 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. Welcome back to my channel, also Cakes. Cakes is gonna be joining us today. Last week I released this video, thumbnail right there, about how I lost my leg and how I lost my leg twice, because it didn't work the first time and sort of the trial and the ups and the downs and so often I received the comment of like, wow, you're so positive, you're so upbeat about this. And then even sometimes sort of like a suspicion of like, you're too happy, you're doing too well. What's going on here? But the comment that really got to me in a very good way was this one, because I think it hit the nail on the head. What this comment points to is, is oh too true. There is so much that you don't see when you are listening to a speaker on stage talk about, you know, becoming disabled or losing a limb or you're watching a YouTube video. There is a lot that happens behind the scenes that is rarely ever shown to the public. And that is what I want to reveal today. But first I actually have a sponsorship in a day's video which makes me absolutely thrilled because as a personal video sometimes brands don't want to, you know, work with this but my lovely long-term sponsor Anna Luisa Jewelry who is the best jewelry company in the entire world if you ask me, I'm actually not paid to say that. It's sponsoring today's video. Anna Luisa is a company that's all about sustainability. They strive to be a carbon neutral company and also their pieces are genuinely affordable starting as low as $39. I've said this before and I'll say it again. They wear their jewelry every single day. It is durable, it's beautiful. There are so many different styles for different occasions and so especially as we have the holiday season coming up and are actually in the midst of it, if there's anyone in your life who likes sparkly, beautiful, lovely things that make them feel lovely about themselves, please check out Anna Luisa Jewelry. And I really like that their styles are pretty diverse. My mom and I have very different tastes in jewelry but we both love buying from Anna Luisa because we can find something that matches our personality, our style, our outfit, whatever it would be. This is my cozy day Anna Luisa Jewelry but I also have fancier things for fancier occasions. You know, when I get invited to a ball, do people still have balls? I'm not sure. And fantastically, right now they're actually running a buy one, get one 60% off sale which is a pretty fantastic deal. Please check out the link in the description if you're looking for anything for yourself or loved one this season. By doing so, you're not only supporting this channel but also a brand that I genuinely really believe in and get excited talking about. But let's dive back in. So going back to this comment that I'm popping somewhere on screen. I remember when I first became, almost with my coffee, an amputee, really struggling with seeing so many people who looked like they had it together. People who could smile and talk about their story and yeah, I lost my leg, but like, here's where I am now and I'm grateful for the journey and all of that and just being sad and just feeling like kind of a failure because that is not what I was feeling because what I was feeling was loss and maybe in some moments bitterness and confusion and overwhelm and exhaustion and I'm like all these people that I see on social media and on stages have it all together and I don't and I don't know if I ever will have it all together and it felt not genuine, right? Because there was such a disparity between the depression and agony that I felt in so many moments on and off camera that didn't seem to match up with what I saw in the public eye which is a really big reason why if you've been here for, you know, a few years watching this journey and I tried to make videos in good moments and also bad moments but I realized recently and this comment honestly helped me kind of connect the dots that this is now something I can talk about without a significant amount of emotion most days because I have spent hours and hours processing through all of the difficult things. There have been so many family members like my sweet husband and friends who have listened to me in dark moments and maybe even more than that the hours that I spent being so genuinely sad and grieving this loss and getting to very dark places sometimes really struggling with my mental health, depression, that angry, dark demon rearing up and threatening to take me away permanently and those moments are very valid, equally as valid as me talking about my story with a smile on my face and like explaining the whole thing to you and I think something that I didn't understand for a long time and that is often missed is when people are standing and telling their stories you are hearing the version that has been worked through. A lot of times if you're seeing that and it doesn't match up with your experience of grief or loss or trauma or whatever it might be it really genuinely doesn't mean that there is a gosh darn thing wrong with where you are. Sometimes when I would hear other amputees speak and tell their stories, it almost felt like hear me out on this one, like an insult to where I was because I saw people being happy about this thing that was making me very, very sad that I was having a hard time with and I was like, well, screw you guys it's like the bitter angry part of me, right? That I didn't actually mean but very much felt in the moment and I do think that is a downfall with some inspirational stories that like make us feel good because we get that 10 minutes of a serotonin boost of watching someone go through things that we think are so difficult and overcome them and oh my God, I could never do that but when you start having to do that when you start having to live through significant loss or really, really deep dark things we look to these people who have overcome and it seems unattainable and the last thing I ever wanna do is be one of those people. My heat just kicked on because it's like 20 degrees in Colorado and I hope you can't hear it. The other piece of this that I feel like is rarely really addressed is the fact that if you are telling your story to an audience as I am on YouTube or as speakers are at a TED talk is that to be able to do that well you have to have reached a point in your journey where you are healed enough from the things that you are talking about that you at least have words for them that you can put it into a cohesive story. 95% of the time, whatever I put on camera is something that I at least have some grasp of. I have some understanding of what I'm feeling. I have support for it or I have an idea that maybe I'm gonna be able to get through this. I've done some work on it before speaking about it which is why I have the ability to speak about it but there are absolutely things that I don't have words for yet. There are absolutely struggles in my life that I am still trying to figure out for myself and for the deeply, deeply vulnerable things I'm probably not gonna be putting those on camera until I feel safe enough to talk about them which is why I think when I or when you watch people that we look up to it seems like they have things together that we don't know how to put together yet, right? That we don't understand how someone could be so okay or so healed or whatever it is and maybe it's not but I just feel like as a personality on the internet as a person who has a platform I always wanna be really crystal clear about what you're seeing and what you're not seeing because I do make a concentrated effort to make sure that I am practicing vulnerability with the people in my life and also with you because you are people in my life as well. Everyone listening to my voice or staring at a screen like you are a part of my journey and part of my story but no matter how genuinely honest I am there are always gonna be pieces that are left out whether that's for my emotional safety or because I haven't figured out the words for it yet or because it didn't quite fit in the story the way that I was trying to convey it. I guess what I'm trying to say is I genuinely hope that anyone watching this video doesn't think that because I can talk about some of the hardest things in my life with a smile on my face and tell it in a 10 minute story that it wasn't agonizingly difficult and that is not because I want you to think to have sympathy for me or anything like that because I'm okay. It's because I never wanna sugarcoat the difficulty that has existed. If you are in the midst of some kind of struggle or some kind of darkness and you see people who have it together please understand that there have been a lot of moments and a lot of work that have probably gone into getting them to that place if it is genuine. The value in feeling what you're feeling and being honest with yourself and feeling that pain or that struggle and crying those tears or hitting that pillow or that wall or screaming in rage in your car those are the moments that enable us to move through things. It doesn't happen overnight and it's not pretty. It's not the Instagram effect to be like screaming in your car as you go through a car wash because no one can hear you. Just me, is it just me? Listen, I wanna ramble on too long about the same thing but I just wanted to say that I appreciated this comment and also to point to it's honesty and if you ever see me or anyone else seeming like they're all put together on issues that are tearing you up please know that what you are going through is 1,000% valid. You should have no guilt or shame for those emotions and feelings because whether or not people are willing to admit it pretty much everyone has been there who is able to now talk about it in retrospect. And in my case, there are thousands of hours of hurt and pain and grief and tears and frustration and confusion and those moments still sometimes exist. Like this is not a completed journey. I am still a work in progress as we all are. You know I had a lot of coffee today and I'm now questioning if this video makes sense. Let me know in the comment section down below if it does or if it does not. Also I'm taking video suggestions as again our beautiful audience has grown so substantially. I know that there are a lot of questions that people have that I'd be more than happy to answer so leave anything you are curious about in the comment section down below. Maybe I'll use your comment in a future video to my delightful sponsor, Anna-Louisa Jewelry. I absolutely love you guys. Thank you for sponsoring this video. Also, like I said at the beginning if you wanna click that link in the description it will help to support this channel but also it will bring you to a site full of very sparkly, pretty lovely jewelry that both my mom and I are really enjoying. So check them out, let them know what you think. Also a huge thank you to my beautiful patrons over on Patreon for supporting what I am doing here. You guys make the world to me and enable me to do what I am doing. So thank you. I now must leave because I have 22 minutes until my root canal. I hate dental work. I can go into like a surgery much easier than I can go into dental work. There's something about mouth pain that just weirds me out. Both that being said to you watching this video right now. Thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me and kicks. Today you could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else. But you chose to hang out with us for a little bit and I really appreciate that. Thank you. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.