Modeling and Disabilities - Story of the struggle!

We would like our audience to know how it feels for you to get here on the cover of World Model Hunt Magazine?

It feels so validating to be here! I am so genuinely thankful to be receiving this opportunity. Up until last year my life was too consumed with health issues to even imagine having a life outside a hospital. I remember lying in my hospital bed wondering if I would even make it to the next day. I'm almost speechless to be sitting here, writing these answers for you. I am beyond grateful to be alive, and appreciative that my career has excelled so far since I started last year. I am so thankful modeling has allowed me to express myself to the world artistically, and to hopefully share my story publicly to begin to reach anyone who needs comfort or inspiration to never give up.

Tell our audience more about yourself?

I grew up as a competitive gymnast, it taught me discipline, respect, and collaboration. Until Scoliosis took over my life, gymnastics was all of it. Placing 1st on the NorCal State team at 11 years old, and 15th in the nation for my floor routine in 2012, it seemed obvious a college scholarship was headed my way. However, my health issues progressed so quickly that by 2014, I had shrunk four inches and my hips and ribs were grinding together. My curvature became so extensive, one rib was tucked up underneath the other, and stabbing into my lung with such force it could have punctured it. I quit gymnastics and went in for surgery by 2015, leaving my old life behind me. 

During the months I was in hospital, I discovered art. I had always appreciated the artistic side of life, but I had never explored it much. Once I was healed enough to draw, I began channeling my emotions into my pieces. I now sell prints, stickers, tattoo designs and custom pieces or paintings to my customers.  I abandoned my original plan of being a doctor to help guide young adolescents through their journey of scoliosis, and decided art was my path to happiness. I realized early on I could make a difference in my communities through sharing my story, but that I couldn't exist in hospitals for any more of my life. 

I had started a Scoliosis advocacy and support page when I was 13 after recognizing that social media could be a way to connect with other people going through similarly difficult situations. I absolutely love learning and educating others when I can. Aside from my art, and modeling jobs, I currently work at my college, and attend classes. I am currently making my way towards a degree in graphic design, and a minor in marketing, or communications. 

My dream would be to travel the world spreading beauty through my art, encouraging positivity through my modeling platform to speak out for the Scoliosis and Ehlers-Danlos communities. I aspire to genuinely attempt to support and empower any person who has faced extreme adversity in their life or understands the lifetime of struggles that come with chronic illness.

“I know I am lucky to have experienced plenty of positive things in my life. However, I know I have missed out on the chance of ever living a “normal” life or being pain free”

Tell our readers about how you faced scoliosis and how tough was it for you to get through all of it?

Truly, I am unable to express how I was able to face it all, or what inside me allowed my body and mind to endure the pain. I often channel my anger at circumstance into fuel for myself to push back even harder against my struggles, so they will never define me. I sincerely do not know what has kept me alive all these years. Yes, I am a determined, tenacious, and very stubborn person, all qualities that I am sure helped keep me alive. 

However, my doctors agree I should realistically be dead. For the longest time I saw no point in life, only pain. There is still pain, in every moment, even as I write this. But now I know I am here for a reason, to speak out for those who can’t. I would like to clarify the Scoliosis is the tip of the iceberg. The fight for my life started with the staphylococcus infection that began to grow, unknown to us, from my first titanium fusion. Throughout the months it remained unnoticed it circulated into my bloodstream and entered my bones. 

I would also like to note hospitals are known for carrying staph, and that generally infections like this stem from hospital environments. I struggled through sepsis from an unseen abscess in my back and quickly went into septic shock where I was diagnosed with organ failure. My right rod began to reject out of my back in 2016, once that piece of my fusion was removed, six months later I sneezed and remaining full rod on the left rod snapped inside my back. My surgeons went unconcerned by the situation, claiming my fusion was stable. 

Flashforward another six months and the rod had chaffed away six of my discs in my back and had begun to stab into my spinal cord. Once I began blacking out, throwing up blood, and talking nonsense, I went into my third fusion in 2017 which included a bone graft and the deflation of my lung. My high school years were spent attempting to come to terms with dying, I was an angry, unhealthy shell of a person, who didn’t care for life or myself anymore. I tried not caring, every time I hit rock bottom, the rocks would crumble, and I would be falling lower again. What I am trying to say is that I have gained perspective. That perspective has taught me that your mindset, that positivity is the key. To be grateful for every moment, to live in thankfulness for what I do have, and to never stop pushing for what I deserve. 

What does “being a model” mean to you?

Well according to my immediate google search, there are four general definitions of being a model. Clearly, I embody the textbook definition of a model as “a person employed to display clothes by wearing them”, however modeling career goes much deeper than this personally. I aspire to be a model who is also “a system or thing used as an example to follow or imitate”, which may sound strange or mechanical at first. However, as a model, with the status of a beginner influencer, I am aware that the messages I put up are seen by thousands of people, and this is not something I take lightly. Whether I collaborate with foundations, or begin my own, I plan to help provide a system of healing within my lifetime through speaking out. To me, being a model means representing the term within all facets of my life and within all aspects of my character. To exemplify perseverance, manifest positivity, and spread a message of empathy and acceptance through my work. Most importantly, to show any individual struggling with insecurities or disabilities that there is no reason to be ashamed of your scars, or your story.