 Alright, and now I'd like to introduce Miss Amy Culpin to you, who's going to be giving our keynote today. Amy's a 30-year-old, necrotizing, fasciitis survivor in quadruple amputee. She serves on the board of directors for friends of disabled adults and children and tools for life, nonprofit organizations devoted to helping people with disabilities. She also acts as CEO of Amy Culpin Foundation, a 501c3 organization she launched in 2017. Amy's earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Georgia, a Master of Arts and Psychology from the University of West Georgia and a Master of Social Work from Veldastas State University. In addition to her work as a motivational speaker and author, she practices individual psychotherapy in Atlanta as a licensed Master of Social Work. Please help me welcome Amy Culpin. Good morning, WordCamp! How's everybody feeling this morning? Well, it's an honor to be here and to join you all this morning as a non-techy person. Thank you for welcoming me into the fold. Some of you might remember me from May of 2012 when I contracted flesh-eating bacteria. And some of you may have seen on the news how the community just really banded together to support me in my time of need and how faith led to my survival despite all the odds being against me. But for those of you who are like, who the heck is this girl and why is she here, I'm going to start at the beginning. So my story begins in May of 2012 when I was a student at the University of West Georgia studying psychology, a very unique field of psychology known as Ecosychology, which really looks at the connection between the human psyche and nature. And at that time, I was also working three jobs. So I was a graduate research assistant at the college, a bartender in our little downtown square. And I was also a morning waitress at the local breakfast restaurant called the Sunnyside Cafe. And it was actually one day after my shift at Sunnyside Cafe when my life changed forever. One of my fellow waitresses invited me to come hang out at the little river that ran behind her house in a neighboring city. And it was this beautiful spring day, May 1st, warm but breezy, kind of like the weather we've been having lately. So I couldn't say no. And so I joined her on her beautiful property that had a river in the very back. And it was just this beautiful idyllic spring day, you know, there were baby bunnies running around in a pen. There were little hatchlings and a bird's nest in the shed. All the seedlings in her garden were just popping up. And as we're wandering down the property, we start wading down this little river, the little Talapusa River. And it was a small river, you know, more like a creek really, maybe a foot wide, a few inches deep. And as we were wading through this river, it's getting wider and getting deeper. And that's when we stumble upon this old homemade zipline. And if any of you guys did see the news when my accident occurred, you would have thought I was like in the rainforest because they were showing stock footage from like Costa Rica. And that's not what this was. This was like a dog runner with handlebars. I don't know about y'all, but I was raised in the south. And if we see a rope swing or some boards going up a tree, we don't ask questions. We just jump off it. And so that's what we did. And there were two other girls, two fellow waitresses there with me. And so we each took a go across the river. And I mean, maybe it's five feet across the handlebars or where you reach up and you can grab them. And it was fine. It was no big deal. It was like five seconds of riding this thing across the river. So I thought maybe I'd try it again. Maybe I'd put a little bit more oomph into it. Well, I certainly put enough oomph into it because the next two sounds I heard were probably the most horrific sounds I've ever heard. And they are scarred onto my memory. I can still hear them to this day. And the first sound was the crack of the zip line snapping. And the second sound was the thud of my body hitting the very sharp rocks that lay directly below the zip line. And excretiating pain was emanating from my left outer calf. And I looked down and I saw how bad it was. The cut was, you know, maybe this far across, but it was curved. So it created like this flap effect. I saw parts of my body that should probably remain hidden. And the river was just turning red around my leg. And we knew it was bad. I mean, the girls I was with called 911. The ambulance came right down into the river bed. It took 22 surgical staples to close the gash. But what we didn't know is that that cut was harboring a stowaway. And that water was a bacteria. And over the course of the next three days, that bacteria would proliferate in my leg, becoming necrotizing fasciitis. And within 72 hours, this went undetected. During the course of that 72 hours, my entire left leg rotted to the hip. Waking up on the third day, blisters were running up my entire leg all the way to my thigh. I had no control over any bodily functions anymore. Bowel, bladder, walking, speaking. I didn't know what was happening. And the only words that I could manage to mutter were, I think I'm dying. And my boyfriend at the time threw me over his shoulder, took me to the emergency room. And as soon as I got there, they confirmed that I was right. I was dying. And the necrotizing fasciitis was quickly spreading throughout my body. And in fact, it was at that point in my bloodstream. I was immediately life-flighted to Doctors' Hospital in Augusta, where they do have a hyperbaric chamber that can help treat this insidious disease. So we'll just start back where we left off. Thanks, everybody, for jumping into the situation and helping where you were needed. So at that time, I was life-flighted out to Doctors' Hospital in Augusta, where all of my vital organs were failing. And in fact, just being moved from the stretcher to the bed, my heart stopped. And I had to be artificially resuscitated at that time. And the doctors knew that my left leg would need to be amputated and called my parents to get their consent. And if you can imagine being the parent of I was at that time 24 years old and learning that your child is in critical condition, you can imagine the speed at which my parents were driving down I-20 to get to Augusta. And at that time, they had one lane closed, so they were doing their very best to get there. And the doctors did call them and said, your daughter is a very sick girl. When she got here, we were trying to save her leg. At this point, we're trying to save her life. And in that moment, my parents consented to the amputation of my entire left leg. Also, a large part of the flesh from my torso did have to be removed. It's kind of like fighting a fire. You want to protect the area even further than the infection to make sure that it does not spread. So at that point, all my vital organs were failing, and I did have to be put on full life support just to keep me alive. And the doctors told my parents she's probably not going to make it through the night. And my parents devastated as any parent would be asked, what can we do? And the doctor said, well, there's two things. First thing is, she's going to need a whole lot of blood. So you can go give blood and encourage everybody around you to do the same. And the second thing is, you can pray. And that's what they did. My parents at that point, you know, dried their tears and started praying and started encouraging everybody to do the same. And my dad, he's a huge Gamecock fan, and he got on his Gamecock message board and started asking for prayers. And so Gamecock Nation was praying for me. Facebook was praying for me. And that night, my psychology department held an all-night prayer vigil in my honor. And the doctor sat by my bedside, twisting and turning the dials that kept me alive. And the next morning, they said, we don't believe this. Last night, her lactic acid levels, because her organs were working so hard to keep her alive, rose to 10 times the normal level, which is three times the survivable level. There is no reason that your daughter should be alive right now. The words they used to describe my recovery include mind-boggling, unbelievable, incredible. The doctors themselves were stunned. And that's when a good friend of mine, Ken Lewis, from my psychology department, started a website for me, a WordPress website to get the word out about what was happening with me. And so my dad at this point had just been blogging via Facebook. And he moved all of his blogs over to the WordPress site. And my dad is like, you know, he's pushing 60 right now. He doesn't know anything about web design. And Ken was able to show my dad how to blog on a WordPress site. So if you can get my dad, my 60-year-old father to do that, anybody can do it. And at that point, the story blew up. The reason that my story went to the national news media was because of that website that Ken Lewis had the foresight to create. And within the next few weeks, my story went viral. We attracted hundreds of thousands of people to listen to the story, to feel compassion with me. And that allowed people to join together to support me in my time of need. That site also had a PayPal donation button because at this point, my medical expenses were through the roof. Even with health insurance, my parents were incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical equipment. And through that WordPress site, over $100,000 was raised in the greater community to help contribute to my needs. The whole community banded together at this meeting spot that became amycopeland.com. And I have that to thank for why my story is out there, for why I met Mickey and Allie of Green Mellon in the first place, and why I'm here talking to you today. So, really, wow, WordPress brought me here to a WordPress conference. It all comes together in the end. Of course, while all this was happening, I was in a hospital bed in a pretty much drug-induced coma because I'm very stubborn. You know, it's kind of cool because now they call me determined, which is really just a euphemism for how stubborn I am. And so I would wake up in that hospital and be pulling tubes out of my throat. And so they kept me pretty sedated to keep my shenanigans at a minimum. But over the next four months, I would spend in hospitals. I got out of the ICU on July 3rd, so after two months in the ICU, I went over to Shepherd Center in Atlanta, which is a spinal cord injury hospital. And a lot of people ask me, you know, why Shepherd Center? You're clearly not paralyzed. But in retrospect, I'm really glad that's where I went. Just think about it. If I had been in an amputee hospital surrounded by people missing just one limb, I probably would have been feeling pretty sorry for myself. But here I am in a spinal cord injury hospital, and neither of my neighbors can move anything but their face. And that puts things in perspective real fast. In fact, one of my neighbors asked his physical therapist, could he have his limbs amputated so that he could use prostheses like I do? And of course the answer is no. But what that made me realize is, even here I was, having lost so much, and somebody else wished they were me. So this taught me a very valuable lesson that there is always further down. No matter who you are, if you live in the United States, if you have eaten this morning, if you have a bed to sleep in, you are better off than most. And how often in life do we let our petty issues make us lose perspective of the bigger picture? You know, it's like, there's traffic and I'm late, my battery died this morning, that's true, my battery died this morning. But you know, I'm alive, I am breathing. And so I do not lose sight of the little things anymore. And I try to make a point of it, like on Thanksgiving, to come up with the most insignificant detail to be grateful for. And the more insignificant, the more successful I think I am. And so this year it was like elbows. Y'all, elbows! I mean, can we just take a moment to appreciate our elbows? You know, like the ability to bring our arm to our mouth. I mean, how would we eat? How would we live? Like, let's give it up for elbows right now. Thank you, thank you guys. I would kiss them if I could. And also what this has helped me realize is helping other people is where it's at. Because when you help other people, it reminds you of this all the time, that no matter what my struggles are, there are other people struggling out there. And we all face our issues. You know, mine are on the outside. You can see my scars from a mile away rolling down the road at you full speed. But most of us have some kind of scars. Most of us have been through something in our lives. And so we all suffer, we all have pain. And if you're sitting here thinking, oh no, not me, my life is great, I've never suffered, just wait. It's coming. But together we can make a difference for each other. And to me, that's the purpose of suffering. And if we don't find a purpose in our suffering, then it's in vain. And I think that the purpose of that is to have empathy, to feel with one another, to experience that human connection that pain creates. We all feel pain the same. And we all want the same thing. After all. And so this has really launched me into getting involved with lots of nonprofit organizations and also to start my own nonprofit, the Amy Copeland Foundation, to help people of all abilities get outdoor recreation and mental health services. You know, another thing that I had to realize, at Shepherd Center I had this call button on my bedside where my ladies and waiting, I mean nurses, could just come to my every beck and call. But eventually I went home and my parents were working and there were no ladies and waiting and there was no call button. And I quickly realized the meaning of that old cliche where there's a will, there's a way. And I realized that, you know, the way part gets emphasized more than the will part because you can do anything you want. I could do anything I wanted if I really, truly wanted it. And that was always the determining factor. So when I got home, if you had asked me like, you know, can you do laundry? I'd be like, oh no, definitely can't do laundry. Cause I didn't want to. But the minute like my tablet went dead and nobody was home and it needed to be charged, like I would have that charger in my mouth, one leg against one wall, my forehead against the wall, I would spend two hours if that's what it took to get back on social media. And I've learned this lesson over and over and over again. And you know, when I first got out of the Shepherd Center I had very, very long hair. And the one thing I wanted to do cause it was August in Georgia was learn how to put my hair in a ponytail. And so I went to this occupational therapist and after I left Shepherd and I'm like, so how do I do this whole ponytail thing? And the OT just kind of shook his head sadly and said, well all the female upper extremity amputees I know just cut their hair short. And at that point I had just had all my limbs amputated. I was not going to amputate my hair also. Thank you very much. Granted, this OT was a man and bald. I'm not the ponytail expert I was looking for. But on that day I vowed that I would figure out how to put my hair in a ponytail not just for me but for all the other upper extremity amputees who have just been cutting their hair short this whole time. And I tried day in and day out and I failed day in and day out. I mean I bought every contraption on the internet that was going toward this market. I found a hair tie that was made for people with one arm and I thought this is the one. And I tried and I failed about a hundred times. And on the 101th try I just had this realization like tie a loop in the end of this contraption. I don't know it just came to me. And the next person that walked through my room I had tie a loop in the end of this device I was working with and on the next try I got my hair in a ponytail. And the moral of this story is that I really really wanted that ponytail. And the reason I know I really wanted it is because I didn't give up on try 47. If you give up on try 47, you didn't really want it. And so that I think goes for everybody in this room today. Whatever it is that you want whatever it is that your goal is you can get it if you're willing to fail like a hundred plus times. And if you're not willing to fail a hundred plus times then just accept the fact that you didn't want it bad enough and you are the only one getting in your way. And if you continue to try, you will succeed. And I've discovered this on so many levels. I love to whitewater kayak before my injury. And I constantly was looking for adaptive kayaking instructors and I probably Googled adaptive kayaking instructors a hundred times. And then one day I just find a whole database of adaptive kayaking instructors. And so now I kayak class three and four rapids. I do whitewater kayaking. I have a friend who makes hand paddles. They're all the rage in kayaking these days. They attach directly to your hands with strapping like a pair of Choco sandals. And he calls them the high fives. And so I went to him and said do you think you could make me some no fives? And he said absolutely. And so we have invented that. There's many other things that we've invented along the way because somebody said that doesn't exist and you can't. And I said you may have seen this before but you've never seen me before, I can. And so I do have a second leg prosthesis that I use to practice walking with. I have a tricycle. You might see me be bopping around the belt line if you spend any time there. I recently did indoor skydiving, which was pretty cool. I tried to do outdoor skydiving and they're like we don't know if the harness will hold you. And I said speak no more. I don't want it that bad. I will accept the fact that I do not want it that bad. So where there's a will, there's a way. Emphasis on will. And I had this nurse at the ICU at Doctor's Hospital in Augusta. And when I left there she gave me this beautiful handmade rag doll that had this wonderful message inscripted on the back of its head. And the message said Amy, please remember, nobody is perfect. This doll is handmade with imperfections because we're all made different. It's what we do with what we have that counts. And I love that message and I especially love that last line. It's not about what we have, it's about what we do with what we have. And I like to rephrase that and say life's not about what happens to us, it's about how we respond to what happens to us. And I thought I made that up and then I read it in a book later so I can no longer take credit for it. And you know I've had to learn this so frequently because it's like life has so many obstacles. There's always something happening. There's always some challenge to overcome and I've learned to appreciate those challenges because after all how do we grow? How do we change? How do we know if we have faith if it's never tested? And so I've gotten very used to these little tests unfolding and finding that appreciation. And it's really changed my perspective on life as a whole. You know it's like so often it seems like we group life into two categories, good and bad. And it's like keep all the bad away but give me all the good. And in doing so we really limit ourselves. We really limit our growth. We limit our ability to become the best versions of ourselves. So now when something obstacle happened it's like all right let's learn something today. And I've had many obstacles. You know as Mickey mentioned I do have two master's degrees and the first one was the one I was finishing up at the time of my injury. I finished that a year after my injury and then started my MSW down at Valdosta State University where I would drive three and a half hours, stay all day Friday, spend the night and have classes all day Saturday and this was one year post injury. So the first time I went down there I'm staying at the Lecinta Inn and I thought I'm gonna take a shower which to most of you does not sound very ambitious but for me at the time it was super ambitious. And so they bring me out the shower bench and it's like this pediatric shower bench and I'm looking at my own rear end and looking at the shower bench and I'm like I don't know how this is gonna work but let's just give it a whirl and I sit on the shower bench and I reach for the shampoo and sure enough I slip right off. And so I reached for like the accessible grab bar cause that's what that's for right? Wrong. My arm slips between the grab bar and the wall and so now my arm is twisted in the grab bar and I'm sitting on the floor of the Lecinta Inn shower. You know I'm a therapist so I'm all about expressing emotions. You know you bottle up anger and a year later you've got resentment. So at that moment I just started wailing. I mean I'm screaming, I'm crying, I'm whining and I do that for about 20 minutes and it's amazing what happened after my little temper tantrum. Nothing. I'm still sitting on the floor of the Lecinta Inn bathtub and my arm is still twisted in the grab bar so while emotional expression is totally necessary and a great thing to do at some point you gotta take action and at that point I use the ingenuity of the human mind to notice the conditioner sitting there, use it as a lubricant to get my arm out, finish taking a shower right there on the Lecinta Inn bathtub floor, get back in my wheelchair, get into bed and vow never to take a shower at the Lecinta Inn ever again. I don't want it that bad y'all. My classmates might have disagreed but that's another story. So emotional expression I think is totally important and I could not sit here and tell you guys that I've been happy smiley ever since all my limbs were amputated. That is not the case and of course that's what people see on the news and they think how do you stay so positive and it's like I stay so positive because I yell, scream and cry when the time is right and that lets me smile the rest of the time because if I had bottled that up y'all it would be coming out on the people that I love the most. That's how that works. The people that you love the most are the ones that see the real you, the real anger, the real sadness and the rest of the world just sees a smiling face. At some point you gotta just take action but first let yourself feel. All feelings are okay and our society doesn't tell us that but they are and I had every right to be pissed off and sad and all the other things and I also have every right to be happy and expressing the other emotions is what allows me to see that other side of the coin. I've had a lot of other obstacles along the way, a lot of other testing of my faith if you will and it was about a year and a half ago, it was a Sunday and I was cooking one of my most favorite meals to cook. I love to cook, I'm an avid cook. Y'all have to check out my YouTube channel because I have lots of cooking videos on there if you'd like to see how I work that out. One of my most favorite things to cook is chicken pot pie and I was raised by a very long lineage of Southern cooks and so we don't use cream of chicken soup in our chicken pot pie, no sirree, we make our gravy from scratch and if you know anything about making gravy it starts with fat and flour. I like using bacon drippings and my long lineage of Southern cook swears by white lily flour so that's how it starts and first you make a roux and you kind of brown the flour and the fat and this is a very delicate process y'all, you can't step away, you have to keep stirring or you'll clump, you'll clump, you'll burn all sorts of awful things could happen to your pie. After that you add your liquid and you thin it out into gravy. Well, this is the process that I was doing on this Sunday morning when my very best friend walks through my front door and says, Amy, where is your van? Of course the meaning my fully outfitted wheelchair accessible van that Steve Raymond had donated to me on the Katie Couric show one year after my injury and as soon as he said that I knew because I live like a mile and a half away from here and sort of a rough neighborhood my van had been stolen but here I was making this gravy and I couldn't stop stirring, it would clump, it would clump, it would burn, awful things would happen and so I'm stirring the gravy and I'm like all right, grab my cell phone, we've had obstacles before, we can handle this, call my parents, yes I called my parents before, I called 911, before I called the insurance company but those calls came shortly after, we reported the incident and I continued making my gravy and at this point my boyfriend was over and he and my best friend are sort of standing in the corner of the kitchen like, is she okay? Like is she gonna snap at any moment? And I'm like guys, the van has already been stolen. Ruining this chicken pot pie, I ain't gonna bring it back. Ah, how often do we do that? We let one bad thing ruin our whole week, our whole day, our whole month, I've seen people let one bad thing ruin their whole life. I was not about to give the thieves the satisfaction of ruining my favorite dish. So I just kept stirring and that's kind of been my motto now, is like just keep stirring, it's like just keep swimming buy the chicken pot pie version, just keep stirring. And y'all, that chicken pot pie was impeccable and the Atlanta police department had a very nutritious meal that evening and it was the chicken pot pie but my vehicle was recovered within 12 hours. You tell me. Thank you. You know what I was worried about at that moment? I was now an intern at the Shepherd Center in the case management department. Remember the same hospital that I was in a hospital bed in a couple years prior and I had a meeting the next morning at 7.30 a.m. and I didn't know how I was gonna get there. So I looked up the Marta bus routes once the chicken pot pie was complete and it was gonna take me two buses and a train to get to Shepherd Center and y'all know Marta, that could take weeks. So I started exploring other options. I did a quick Google search and I Google mapped it and I saw that the Shepherd Center is exactly five miles from my house and I looked down at my wheelchair speedometer and I saw that I can go exactly five miles per hour. So I reasoned that if I just rolled the whole way I would get there in an hour and said that's what I did. I set out at 6.15 in the morning down Boulevard to North Avenue to Peachtree Street and there were people out for their morning jog and there were some people that looked like they hadn't slept the night before. Hello, neighbors. And I was 15 minutes early to my meeting the next morning. So while I never worried about the van being stolen, cause let's be honest y'all, I've lost a lot more than a van. Things I will never get back. What I was worried about was how I was gonna figure this out and that has become sort of the motto of my life, figure it out. Whatever happens, there's a way to figure it out and sometimes the way to figure it out is screaming and crying for 20 minutes just to feel better. Sometimes the way to figure it out is using the ingenuity of the human mind. Some way the only way you can figure it out is just to sit with it. Just to sit with it until the purpose, until you get some kind of insight about why this is happening. What am I supposed to learn? And that has been really, what this whole experience has taught me is my purpose and my calling. So you know, I was studying psychology long before my accident ever happened, but I didn't know who I wanted to work with, like troubled teens, alcoholics, I didn't know. And now it's like there's been a neon flashing sign that says, people with disabilities, you idiot. I mean, come on, what do we have to do to tell you this? And so I'm getting the message now it only took 24 years and now I've got the message. And it has given me such great purpose in my life to be able to make sense of my experience, to be able to make meaning out of all of this and to be able to help other people. And I remember laying in a hospital bed thinking, eco-therapy, I wanted to be an eco-therapist. It didn't seem like five miles hikes in the woods were gonna happen for me anymore. But the longer I laid there watching daytime TV, seeing my neighbors lying in hospital beds watching daytime TV, the more I realized these were the people who were the most alienated from their natural environment. These were the people who needed eco-therapy the most. So that's why I launched the Amy Copeland Foundation one year ago. I am a social worker and I do practice psychotherapy three days a week in Inman Park. And every other waking second, I'm the director of the Amy Copeland Foundation where we create mental health opportunities and outdoor opportunities for people with disabilities. And when I started this foundation, the first thing I knew I needed was a website. And I knew I needed a WordPress website because I knew if my dad could blog on a WordPress website, maybe I could figure it out too. And I have and I've had great help from Green Mellon in designing my website and getting it so beautiful. And it was like such a fun process. Like I don't think I would be able to do that for a job. But I think y'all's jobs are really fun because it was great like looking at the different layouts and choosing the pictures and the images, so much fun. And so today I use that website to share information about my foundation with the world. And so if you go on my WordPress website, amycopelandfoundation.org, you can see everything that we're doing in the community. We're having our first pilot program this year where I'll be working with five people in wheelchairs out of the Chattahoochee Nature Center in Roswell. And they're all gonna be receiving absolutely free, one day a week, individual therapy, group therapy, outdoor recreation, fitness, and nutrition instructions. So they're gonna be really being able to figure out how they can make their lives work, how they can find fulfillment just as I have. And we're also gonna be having a gala on August 25th to start spreading the word about this pilot program. And I'll be using the bug me bar on our website, which is one of my favorite features. So to get people to know as soon as they get there, come buy your tickets for the gala. So what's really impressed me about this site is how easy it's been for me, a completely tech illiterate. I'm in the humanities, okay y'all? This is not my field. And I can figure it out, that's pretty cool. So I really appreciated it in helping me get the word out. And so if my dream resonates with any of you, if you're interested in the outdoors, people with disabilities and you wanna get involved, we are always open to having new people come in. We love collaboration. Eventually our goal is to create a wheelchair accessible center for people of all abilities. So we don't wanna just stick with the people in wheelchairs because we, like I said before, we all struggle, we all suffer. So the idea is kinda like the theme for y'all's conference. It's all about diversity. It's all about getting people from all walks of life in one place so we can learn from each other. Groupthink doesn't teach us anything. By being with people who are just like us, we don't grow, we don't learn, we don't change. There is no conflict. And as I have mentioned, it's conflict in obstacles and which we learn things. So we wanna bring all sorts of different types of people together to all find fulfillment. I mean, after all, what is the point of life? If not to enjoy every moment and help others do the same. So thank you all for having me today. Even a great audience. Enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you. Thank you so much.