In the last days of December, 2015, everything changed. In a single breathe, with a single step, my whole world flipped.
As I fell from my old life & into a new.
I fell 15 metres, about 4 stories to be exact. Through a rooftop terrace that gave way beneath me while I was travelling South America. I was 23 yrs young.
I broke both feet, my ankle, pelvis, sacrum, elbow, and my back, my spine vertebrae exploded.
In an instant, I was paralysed. No movement, no sensation from the waist down. The pain was indescribable.
I was rushed to a primitive hospital in Peru for open back surgery, then flown to California for another 13-hour operation. The team At Sharp Hospital In California were angels. Months later, I finally made it home to Australia. I was diagnosed as an incomplete paraplegic and told I would likely never walk again.
I never believed those words though & told my body we were walking again, in a month. A month was long enough right? Naievity saved me as always.
I threw myself into healing. That meant researching and trialling and reading all I could on how to Heal. Others who had overcome adversity & how they did it, Visualisation. Meditation. Wholefoods as medicine. Juice fasting. I devoured every holistic health book I could find. I studied quantum physics, the power of the mind, the art of quantum leaping.
I committed to five hours of physio a day, five days a week. Specialist after specialist. Alternative therapies. Detoxing. More Endless research.
The road forward after falling certaintly wasn’t smooth. I battled pressure wounds that almost led to amputation. Chronic nerve pain that hospitalised me fortnightly. Debilitating aftermath from pain flares and pain contractions. Chronic fatighue and Chronic Neuro fatigue, PTSD. For the first year my bowels, bladder, and sexual function didn’t work.yep. I healed these. Many Broken bones I had to Heal/over 20 surgeries. At one point my body began breaking down under the stress, from yrs of trauma & big pharma medications which helped but hindered: Depression. Body dysmorphia (accepting my new body and how it looked with her new scars and uneven shape ) rashes, hair falling out, constant exhaustion, and that relentless, unforgiving pain. one layer at a time. I chipped away at healing me. It took blood, sweat, and tears — but after three years, not only did I heal, but I took my fist unaided steps &
I walked again.
Id love to tell yall that my story ends here, but we are only at the middle.
In 2019, I went in for another back surgery. It was supposed to be simple. Overnight. Id walk out the next day.
But I never walked out of that surgery.
The surgery was sadly botched.
& I woke up from surgery & my right leg was paralysed. For the second time in my life I felt that terrifying feeling of no feeling. I was back in a wheelchair. That sentence “you may never walk again.” You might have to just accept that this is the way your leg will be from now on the surgeon said. LOL.
The heartbreak of that moment, of having my legs taken from me twice.
Three years of agony, persistence, progress. missing out. blood sweat and tears from dawn till dusk. All gone. It felt like I was right back at the beginning. Like my life had been on pause for nothing.I was right back where i started 3 years ago.
Living on hope and faith that your legs will work again and then, when they finally do, having them taken from you again is a grief only a few will ever understand. I disappeared for a month after this surgery & I went quiet. To cry it all out. To rebuild my strength. to work up the courage to face the road ahead.
After a month of grieving,
I knew I had to get back up If i ever wanted to walk again, I knew what i had to do. It takes just as much energy to be sad as it does to be happy. I decided i wanted to be happy & i began to tell myself, over & over ,
I would walk again.
​The years that followed brought new kinds of tests, not just paralysis. Bed rest. debilitating Gut health repair, autonomic dysfunction,. Nervous system dysregulation. continued Chronic fatigue syndrome & chronic neuro fatigue, all the side effects and aftershocks of trauma, id come to learn. With the new right leg paralysis returned the nerve pain and pressure wounds.
I continued researching ways of healing the new issues that arose, as I rebuilt my body, I also rebuilt my mind. I truly believe: you can’t heal unless all three parts of yourself, mind, body, and soul, are in alignment. Those 4 years were the hardest yet mentally, a decade is long time to be recovering. My heart longed, to be out in the world, working, sharing, contributing. I really missed working; living with no paycheck is tricky, and trickier with no capacity to work. Living off $100 a week after rent, the bills rack up — but health always had to come first. And my body made sure It knew it did. fatiging if i didnt force rest or flaring lol. I spent over 365 days in the hospital. Countless more in bed. Then, healthy days were spent doing physio. I hated wasting the time.
So I habit-stacked. Reading while riding the bike. Tutorials on the treadmill. Laptop while on bed rest. Courses, audiobooks completed in hospital beds.
Documenting everything while I healed. In case what I was learning helped me & could then help others to, or at least help the 24-year-old me. These documents became
My manuscripts, Backbone and The Healing.
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Backbone. The Fall. It's really just one helluva story, a hopefully uplifting/motivating read, written for the 23-year-old me, to help her heal.
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The Healing. The Rise, Everything I’ve discovered that helped me heal that blew my mind & changed my life. How to find purpose and one's most authentic self to vibrate higher to call in desires.
Everything I share isn’t just for those healing from physical & emotional trauma, what I've learnt in the last decade I wish they taught me in school, because my life is better for knowing it, I'm better for knowing it!
Despite what I was told, here I am in 2025, a decade since the fall.
The girl who was told she may never walk again… not once, but twice… Is walking.
She is healed.
She is me. ;)
Those words/sentences don’t seem big enough to capture the emotion, energy, or the decade-long fight it took to get here, hence writing my manuscripts and my strong need to share, to help.
In falling & losing my old self, I found my- self. & I love her, I hope you will love her too & that my work is able to help in some way.
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Find me on socials, id love to connect.<3
Love,
Emsie
