“It’s no secret Bethany Hamilton is one of the most philanthropically driven athletes you’ll ever meet. From working with SurfAid to being one of the Make A Wish Foundation’s most requested wish granters to her own Friends of Bethany Foundation and more, she’s a busy woman with a very big heart, to say the least. Her story is inspirational without needing much explanation: A teenage girl loses her arm in a shark attack while surfing, then not only returns to surfing but does it so well she becomes one of the sport’s best. She surfs big waves. She shows up at ‘CT events and upsets some of the Tour’s top competitors. And at 27 years old, she’s now been doing all this with one arm as long as she ever did it with two.
Professional accomplishments aside, the things that don’t make as many headlines are probably the simplest and most life-altering, like learning to tie your shoe or comb your hair with one hand, or how a woman’s perception of beauty will forever be changed when she no longer has an arm.
“When you’re faced with the loss of your limb or some other physical difference there becomes, in your mind, a real challenge to what our culture says is beautiful,” Hamilton says. “There has to be a change in your mindset when it comes to beauty, from focusing on physical appearance—which is fleeting — to thinking of the heart and attitude and even something greater...”
And so this is the focus and drive of what might be Bethany Hamilton’s most unique endeavors, a retreat called Beautifully Flawed, which brings other women together who have also lost limbs or face other life-altering physical differences and empower them. Friends of Bethany, the foundation that hosts the retreat, is actually very proactive about helping amputees after their accidents. A person from the foundation will regularly reach out to victims of accidents while they’re still in the hospital, offering support. Some of those women end up at the annual retreat, sharing their experiences with each other, finding encouragement and inspiration, and even sharing tips of how to tackle those simple everyday tasks anybody else can take for granted.
“I had a hard time just simply trying to relearn how to brush my teeth,” says Jamison Sepulveda, who attended this year’s retreat. “You don’t realize how much coordination something takes until you have to use your non-dominant side. I had to find new ways to do my makeup and how to button things or zip up my jacket. It’s everything you always did without a second thought and now you’re sitting there trying to figure out how to adapt.”
Continue reading here...
Article first published by theinertia.com on Tues 28 Nov, 2017. Read it in full here.