 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. When I lost my light because of, well, you know, that vampire bite to my ankle, the fish tank accident, the assault by that gosh darn kitten, the very slow zombie. People see or hear that I'm in amputee, the common response is, oh my God, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry for your loss, right? And while I will absolutely take and soak up your pity, the reality of this situation is that it gave me more than I ever could have asked for. And no, this is not one of those videos where I'm about to lecture you about how it made me so much stronger. I'm talking about the very practical real ways in which this actually made my life exponentially better. So often we think of amputation as only a bad thing. As someone who had to choose this, I'm here to tell you it's not. So let's get some stuff done around the house. I'm gonna tell you my top 10 things that I gained from losing my light. You know, I just said 10, I don't actually have a list that long. So maybe eight, maybe 10, we'll figure it out. Okay, so thing number one, as I get the rest of the nail polish off my nails, because I did not finish that this morning. And if you don't know the story of how I lost my leg, I will link it up above so you can check it out. Feeling like my body was actually my own again. Like this sense of autonomy, like I owned the skin I was in. I went through about 14 years of surgeries on my ankle and I felt like I was always just kind of along for the ride. I'd go to a doctor, do what they said as I should have. And there was never any say, like I felt like my body wasn't my own. It was hurting me all the time and I was just there. I really felt like my life was just being dragged from surgery to surgery and completely controlled by this part of my body that was failing. And when I realized that I had a choice in front of me about what I wanted to do, I could have kept my ankle. It would have kept causing me severe issues. When I realized that I could make that choice for myself about what I wanted to do with my own body and my surgeons were on board for whatever I chose. Making that decision obviously was agonizing and very difficult, but having a say in what happened to my body and getting to decide the time and the place, being able to prepare for it and knowing that I made this call for myself as opposed to being just along for the ride was really powerful and made me start feeling like I had my body instead of my body just having me. Second thing is I am demonstrating at the moment the ability to walk again. In the last couple of months leading up to my amputation I could technically walk. Like I wasn't using a wheelchair which comes as a shock to some people but walking on that ankle was so painful that I kind of did everything I could to avoid it. And the life with a prosthetic leg in my nubbin here is not pain free by any means. It is so much better than it was before. Thing number three. But first a word from our sponsor. Scentbird is a fragrance subscription website but I wanna give you a quick story before I talk about them. I have a very weird pre-filming ritual that I've never told anyone about and it actually makes no sense. So for the past three years of making videos when I get ready to like get in front of the camera I always put on perfume or body spray. As if you smell me through the screen which you do not, which is unfortunate because right now I smell amazing. Which brings us to Scentbird. Scentbird is a fragrance subscription service where every month you get to try a new designer fragrance for just $16, no surprises. You can skip a month at any time and with each fragrance comes a 30 day supply which for reference cue packaging by the way looks like this. So you can wear and figure out what fragrance you love before you actually commit to a full bottle. They have over 600 designer brands to choose from. I promise you they'll have something for you and if you aren't sure what kind of scent you want to try out they actually have a quiz on their website where they can help you get started. Today I am wearing Confessions of a Rebel's Let's Be Real which is a blend of some of my favorite scents like Jasmine and Vanilla. Make sure to click the link below and use Code Joe 55. I check out for 55% off your first month that makes it about $7 to try out. An absolute steal if you ask me. Thank you so much to Scentbird for sponsoring today's video. Now let's get back to number three. So this third thing is one that has been incredibly powerful in how I view myself. When I lost my leg I expected my body image to really take a hit, you know which is expected. You go through some major body modification and how you see yourself might be altered but I was a little worried about this honestly because I spent many years of my life dealing with an eating disorder and then even when sort of the active presence of that was gone I dealt with those disordered eating thoughts. Like all throughout my 20s I wasn't actively participating in sort of the harmful behaviors I had before but I sure was thinking about them. Like I was always thinking about my body through the lens of what it should be, how the world wants it to look, you know wanting to be skinnier, wanting to control how this looks for aesthetic reasons and in a strange twist of fate going through something so substantial with my body losing a major piece of myself maybe begin to really appreciate the body I had left and to want to treat it well for no other reason than like it's the vehicle that allows me to live life and do things. I no longer cared as much about what my body looked like and started really caring about what it could do for me. I sort of switched to a very neutral view of the skin that I am in and I wanted to nourish and take care of it and you know be strong for no other reason than it allows me to do things. Living in a body that is very different from the majority of the people who are around me does bring a set of issues with how I view myself does bring some insecurities but honestly not nearly as many as I had before. You know I think it's about time we throw some tennis balls for Sophie for number four. Where's your ball? Go get it, go get it. Number four, this one might sound a little bit funny but I think it kind of gained a cool factor that I never had before to a lot of people. Like yes people are definitely uncomfortable and weird about my legs sometimes but a lot of the times they're just fascinated and curious and they get to talk to people and educate people. Like I pretty much always have an icebreaker and there's something that people want to talk to me about and to be honest having a carbon fiber rocket cyborg leg is kind of neat looking. I think we're gonna spend the rest of this video painting my nails because it will give me a reason to sit still long enough to actually let them dry for once. Number five, a career. This is something that honestly was entirely unexpected. I've always really enjoyed things like public speaking. I wanted to pursue that. I was looking into it. But when I started this channel and started filming kind of going through the process of losing my leg and adjusting to that I gained an audience that I genuinely never expected and then it just grown into what it is today which is mind blowing to me. And now I get to speak both on the internet here and professionally about things I really care about. Like getting through hard things, mental health, you know losing limb, amputation, disability. And it certainly wasn't something that I expected to gain when I lost my leg. Very happy surprise and one that I'm very grateful for. Number six, a community. Hear me out on this one. I want to make it really clear that no, not every amputee knows every other amputee. I feel like there's this misconception that there's probably like 10 amputees in the world and we definitely all know each other. The reality is that there's hundreds of thousands and not every amputee gets along. But I have discovered that the people in the limb difference community are apps are fricking loosely amazing. I have made so many friends and so many amazing connections with people who I share interests with and share passions with and the amount of willingness to help, willingness to be there for each other, willingness to share information or tips and tricks in the limb difference community is absolutely incredible. Camera angle changed because I was bored of that one. Number eight, the capacity and ability to run again. This is something that I dreamed of since I was like 14 years old, I could never run my ankle would not allow it. And I thought it was something that was entirely off the table for me. But I was very wrong. Running was sort of the icing on the cake when it came to losing my leg. About a year and a half after my amputation, I got a Levitate Blade, fantastic company. I absolutely love working with them and I learned to run. I ran a 5K, I jogged with my dad which is something I dreamed of doing. It's so funny how becoming more disabled actually enabled me to do so much more in my life which brings us to the last couple of numbers which I'm going to lump together. Like I live in Colorado, right? And if you know anything about the state, you know it's big on hiking and big on winter sports. The amount of skiing and snowboarding we have here is nuts. It's one of the best places in the world for it and I never was able to take part in that at all. Definitely never thought I'd be able to. But this past year I learned how to snowboard and it was so cool. Huge challenge and still is to learn how to do that with my prosthetic leg, but I could actually do it. Quick side note, my hands shake so bad. Doing nail polish is, well, it's always an art project. Along the same lines of outdoor activities, hiking. I absolutely love hiking. It is something that is like a part of who I am. It's kind of how I reconnect and breathe. Couldn't do that with two legs and I can totally do it now with one and a half. Also being able to rock climb again, go to the ninja gym, be able to participate in jiu-jitsu. It's been awesome. This is the one I actually, I didn't write down but it just came to mind, acting opportunities. I've been able to audition for some really cool stuff. That is nothing I ever thought I would ever be able to do but because Hollywood is kind of trying to make a push towards actually including people with disabilities in disabled roles, which we love to see it. I've been able to work with my friend Dominic who's an acting coach and realize that acting is so much fun. I really enjoy it. I'm looking to pursue it more just cause it's cool and therapeutic and you get to kind of explore a different part of yourself. All right, coat one done. Now I just have to stay put long enough not to ruin it. Oh no! I got nail polish on my table. I should have seen this coming. You got a shepherd. Hi Yogi. You just wanna use me so I can throw your tennis ball. Last but not least, thing number 10 that I'm pretty sure we're like at 11 or 12, reduced pain. I'm not gonna say pain-free because I do still experience a lot of phantom pain. I have a lot of sore spots and I have an aroma right now that I may have to have surgery for. There is definitely still pain in my leg and throughout the rest of my body but the combined value of that is substantially less than when I had an ankle and if you've ever lived in chronic pain you know the toll that that takes. So any pain reduction is a win for me. In so many tangible and life-changing ways losing my leg has given me so much. I'm so grateful that I got to make the choice that I feel like I had some say in the direction of my life that things generally worked out. This is a challenge it will continue to be for the rest of my life but of the options that I had it was the best one and it has given me so much in my life. I really like talking about this kind of stuff because we often think of disability or amputation like I said at the beginning of the video as just a loss across the board like I'm so sorry and while there is pain, there is loss, there is grief there's a lot of joy and a lot of really beneficial things that have come from this change in my life. That is it for today's list. Thank you so much to this lovely commenter for suggesting today's video. I put up a poll on my community page asking what you guys wanted to hear about because I felt like filming. If you saw my last video you know that life is a little interesting right now, a little challenging but I wanted to have a reason to sort of get put together and get in front of the camera and talk about distracting things so I really appreciate you hanging out with me here today. Big thank you again to Sendbird for sponsoring today's video. Check out that link and code in my description that helps to support the channel and also Sendbird is really gosh darn cool. Huge thank you to all of my lovely members on Patreon to so many new faces there. It means the world to me that you guys are there. Thank you for your generosity and your support and to you watching this video right now you could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else but you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes here today and I really appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.