My story.

Some of you will know my story, maybe snippets here and there, but I wanted to drop a keynote speech I did at an event a few years back, it'll give you even more juice on ol' ellesy. 

I was born with a condition called Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita, I also have club feet and a hand abnormality. 

For so much of my life, I was taught that disability as a bad thing, it was seen as weak or less than. So, as my career progressed, I felt increasingly uncomfortable working in the disability space, I even went on to say I wasn't a disability advocate. I'd been taught that you had to angry about your disability and how people treated you, but I'm not and I haven't been for a LONG time. 

I am passionate about the rights of people with disabilities. But I have chosen to focus my life on being a freedom advocate. To live from a place of joy and fun in all that I do. 

I was so angry when I was a little girl, so angry that everyone else had it so much easier than I did. I used to take my pain out of my family, Mum and Dad and my two sisters, Meg and Bridge. It was a painful existence.

When I was 11, my parents (after years of searching) joined me up to a club for people with disabilities who wanted to participate in sport. After a few Sunday mornings of swimming with other kids around my age with disabilities, I was selected to swim at my first Junior National Wheelchair games - similar to a mini Paralympics. 

At this event I won, 5 Gold, 3 Silver, 2 bronze, the female swimmer of the meet and broke 5 national records. Ranking me in the top 25 in the world for my swimming class. 

In the years to come, it was a whirlwind of bathers, long hours in the pool and competing for many years after that, with the culmination of me being selected to swim at the Sydney Paralympics in 2000. Now it may seem like I’m skipping through a lot, but it’s because I feel the really important stuff. (and the tell you blogs 'should' be 300 words long 🤓).  

In 2004, while swimming my qualifying race in the 400m freestyle at the Athens 2004 Swimming trials, I swim my first 50m of 8 in personal best time, tumbling at the wall, only to have my fancy fast skins rip all the way down the back. I continued swimming because I knew I only had one chance to make the team. When I hit the wall at the end of the race, seeing a personal best time was shattered by the realisation that I’d missed the team by .03 of a second.

This event in my life was the catalyst for such change, on the last night of the trials I called my best friend Ali, as comfort while I visited my brick (my name is engraved in brick at Sydney Olympic Park). She said to me something that has stuck with me ever since, ‘Elle, just like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, you are travelling down your yellow brick road. On this road, you will find cracks you have to jump over or puddles you have to swim through, but what you learn along the way is the most important part, not the outcome.’ 

Through all the surgeries, the retirement from swimming, then years later, being the only female to play wheelchair rugby nationally, this has stayed with me. I’m on my yellow brick road, as we all are. 

It was especially powerful for me when I had my left knee replaced in 2015. I’m not sure if you’re aware of what the doctors do during a knee replacement, but it’s intense. To add to that, you stand up the day after (so your knee doesn't stiff), and there began the 3rd time I’d learnt to walk again in my lifetime (actually the last ten years). When I stood up for the first time, I felt so tall because I’d been sitting for so long, but the fun and games 'having a new knee' slowly disappeared as the energy-zapping rehab began. 

In June last year, I underwent my second knee replaced and learnt to walk again on my gorgeous titanium knees and just recently, while in isolation for COVID-19, I had my 35th operation on my left wrist, which left me essentially bed-bound for two weeks, but I have NO PAIN in my legs. It's the simple things, ay? 

Part of life is about overcoming those hurdles you’ll face as you walk, or wheel, or hop. It’s about how we react to these situations that give us our true strength. 

It's 20 years since the Paralympics, and on October 22 this year it will be 20 years since I swam my race. I am now so proud to say, I did that, but has taken me 20 years to acknowledge it. I trained my arse off, I sacrificed so much as a teenager because I wanted to swim at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics, and I'm a f#cking legend for achieving it. 

Since lying on the treatment table of my first spiritual healing session nearly 15 years ago, my life has changed abundantly. I’ve learnt how my emotional responses to things absolutely affect my levels of pain and how I can use energy healing, yoga and talking to my family (chosen or blood) to heal about any situation. 

I now work with people, mainly women (it’s just turned out that way) to help them uncover their own personal freedom. Whether it’s a change in mindset or we have to go deeper and change someone’s career or relationships.  I believe Freedom is a choice and we have oodles of choice. 

I never thought I had the choice to see or feel differently in my life until one day, I just chose to look at myself and the world differently.

When I think about disability and chronic pain I am so excited to see the changes and acceptance that is now making its way through society but included in that, I believe it is so important at that the people who are part of this special group, don’t fall into the trap of believing that they are less than or ‘life will always be hard because ‘insert disability, or even problem, or frustration here’. 

There will always be moments when life gets too hard, hey, I had a bad day yesterday of all days. But, I have learnt that in those moments I am not controlled by what is external to me, in fact, I am the creator of my destiny. 

As you begin or continue on your expansion and healing adventure, the movement from shadow to light, allow yourself the time and space to breathe. No point in rushing the healing process, enjoy it for it reminds and demonstrates to you how far you’ve come. 

Everyone is strong on the inside, take the time to feel into yourself and see your own brilliance, there will be days when you don’t feel anything good, and that’s ok, that’s just another layer of the onion that is ready to be peeled off. 

Your ego will always try and keep you safe but know, you are fire and ice and the cosmos. You are brave and can I be super candid here, if you have no idea what you’re doing, know that no one does, we’re all just working it out, but when you live from a place of self-acceptance it’s so much easier! 

Find acceptance in yourself, no one can give it to you, so you have to do the work to heal your beliefs about yourself and your life. Know that whatever anyone believes about you, is their stuff and has nothing to do with you. 

No one is here for you, to heal you, to make you feel better, to take your pain away. You must be the one to hold it, sift through it and come out the other end. When we rely on others to make us feel better we are externalising and that will always be a mask for the truth of what is going on. 

We can ask people for support and love and guidance, but when it gets down to the nitty-gritty healing and transformation, we are the only ones that need to choose to walk through those doors to a better day. 

Sometimes the hardest but most rewarding action you can take is to sit in the nothingness until the answer comes to you. No reaching out, no asking for opinions, no ‘just tell me what I should do’, just sitting in your uncertainty, waiting, unsure. 

It will help you move through the pain with grace and you’ll feel empowered, because you did something for you, at that moment, you were there for yourself.

Breathe that knowledge all in now, and remark on your brilliance.

Promise me, you will not shrink yourself in order to make others feel comfortable. Shine your light and choose now to set yourself free.