I stand here as a 23 year old lower limb amputee and motivational speaker. A woman who loves fashion as much as she loves her future and that’s saying something. I am training as a life coach and I have my own memoir manuscript in the publishing process but life wasn’t always like this.

I grew up a child filled with fear and dread. I was always in a constant state of anxiety and tears. My role models around me were abusive and maladaptive in their own ways and the trauma I suffered from a very young age impacted my life greatly. I was a child rigid with anxiety, scared, and voiceless.
Always on guard and always perceived as different. The weirdo. The loner. I did not fit in.

I was eleven when everything changed. Getting severely bullied in school and neglected at home, things hit rock bottom. A girl in my class who was popular and loved by all left a message on my social media account. She told me about how I was hated and how I should do the world a favor and go kill myself. I tried to do just that several weeks later on a family holiday in France. My aunty stopped me before I could walk off the pier into the sea and I cried to her about how much I hated myself and hated my life.

Things didn’t get easier and at 14 I was hospitalized in psychiatric care after another bad suicide attempt. I went into psychiatric care at 14. I was discharged four years later but I was not cured. I tried so hard to get on with my life. To get past the trauma. To just be normal but I couldn’t. I felt an unbearable sadness in my soul and on the 9th of March 2019 I walked out in front of a speeding train. I was 22. I was airlifted to a hospital and placed on life support. The doctors told my family I would not make it. I had broken most of the bones in my body. My foot had been cut clean off on the tracks. My lungs were punctured and my spine shattered. But yet my body persisted. It stayed fighting. The doctors told my parents that if by a miracle I did wake up, it would take 12 to 18 months to recover if I wasn’t paralyzed.

My suicide attempt was on the 9th of March. On the 18th of June, I walked back down the catwalk at a fashion show but this time with my prosthetic leg. A story of perseverance and determination.

It’s been 15 months since I ended up on life support after trying to take my life by moving train. I just moved into the most beautiful house with my fiancee and things are looking up. I’m not saying it’s easy but it is possible.

I adore The Secret and the message it spreads. Anything is within our grasp if we can just believe it.

I’ve finished my memoir, recreated my blog and I’m training as a life coach. I’m a 23 year old woman with her whole life ahead of her, even if I spent more than a decade trying to erase it. I hope one day to give a Ted Talk on the Ted Talk stage. That is the dream but for now, I’m focusing on my vision board and my recent engagement to my favorite person in this whole wide world.

I truly believe the law of attraction holds more power in this Universe than anything else and I know that at times I have to push myself to believe. It’s not always easy to keep your visions in sight but there are things we can do to maintain our dreams and aspirations. Vision boards. Journaling. Affirmations. Reading Rhonda Byrne’s books over and over again. We all hold The Power to create the life of our dreams. I got smacked in the face by a speeding train yet I still get told daily of my beauty. As beings, we are special. We are unique. And we are our own creators.

The Magic is in believing and if you find it hard to believe in yourself then just believe in The Secret. Believe in The Power. And read Hero. If our voices aren’t always the kindest to ourselves, I promise you that Rhonda Byrne’s writing will be that safe, sacred, motivational voice we all sometimes need.

I never thought my life, as it is now, was possible. Especially when faced with the cruelest of circumstances from when I was born. But regardless of what I experienced in my life from others, it doesn’t define me or my future. It did at one time but I realize now it doesn’t have to.

Stay safe. Stay strong. And most of all stay believing.
Lots of love,

Katie M Woods xxx