Picture this. You’re 24 years old. Fit, healthy and living your best life. You’ve travelled all over the world, you play representative sport and you’ve just scored a promotion in your dream job. All of a sudden, you suffer a massive brain haemorrhage that changes your life forever.
That’s exactly what happened to this week’s guest Lisa Cox. She spent 3 weeks in a coma, months on life support and a full year in hospital. She lost a leg, most of her toes, most of her fingers, 25% of her sight and a fair portion of her long and short term memories.
She’s now a writer, change-maker, model and disability activist and she very generously chatted to me about how she gets shit done. This interview is easily one of my favourites from the season, Lisa is so positive and funny. Chatting to her really cheered up in the middle of a very bleak week.
In this episode we talk about overcoming major trauma, the importance of mental health and resilience and how at the end of the day you have to laugh because what else is there?
In this episode, we talk about…
- What happens when your whole world and body falls apart in a single day
- The epic awkwardness of waking up from a coma and forgetting that you’ve broken up with your boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend) who happens to be sitting next to your hospital bed
- The differences between visible and invisible disabilities and the unique challenges of each
- Health anxiety and managing PTSD
- The beauty of silver linings and how she never would have met her husband had her life played out in the way she intended
- How you don’t really think about disability until it directly affects you
- Lisa’s mission to create better opportunities and visibility for people with disability
- How representation means more than tokenism
- How she wishes people would ask people with disability about something other than their disability