 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, talented, and delightful internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today for a little bit of a story time. I wanted to tell you guys the story of the day that someone who I did not know made me feel really uncomfortable and weird and self-conscious and like questioning myself about being an amputee when I wasn't previously feeling that way. And one of the reasons I wanted to tell the story is because I am 100% certain that their intention was to make me feel great and I so appreciate that. Unfortunately, it had the polar opposite effect. So I wanted to tell the story for two reasons, first of all, because I like doing story times. I like telling you about my life. But secondly, also to serve is just a word of warning that sometimes the best of intentions could use some help in their execution. Now, before we dive in today, a word from our amazing sponsor. Thank you for not running into the camera. 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This lotion is awesome for sensitive skin and can also be beneficial for more serious skin conditions. I've put a link to this lotion in the description down below. However, on top of giving my viewers a discount, you could find the discount code down below. Additionally, they have also offered my channel a free giveaway, meaning that one of you can receive some of this lotion to try it out for yourself. If you would like to give this a shot and be entered into free giveaway, comment down below and somewhere in your comment, leave hashtag skincare. Whether you have specific skin concerns or you're just looking for a really great body lotion, I would highly recommend checking them out. Thank you so much to Skin Repair Lotion and Allagon for sponsoring this video. Without further ado, let's dive in. And I always say this before I actually mean it, there is some further ado. If you felt like giving this video a thumbs up or hitting that subscribe button, that would be fantastic. But now let's actually dive into this story. Allow me to set the stage for you. There it was, standing in line at a grocery store. And when it was my turn to check out, I was ready to just make polite conversation with the lovely lady standing there and go on my merry way. Now at this point, I was on the eye walk, meaning that it was super, super easy to tell that I was missing a leg because I was just on a walking crush, right? And the lady who was checking me out looked down and saw that I was missing a leg and stopped everything to tell me how beautiful I still was, even though I was missing a leg, how I was not worthless and never let anyone make me feel worthless. And then I was still an incredible human being that I still had value in this society. And then I was still pretty, I was still attractive and never let anyone make you feel differently, girl. I was standing there ready to just check out with my things and go on my merry way. This lady decided now was the time without any context about who I am as a person, what I do, what I care about, how I feel about myself to tell me that I don't need to feel worthless and disgusting because I still have value and I'm still beautiful. I want to just reiterate the fact that I am 100% convinced that this gal meant nothing but the absolute best for me. I think she wanted to make me feel good about myself. I think she assumed that I didn't feel good about myself and wanted to fix that. I think she wanted to make an impact and be a good person and do a nice thing. However, the effect that her words actually had were quite the polar opposite because when someone who doesn't know you, who doesn't know what you do or you don't struggle with tells you you are not worthless even though I'm sure you feel that way because you're missing a leg. You are not unattractive even though I'm sure people think that about you because you're missing a leg. I don't think that this person would have assumed that I thought negative things about myself if they didn't have some biases in that direction and we all have biases. I fully acknowledge that, right? But to think that I must feel like crap about my body, about what I look like, about who I am as a person, about my value to society just because I'm missing a leg made me feel super uncomfortable and made me feel really small honestly and the more that this person pointed this out because this was not a 30 second conversation. This was like a four minute monologue as there were people behind me of this lady being like, I need you to listen to me. I know you're missing a leg but you are still worth something in this world made me feel so different from everybody else there. I felt like I was like a freak show almost right and this person was reassuring me as if I had expressed I feel worthless. I feel hideous. No one's ever going to want me when in fact I don't. I don't feel hideous. I know that I have worth. I generally like who I am as a person. I'm growing. I'm always going to be wanting to grow and change and expand who I am but I don't hate who I am right now and most of the time I don't hate how I look. I don't hate that I'm an amputee. I don't hate that I look different from missing a leg. Yeah it comes with challenges absolutely and ups and downs but I'm all right and this lady was talking to me like of course I would feel horrible because I'm disabled. Of course I would feel ugly because who's gonna want me right? She was reassuring me based on things that did not come from me based on things that came from her perception of amputees or her perception of disability and this was a hard situation for me to figure out what to do with because I was like I know. I know that you want to help. I know that you want to make me feel better right now but you're doing the opposite and in that moment I just I thanked her sincerely because I knew it was coming from a good place but I also didn't really know how to respond and I wanted to get out of there. I wanted other people not to hear this conversation. I want to just be done so I left and I think this could have been a good a good chance to provide some context and education and be like hey I so appreciate that you are trying to help me that you want to make me feel better that's beautiful like you're taking time out of your day for a stranger for me that's an incredible thing but just so you know when you tell me these things this is how it makes me feel I know that's not your intention like there could have been an opportunity for a positive conversation like that but I was just so so weirded out and so like I don't know what to do with this I feel different and weird and people are staring and I just need to get out of here that I didn't take the opportunity to do that I just I just got out. I did a video a while ago where I talked about getting comments of like you're still worth so much especially over on TikTok where the audience is a little bit younger generally there's so many comments of people being like you're still worth something don't feel worthless and I've never expressed that I feel worthless I don't think I've ever indicated that I feel like less of a human being because I don't feel less of a human being like again I've had moments where I've absolutely struggled 100% but as a baseline this is just a challenge this is something different yeah it's weird to get used to yeah it's odd to have people look at you differently but I know it doesn't determine my worth or my value or how attractive or not I am for me when people make this assumption that I must hate myself because I'm an amputee it's really uncomfortable because I feel like there's like this pressure of like you should you should feel like shit missing a leg no one's gonna want you no one's gonna like you look how unattractive you are and I'm like but I don't believe those things but should I believe those things because people are telling me I should believe those things they are pressing upon me that that's how I must feel and sometimes it's hard and sometimes it makes a little more difficult not to feel that way people will often ask me if I've had like bad experiences with people being an amputee like are they really mean to you and I'm so grateful to say that I get mean comments yeah people have said mean things but they don't usually stick and they're usually from a place of ignorance I have to say that the times that I've been most uncomfortable or felt the most weird is when people were trying to be nice and trying maybe a little too hard to be nice which hey I'm guilty of I've tried too hard to be nice we've all been there but the most weird and uncomfortable and hurt to some extent that I've ever felt is when people were trying to help in their own way now when I say that I very much consider not saying it because I'm like I don't want people to think that they have to shut up and be quiet because that's not good either I think it's sometimes it's better to say something from a good place from a pure intentional place of trying to do something good or trying to help someone and maybe make a misstep than to never try like I would never be like how dare you how dare you tell me that I'm still beautiful and still worth something like because I know it's not coming from a bad place but I think it is really important to take some time to examine what we actually think and what we actually feel about people who are different than us because those feelings can come out in unexpected ways like reassuring someone that they're not worthless why do you think that they feel that way do you feel that way about them is it because the media has portrayed that people must feel like crap about themselves if they're disabled like why do we feel a desire to interact with people in a certain way I think that this can apply to so many different demographics and so many different situations I just think it's important to take some time to educate ourselves to look at each person as a whole human being standing or sitting in front of us and talk to them as such right don't talk to people as if they're stereotypes talk to them like they're people and seek to gain a little more understanding about them some of the best interactions I've ever had with people which are many is when people aren't people don't meet me and immediately be like oh my god you're an amputee that's different right like that's okay too in certain situations because I understand it but it's great when people just talk to me right it's great when it's not a topic of conversation I realize that sounds weird being someone who runs a channel that is primarily about my life in the aftermath of amputation but shockingly my actual life is not that much about my amputation my my conversations with people do not center on that at all they center on shared interests we have or how the week went or what's going on in my life you know things like that it's it's very normal only occasionally will I have conversations about my leg if something's going on with it but so far it's not been the mean comments or the people being hateful that has ever gotten to me or ever actually like really hurt me in any way it's the people who assume something about me who think that they know something and then place that upon me I'm so grateful that I've never had to experience anything horrific like bullying because of my disability and just speaking for myself I can say that that these times like this story is one of the situations where I legitimately felt uncomfortable because of actions of someone else because of their actions and their words and again I appreciate where it came from but it sure made me feel weird sure made me feel super uncomfortable and that was like a year ago and it's I still think about it from time to time so it obviously had some kind of impact I struggle to classify this as like the worst experience that I've ever had with another person because of my disability or because of my amputation but I think the fact that it left a mark in my brain probably is some indication that like yeah it did have some impact on me it made me feel so other than everybody else around me and I didn't love that feeling now thankfully that feeling doesn't stick around all the time and I appreciate that but yeah even with like hate comments and people trying to intentionally be mean online I think I can easily classify that story as the worst experience I've ever had let me know what you think in the comment section down below is this something that you've thought of saying to someone before I know it's something I've thought of saying before before I was dealing with this kind of stuff like wanting to be like oh this person probably feels I probably feel weird and different so I'm gonna point out they don't have to feel weird and different I don't know that I ever actually did that but I certainly thought it so I think it's a human thing to do I'm not penalizing or talking down to anyone who has I'm just expressing this is how it made me feel so like I said I'd love to hear your thoughts down below a huge thank you again to our sponsor this video all links are down below thank you to my patrons for making these videos possible I appreciate each and every one of you more than I can ever tell you patreon is a place where you can financially support creators that you care about whose content you want to sponsor in return for that there are some cool perks like a hand signed artwork print for me to you and things of that nature if that's interesting to you check out the link on screen or in the description down below and to you watching this video right now thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today you could be anywhere in the world doing anything and you chose to hang out with me for a little bit and that means a lot to me thank you I love you guys I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video bye guys bye guys I'm still working on like perfecting the wave with this maybe this way this I'm not sure just looks like I'm flailing a prosthetic limb in the air it's not a cool way to close a video well done Joe well done