『Be-YOU-tiful Adaptive Warrior』のカバーアート

Be-YOU-tiful Adaptive Warrior

Be-YOU-tiful Adaptive Warrior

著者： Angie Heuser
無料で聴く

概要

 Breaking through mental and physical barriers to becoming your best self, living your best life.©2021 Be-YOU-tiful Adaptive Warrior Podcasting 衛生・健康的な生活
エピソード
  • This Isn’t Enough For Me

    This Isn’t Enough For Me
    2026/03/11
    Advocating For Yourself is Self-Respect, Not Entitlement What if the life you want is waiting on the other side of one powerful decision, the decision to advocate for yourself? In this episode of the Be a Warrior Podcast, I dive into something that took me years to truly understand and learn how to practice: speaking up for myself. Advocating for yourself sounds simple, but in reality, it can be incredibly difficult especially when you’re navigating the medical world, recovering from trauma, or learning to live life in a completely new way after an amputation. If you’ve been following along with my recent episodes, you know that my word of the year is “trust.” Trusting the process. Trusting the journey. Trusting that even when things feel uncertain or uncomfortable, there is still growth happening beneath the surface. I’ve placed the word trust all around my home-on my bathroom mirror, near my bed, and in my office, so I see it every single day. It’s a reminder that the goals I’m working toward aren’t short-term. They’re marathon goals that require patience and faith in the process. But this week, I realized something important. Trust and advocacy go hand in hand. As an above-knee amputee, my journey through the medical world has been long and complicated. Before my amputation, I went through years of knee surgeries and saw nearly ten different doctors over a five-year period. In those early years, I did what many of us do, I trusted everything my doctors told me. I assumed they knew best, and I rarely questioned the direction we were taking. Now, to be clear, those doctors truly did their best. My complications were due to hyperscarring and my body’s unique response to surgery, not a lack of effort from the medical team. But what I didn’t realize early on was that trusting the professionals didn’t mean I shouldn’t also trust myself. Learning to advocate for myself took time. It came through experience, frustration, trial and error, and eventually learning to listen to my own body. Because here’s the truth: you know your body better than anyone else. Doctors understand the body in general, but they don’t live in your body. They don’t feel your pain, your discomfort, your limitations, or your goals. That insight only comes from you. This lesson becomes incredibly important when you’re an amputee. One of the most important relationships in an amputee’s life is the one you have with your prosthetist. Your prosthetic leg isn’t just equipment, it’s the tool that allows you to move through the world. And one thing every amputee learns sooner or later is this: if the socket isn’t right, nothing else matters. You can have the most advanced knee or ankle technology available, but if the socket doesn’t fit properly, your mobility will suffer. Your comfort will suffer. Your ability to live your life fully will suffer. That’s why clear communication and persistence are so important. Advocating means taking an active role in improving your life by clearly communicating your needs, your goals, and your concerns. It means explaining where pain occurs, when it happens, and how it affects your movement. Sometimes your prosthetist has to troubleshoot based on what you tell them because they can only observe from the outside. Every amputee is different. Even two people with the same level of amputation will have completely different experiences. Our bodies, our pain tolerance, our lifestyles, and our goals all vary. So if something isn’t working, we can’t be afraid to say it. My Team of professionals over the years. Take time to talk with them, communicate clearly, don’t settle. My PT’s who helped me prepare for amputation. My Prosthetist who has my back always and knows what I want to accomplish in life. My plastic surgeon who performed a TMR a year post amputation because the pain was too much! Sometimes we hesitate because we feel like the professional already tried their best. We don’t want to seem difficult or demanding. But when we settle instead of speaking up, we often end up limiting our own lives. The goal isn’t to take your prosthetic leg off halfway through the day because it hurts too much. The goal is to put it on in the morning and live your life fully until the evening. Advocating for yourself isn’t just about medical care, though. It also applies to the relationships and environments you allow in your life. I often tell my kids that friends come into our lives for seasons and reasons. Some friendships last forever, while others naturally fade as we grow and change. Advocating for yourself means recognizing when a relationship is supportive and when it might be holding you back. That doesn’t mean you abandon people carelessly. Healthy relationships require balance-a give and take. But it’s also okay to acknowledge when something no longer aligns with who you are becoming. During this episode, I share a quote from a book called ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    21 分
  • Trust The Process

    Trust The Process
    2026/03/04
    What if the very thing holding you back isn’t your body… but your fear? In this week’s episode of Be a Warrior Podcast, I’m coming to you in real time in the middle of something new, uncomfortable, and humbling. If you’ve been following along, you know last week I talked about life lessons from the ski slopes and how we have to stop looking down at our feet and start looking ahead at what’s coming. That lesson didn’t end on the mountain. It followed me straight into this week. As an above-knee amputee, I’ve learned that one of our earliest survival habits is looking down. When you first get your prosthesis, you watch it constantly. You can’t feel your foot, so you visually confirm it’s there. Every step is deliberate. Every movement is monitored. Adaptive skiing taught me the same lesson when I ski with one leg, my instinct is to look down at my ski to make sure it’s under me. But when you look down, you miss what’s coming at you. Hazards. Forks in the road. The bigger picture. And that’s not just skiing. That’s life. This week, I’m leaning into something I do every year choosing a word that will guide me. My word for 2026 is trust. And wouldn’t you know it? I was immediately handed an opportunity to live it. A prosthetics company from France, Hopper, reached out and asked me to try their running blade. Now, if you know me, you know I’ve used a running blade before. I even completed a 10K during my first year as an amputee adding socks mid-race as my limb volume shrank, hoping my leg would stay on. That race required grit. It required strength. But above all, it required trust. This new blade, however, is different. It required a different knee a microprocessor knee I’ve never used before. For six years I trusted my Ottobock C-Leg. Last September, I transitioned to the Össur Navi knee because it’s waterproof I can snorkel with it, travel with it, take it into the ocean. I love how it responds. I trust it. And now? I’m back at square one. New knee. New blade. New mechanics. New fear. New Blade- Trust the Process Hopper Running Blade Standing between parallel bars in an office, with people watching and cameras recording, I felt that old instinct creep back in. Tight muscles. Hesitation. Looking down. Wanting to be good immediately. Wanting to “perform.” Wanting to prove. But trust doesn’t grow in 30 minutes under fluorescent lights. So I brought the blade home. And here I am walking in it around my house. Stepping outside. Trying to “run,” which currently looks more like a gallop from a newborn deer. It’s awkward. It’s humbling. It’s vulnerable. And it’s exactly where growth happens. Here’s what I’ve realized: when we don’t trust, fear takes over. And fear tightens us up. We don’t relax into movement. We don’t open up. We don’t visualize success we visualize what could go wrong. What if I fall? What if I break my wrist? What if I embarrass myself in public? I’ve fallen before. On sidewalks. In front of cars that didn’t even stop to check on me. I’ve tripped on hikes. I’ve fallen skiing. And every single time, I learned something. Failure is feedback. On my last ski trip, I intentionally chose the harder side of the slope. Why? Because I realized if I wasn’t falling, I probably wasn’t pushing. I did fall exhausted from aggressive turns my muscles weren’t prepared for. And that fall told me exactly what I needed to strengthen. If we never risk failure, we never gather information. And that applies far beyond prosthetics or skiing. It applies to relationships. To careers. To faith. To stepping into something new. Trust requires us to first identify what we’re afraid of. For me, I had to name it: I’m afraid of falling. I’m afraid of being embarrassed. I’m afraid of injury that could set me back. Once I name the fear, I can address it. Once I address it, I can begin building trust. That’s my call to action for you this week. First: choose a word. A guiding word for your year. Maybe it’s trust. Maybe it’s courage. Maybe it’s surrender. Maybe it’s strength. But choose something intentional. Second: identify where fear is showing up in your life. Where are you tightening up? Where are you looking down instead of forward? If you’re a new amputee and you’re exhausted from thinking through every step — I see you. I remember the mental drain of early prosthetic use. I remember wondering if I’d ever be able to carry laundry without watching my foot. And now? I do it without thinking. But it took time. It took repetition. It took falling. It took lifting my chin. If you’re not wearing your prosthesis because you don’t trust it, the only way through is through. Wear it. Practice in your home. Slow your gait. Gradually lift your eyes forward. You will build that trust, one step at a time. And if your struggle isn’t physical — if it’s relational, emotional, spiritual — the...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    26 分
  • Life Lessons From the Ski Slopes

    Life Lessons From the Ski Slopes
    2026/02/25
    Facing Fears, Letting Go, and Breathing What if the thing you’re most afraid of… is the exact mountain you were meant to ski? Welcome back to Be a Warrior. I’m Angie Heuser — above knee amputee, equine therapy lover, skier, and someone who refuses to live life from the sidelines. And if you’ve been following me the past several weeks, you know we’ve been diving deep into the energy of the Year of the Fire Horse — a year of movement, momentum, fearless expansion, courage, and decisive action. But before the fire horse came the snake. And I can’t stop thinking about that metaphor. The Year of the Snake ended February 16th — a year of shedding. And if you’ve ever seen a snakeskin left behind, you know it’s both fascinating and a little unsettling. Snakes don’t just slip out of their skin like changing clothes. They rub up against rough surfaces. They press into discomfort. Sometimes it takes extra effort around the face or certain tight spots to fully shed what no longer fits. It’s not gentle. And neither is growth. When I think about amputee life — about losing a limb, whether by trauma, illness, or in my case, elective amputation after years of surgeries — there is so much shedding. Shedding fear of the unknown. Shedding anger. Shedding grief. Shedding the identity we once had. And it doesn’t happen smoothly. It happens against the rough edges of life. But once the shedding is done? The new skin is ready to grow. And that’s where the Fire Horse comes in. This year only happens every sixty years — the Horse combined with the element of Fire. It’s bold. It’s fast. It rewards courage. It exposes comfort. It does not tolerate stagnation. And if you’ve built your life around playing small, it’s going to make you very uncomfortable. Which brings me to the ski slopes. If you follow me online, you saw we were just in Park City. I’ve been skiing since I was seventeen — long before amputation. But I’ll tell you something honestly: there isn’t a single day I clip into my ski that I don’t feel fear. Even now. Especially now. Three months after my amputation in 2018, I got back on the slopes. I had already missed five years of skiing due to surgeries. I had told my husband if I didn’t ski that April, I might never do it again. So I did it scared. I did it sick to my stomach. I did it unsure. And here’s what skiing has taught me — lessons that mirror life perfectly. First: the person in front of you has the right of way. On the mountain, it’s your responsibility to avoid the skier ahead of you. What’s behind you? That’s their responsibility. Isn’t that life? If I constantly look behind me — at my past, my trauma, my failures — I lose balance. Literally. With one leg, if I look back, I fall. And metaphorically? Same thing. If I live looking backward, I miss the beauty and the hazards in front of me. That doesn’t mean I ignore the past. I learn from it. I listen. I stay aware. But I don’t let it dictate my line down the mountain. Second: you will face forks in the slope. Left might be safe. Right might be steep. Green or black diamond. Easy or challenging. Comfort or growth. The Fire Horse energy says choose courage. Choose the line that stretches you. And I had that moment on this trip — two blue runs splitting off, one steeper than the other. I heard myself say, “Just go.” So I did. I picked up speed. I carved hard. I pushed myself. And eventually, my leg gave out and I ended up on my butt. Not a dramatic crash — more of a tired surrender. Take five and reassess your path every now and then But here’s the thing: I was proud of that fall. Because if I’m not falling occasionally, I’m not pushing hard enough. Growth requires risk. Risk requires vulnerability. And vulnerability sometimes ends with snow in your face. Warriors aren’t built in comfort. They’re built in the steep sections. Third: breathe. One of the biggest lessons my ski instructors taught me after amputation was breathing rhythm. As I carve down the mountain, I exhale into the turn and inhale as I rise. The mountain becomes a rhythm — breathe in, breathe out. When I hold my breath, I tense up. When I tense up, I rely too much on my upper body. When I breathe, I find flow. How often in life do we grit our teeth and forget to breathe? When we breathe through discomfort, we release tension. We think clearly. We stay grounded. Whether you’re walking in a prosthetic, stepping into a hard conversation, or heading into an interview — breathe. Finally: visualize the run. I watched Olympic skiers at the top of the mountain, eyes closed, moving their bodies as they mentally rehearsed every turn. They had already succeeded in their minds before pushing off. That’s not luck. That’s preparation. If you only visualize falling, you’ll hesitate. If you only picture failure, you’ll create it. But if you visualize walking confidently in your ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    31 分
まだレビューはありません