I didn't make the Paralympic team, I was okay.

I didn't have regret.

I didn't, I knew that I had done everything in my power, and I felt this very strange sense of contentment that I had never really had before.

And it was because I knew that I had done everything right and I had done everything to get to where I was, and it was okay.

And, you know, and then and then it's wild how the universe kind of opens itself up for you sometimes, and and that's where I ended up also meeting my husband, and he was a coach, was coaching a little person on deck, and we had just had a brief encounter and ended up connecting, and we were going to talk about Paralympic swimming and how it's so different than able-bodied swimming, and just kind of stay connected that way.

But yet in three months, and I'm not I'm not exaggerating, in three months from the day we met, we were married.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

She moves fast in the water, fast in relationships.

I like it.

I mean, only when they're right.

Yes, yes.

Well, that oh my gosh.

Well, okay, so we're gonna come back to the relationship side, but back to the swimming pool.

So talk to me.

How what does swimming look like in your situation?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, that's a great question.

Well, I think that swimming is something obviously that I it was a very, very big part of my life before my accident, but it became even more empowering afterward because it after my accident, after being paralyzed, it became the one activity, the one sport, the one really anything that I could do without any assistive devices, without a wheelchair, without any equipment, and just me in the water.

And because I really can only move and feel my arms, upper body, and upper torso, not even, I don't really have much trunk mobility.

When I swim, it's just my arms.

And my legs do provide a fair amount of drag, which, if any of your listeners are swimmers, you will know that drag is like the epitome of a swimmer's like death.

SPEAKER_00: To put it lightly.

SPEAKER_01: Right, exactly.

And so uh, you know, I swimming is very hard physically to do with just your upper body and your legs dragging behind you.

But the benefit outweighs any sort of struggle in that room, you know, it's just my whole body can float and I just feel very free in the water.

Having grown up a swimmer, very used to just kind of going back and forth, and you get really lost in your thoughts and your breathing, and it's and it becomes really meditative and and wonderful.

And so I've always been drawn to swimming and that world and and being able to continue it after my accident, it was I think that that saved me in some in some ways.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I love that so much.

So so talk to me about your relationship.

You you meet this guy, three months later, you're married, and then you end up becoming a mom.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

When I met my husband, he was living in in North Carolina, so we were all the way across the country from each other.

And so when we first started interacting, we were emailing and texting, and then we quickly moved on to Skyping each other and having these like Skype dates every couple nights.

And it was like a really, really cool way to get to know somebody because you took out all of the extras, you took out the the the movies and the flowers and the you know, all the fluff that doesn't really matter, and it was just us talking for hours, and so we were very quickly really able to learn about one another on a very, very real level, and I think that that is what made it work, and so we knew pretty quickly that like this was it, and so he came, we met in in a June, and he came

out to visit in August, and we went camping around the state for like a week, and then I think that kind of solidified it for us.

We're like, okay, this is it, and so then we made plans, and the following month I flew to North Carolina and met his family.

We celebrated his birthday and then got married the next day.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, y'all figured if you can camp together, you can be married.

SPEAKER_01: Totally.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.

So that is just that is absolutely incredible.

Now, talk to me about becoming a mom.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

And so, you know, I think like all along before I met my husband, I never really thought that hard about being a mom.

I think it was something that I always wanted, but was worried that it wouldn't happen in my life.

And I didn't want to have that disappointment.

So I never really let myself think about it too much.

But once I met my husband, and once we were married, it was it was really clear that I did want to have children, and we didn't really know what that was gonna look like, but we both decided that it was worth, you know, kind of trying and seeing what happened.

And I was able to get pregnant pretty easily, and I had a, you know, I I actually I have two children.

My firstborn, he we had a fairly regular pregnancy, I would say, very uneventful.

However, as I progressed and as I got closer to my due date, I kept wondering, am I going to know when I'm in labor?

And nobody could answer that for me because there aren't that many circumstances of paralyzed women that have had had their own babies.

And, you know, I can I remember just like Googling, looking for information anywhere on the internet, and I couldn't really come up with anything solid and concrete.

And beside that, every person that has a spinal cord injury is so different.

You know, I you could put me next to somebody that has the exact same spinal cord injury as I do at the exact same level, and we may feel and move completely differently.

Because your spinal cord works so differently.

And so nobody could really tell me the answer to any of my questions.

And so I remember at my OB was really wonderful in the fact that she was very, very confident in me and of my own capabilities and how I knew my body so well.

And she was very encouraging, which almost made me feel worse because it was like, somebody's gotta tell her that I don't know.

And so she agreed that I would go in and have regular visits with her, I think like once a week, maybe twice a week, as I was getting nearer my due date.

And the way that it happened was I it was 38 weeks to the day pregnant.

I had an appointment, just a routine appointment with her.

My husband and I had coached a morning swim practice that morning, and I was just kind of feeling crummy.

Like there was nothing outwardly that I could say that I was complaining about, but I just wasn't feeling good.

And so we got to the appointment and I was sharing that with my OB.

And she said, Well, you know, I I you don't seem, you know, you seem like you're okay, you seem fine.

Let me just go ahead and check your cervix.

I'm sure you're gonna go full term, you still have two more weeks, everything will be great.

And then lo and behold, she goes to check me, and I will never forget her face.

She stands straight up and said, I feel hair, you need to go to the hospital.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, and so from that moment, we, you know, we were whisked to the hospital.

I still had no idea I I could not feel contractions.

Even once we got to the hospital and I got hooked up to the contraction monitor, I was watching visibly the contractions happening on the monitor, and I could not feel a thing.

Luckily, you know, we were at the hospital, we were taken care of.

I was able to push my baby out naturally.

Nobody, you know, nobody can tell me how that happened or why that happened.

He was born healthy and happy just a few hours after we got there, which is, you know, I feel very, very lucky, very, very blessed because if I hadn't had that appointment in the morning, who knows where he would have been born.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: And so then getting with my second child, I was very, very nervous the entire pregnancy.

And I was very, very concerned that I was going to have him in the middle of the night while I was sleeping and not even wake up, you know?

Um I was having all sorts of nightmares about all the different places that this child was going to be born and when.

And so, I mean, I don't even think I slept that entire pregnancy.

But as we got nearer, my OB, the same one from my first pregnancy, I would be comfortable inducing you at the first day of your 39th week.

And so, you know, it wasn't exactly a solved problem there, but it gave me a little bit of a plan.

It made me feel a little bit better that we had like something to work with.

But still, I mean, from about my 20th week on, I kept thinking I was gonna have half him any seconds.

But I could plan for that that induction, and and you know, it's kind of wild how your mind and your body sort of play into each other.

And uh leading up to that induction, the night before my husband and I, we had a coached a swim meet together, and then we were dropped my son off at my dad's house to spend the night, and we went out to dinner, and the whole time I kept telling him, like, my this like funny side pain.

I think this baby's sitting really goofy in me, and and gosh, it it feels so funny.

I almost feel it in my teeth, and and just kind of like played it off because I knew, or at least I thought I knew, that I couldn't feel contractions.

And so I actually ignored it.

And then the next morning I woke up and I was still kind of having that weird, dull side pain.

I told my husband, don't even worry about coming into the the induction yet.

Everything I've read says these things take hours, and I'll just call you in a little bit.

And so I drive myself to the hospital and get checked in.

I was telling the nurse, like, yeah, I had these like side pains, and it's like such a kind of weird feeling.

And she hooks me up to the contraction monitor, and I am in active labor.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

SPEAKER_01: And my second born was born two hours later.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

So I was just, I mean, I to this day, I just feel very, very lucky, very, very blessed for both of my children to have been born in hospitals the way that they were supposed to be.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Now, if you don't mind me asking, how old were you when when you you had your your first child?

Like I tried to think like how long that was after your accident.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was, I believe I was 34.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Okay.

Wow.

So I just I look at you and I think like, such a tremendous journey you've been on.

And you know, and and what and goes back to what you said at the beginning of our conversation today is this idea that you wouldn't have chose this this new life, the accident to have happened.

But in some kind of weird, crazy, beautiful way, it all kind of works out.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.

I think that that's really the the way to look at life is you know, you can't always design it the way that you want.

And really your perspective on your world is all that matters.

And if you b truly believe that you have a wonderful life, no matter what anybody else looks at you and thinks, then you have that life.

You have that life that you want and desire.

And and that's something that I I really hold on to.

And something I've been really sort of thinking about in recently is how much I feel like the word disability and people with disabilities in general really have had something added to their lives, not taken away.

And that's something that I think that that the general public needs to understand a little bit more because clearly everybody that's got a disability had some sort of struggle and had to rise against something.

And what that does is that really, really does add to your life.

And if we could all just look at it, you know, that way, wouldn't that be wonderful?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I agree 100%.

And I think I think that happens by sharing more and more stories like yours.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: You know, I I think that's how it happens.

Now I have to ask, you're you're a mom, you're a wife, you're you're all these things, swim instructor, you're doing all the things.

What possessed you to then try to write a book?

SPEAKER_01: That is a valid question.

You know, I think that looking back, writing is something that I have always been doing.

And whether I was admitting to it or not, it was really something that has always kind of kept me grounded and kept me reflecting and moving forward.

And I think that when I started writing this book, that wasn't my intention.

My intention wasn't to create a book, it was I have some stories that some of them are painful and they just need to get out of my own person and it need to be on a paper somewhere.

And some of the stories were things that I realized that I had been sharing with students and kids over and over again as like life lessons.

And so I just started writing them and compiling them.

And and it wasn't until, you know, several years later that I realized that, hey, this could actually be a book.

And so when I was pregnant with my second child, that's when I really, really decided that I wanted to create a book out of all of these stories.

And and I think if if any of your listeners are parents, especially moms, you realize that, you know, as you have children, you lose a little bit of yourself and not in any sort of a negative way, but I knew that by having the second child that there was going to be a little bit less of myself in the world.

And so I really, really wanted to make sure that I had the energy to get this book out.

And lo and behold, my son turned three just after my book came out.

So it still took me quite a while to get it out in the world.

But but it was also just a really fabulous way for me to put all these stories together and realize for myself for the first time all of the lessons that I had truly learned and all the themes that were have been so recurrent in my life.

One of those being how much strength comes from vulnerability.

And I feel like so many of my stories and the things that I really pride myself on have come at from just the most darkest, you know, naked vulnerabilities that anybody could possibly feel.

And that's where, you know, so much power lies in that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree so much.

Now, just a couple more questions for you, but before we even get to that, go ahead and tell my audience name of your book and the best place to find it.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

So my book is called When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Chair.

And the best place to find it is on Amazon.

And right now it is available in three formats.

It's paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

SPEAKER_00: Okay, wonderful.

Unpack the title for me.

What does that mean?

SPEAKER_01: Believe it or not, the title comes from a very true real story.

When I was a young child, probably about the age of three or four, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I told people I wanted to be a chair.

And my mother shared this with me, you know, when I was much older, and we would laugh and giggle about it.

And I always tried to come up with what, where that came from, what I really meant by it.

And I, the only thing I can consider was that I have a younger sister that's three years younger, and I thought perhaps maybe I was thinking if I were a chair, somebody would actually let me hold her.

But, you know, in a very serendipitous, wild way, um, my wish was granted.

And as I was writing my book, realized that that chair is such a metaphor and that it's something that everybody, everybody has a chair of some sort in their life.

And that's it's even, you know, I wrote about it on the back of my book about how everyone has a chair, it's something that you're bound to, something that defines you, you know, whether you want it to or not.

And it's what you do with it that that really matters.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love it.

Last question for Ryan at 16 years old, and she just had her life flipped upside down, what would you tell her right now?

SPEAKER_01: That almost makes me tear up.

And I don't know why.

I would just tell her like breathe and go.

That's it.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just live.

Just keep pushing.

SPEAKER_01: Yep.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

I love it.

Ryan, you are a breath of fresh air.

Your your story is so powerful in so many different ways, highlighted by the fact that it's about you.

And you are such a beautiful, amazing woman doing incredible things.

I just want to applaud you for the fact that you kept living your life.

And I think that's very admirable and very just like encouraging to us all that even in the midst of the storms, there's always, you know, a rainbow at the end.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Thank you so much, Kevin.

It's been really nice to talk to you, and I knew it would be.

SPEAKER_00: Well, well, thank you.

And uh so so yes, I mean, just thank you for being here, Ryan.

It means the world to me.

For you, my listener, I want to thank you for being here as well, for being a part of this conversation with Ryan today, this incredible soul who just has so much to give.

And as we said in our conversation today, we can't control what happens in this life.

But what we can control is how we react to it.

So I remind you in your day-to-day life, when things are tough and things don't go your way, realize that that's okay.

What you need to focus on is how you're gonna react to it.

And that's how you define your legacy.

With that said, my name is Kevin Lowe, host of Grit Race and Inspiration.

Now it's your turn to get out there and take on the day.

Hey, real quick before you go, I have one last thought to leave you with.

I of course hope that you've enjoyed today's episode, but more importantly, I want to remind you that I never want you to listen to an episode of this podcast to hear something that I have to say or that my guest has to share.

And think, wow, I wish I could be like them.

I wish I could overcome my own challenges and do the great things that they are doing.

But I just can't.

Well, friend, that's when you're wrong.

You are capable.

You are capable, and you darn sure are deserving of having all that you can imagine in this life.

There's nothing special about me or any guests I have on this podcast.

We are all just normal people trying to make it in this life.

And so I encourage you to take a look at yourself in the mirror and remind yourself that you know what?

I can do it.

Now, of course, if you would like to help along that way, reach out to me.

Whether that's a listener of the podcast of Grid.

Or if you'd like to work with me as a coach, my contact information is inside of every episode of show notes, just like this one.

So go down, check out my contact information, and reach out to me today.

With that said, I encourage you to take on the day every day.

It's grid, great, and it's grid.