Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Amanda Ray Beard is an Olympic gold medalist.  She attended her first Olympic games in Atlanta at the age of 14.  There she won a gold medal and two silver medals.  The media took many photographs of her approaching the pool carrying her teddy bear.  She went on to compete in two more Olympic games earning her a total of 7 medals.  Her Olympic notoriety was a springboard to her lucrative modeling career.  She appeared in magazines such as FHM and Sports Illustrated.  But amidst all of this fame Amanda was struggling on the inside.  She felt unworthy of her success.

Unbeknownst to her, she was battling with clinical depression.  She hid this struggle from friends and family.  Her parents had no idea what she was going through.  The depression led her down a dark road.  “She became bulimic, abused drugs and alcohol, and started cutting herself. Only when she met her future husband, who discovered her cutting herself, did Amanda realize she needed help.” 

Her new book “In the Water They Can’t See You Cry” describes Amanda’s struggles and triumphs in overcoming her diagnosis.  She has been currently touring and promoting her book.  On April 11^th Amanda’s agent Even Morganstein of PMG Sports tweeted that she “will be announced as a NY Times Best Selling Author.” 

It is important for people out there who are experiencing clinical depression to know that they are not alone.  It is very difficult for anyone, let alone someone in the spotlight to bare there sole on a topic like this.  I applaud Amanda for her bravery in discussing the topic.  It shed light on those who are in the same situation reinforcing that there is in fact light at the end of the tunnel.

Overcoming Obstacles

Amy Purdy was 19 years old and living life to the fullest.   One day she was admitted to the hospital with what they thought was the flu and ended up being bacterial meningitis.  She was on life support and had a 2% chance of living.  She recovered, but left the hospital without a spleen, a kidney, hearing loss in her left ear and lost both of her legs.  She was devastated and had to learn to cope with her new legs.  The first time she put them on they were painful and prohibited her from doing the things she loved the most.  She was emotionally and physically broken.  She thought to herself, if her life were a book and she were the author how would she want her story to go?

As she pondered that question, she imagined herself snowboarding again.  She could feel the wind against her face and her heart racing.  At that particular moment a new chapter in her life began.  She knew that with the legs that she currently had she could not snowboard.  She could not bend her knees and ankles the way she needed to.  She learned at this point in time that snowboarding and obstacles did 2 things. The first was that obstacles can stop you dead in your tracks and the second was that it forces a person to get creative.  Instead of giving up she designed her own set of legs that would allow her to snowboard.  After many trials and errors, she finally found the solution to her problem.

The new legs gave her the ability to snowboard.  She currently holds two world gold medals for adaptive snowboarding, and is the highest ranking adaptive snowboarder.  Her tragedy enabled her to rely on her imagination and solve a long-standing problem. A person’s limitations can be tools to break through borders and allow a person to live beyond their limits.  Her borders allowed her to be innovative.  Amy hopes that others can look at their challenges as a blessing that can ignite a person’s imagination that propels them to go further in life.