{"id":8428,"date":"2014-09-30T15:18:24","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T20:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/?p=8428"},"modified":"2014-09-30T15:36:54","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T20:36:54","slug":"blogelevated-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/2014\/blogelevated-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogelevated: Speak to me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I went to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogelevated.com\" target=\"_blank\">Blogelevated<\/a> hoping to meet bloggers (and I did) and hoping to connect with brands, (OOOOH how I did!) but I did not expect to go to Blogelevated and walk, err ROLL away, knowing exactly what my mission will be over the next 12 months.<\/p>\n<p>When I was first paralyzed, I planned to write a book. It had a catch name and everything. While I was busy making these fantastic plans, life happened. It really, trul I never wrote the book. I started a website way back when. It&#8217;s so far back that even the way back time machine can&#8217;t find it. Seriously, 1999. I eventually moved on to keeping a journal on message boards. I&#8217;d post about wedding ramblings and eventually pregnancy ramblings and people would comment. I&#8217;d comment back. We&#8217;d have wonderful conversation. &nbsp;It was around the time I had my son that I found the blogging platform and it took a few years before I started using it. I eventually transferred all my old message board posts so I really can&#8217;t even go back and figure it out.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/IMG_2518-e1412108278606.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8436\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/IMG_2518-e1412108278606.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_2518.JPG\" width=\"600\" height=\"600\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This has all been&nbsp;an easier way to tell my story continuously, but for the last 2-3 years it hasn&#8217;t quite been enough. I want to reach more people. I want to share my story with everyone. Okay, let&#8217;s back up. I don&#8217;t want to tell my story exactly, but I want to reach more people so they can see me live my story. I want them to see me live my dreams. I want others to see that I made the choice to LIVE and to live fully. I want that to be an encouragement for the days they want to just crawl under the covers and never come out. I&#8217;ve been there. I still go there.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to tell people to have faith and rely on God for their strengths. That&#8217;s personal. That&#8217;s not my place. If that&#8217;s what helps them and motivates them after seeing me and hearing my story, great. That&#8217;s amazing and beautiful. Faith is a beautiful and wonderful thing. However, it&#8217;s very personal and I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s always faith that gets us through. I think sometimes it&#8217;s our own strength. Strength we don&#8217;t know we have and that we didn&#8217;t necessarily get from a higher being. It&#8217;s not fair to tell the boy that doesn&#8217;t believe he can&#8217;t recover or be happy unless he has faith. That will only tear him down.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Okay, so what exactly do I want to focus on? I want to keep blogging and I want to keep meeting and connecting with every one of you &nbsp;and introducing you to amazing brand, of course. I am going to take it a step further. I am going to start speaking at conferences and Universities. I am going to <del>stand<\/del>&nbsp;sit on stage or snake my way&nbsp;through the crowd and tell&nbsp;every one my story. The best part? I already have my first one in the works! I&#8217;ll keep you posted!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went to Blogelevated hoping to meet bloggers (and I did) and hoping to connect with brands, (OOOOH how I did!) but I did not expect to go to Blogelevated and walk, err ROLL away, knowing exactly what my mission will be over the next 12 months. When I was first paralyzed, I planned to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-wheelchair-stuff","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5zEve-2bW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wheelchairmommy.com\/closed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}