Dr. Maya Shankar

It's so interesting because you talked about some of the lessons you learned afterwards around empowerment and other aspects of your identity.

What Olivia learned from this experience, which was so interesting and so unexpected, is how beholden she was to other people's perception of her.

Because she realized that when her boyfriend's family, who she had never been able to impress before, came into the hospital, that is when...

the reality of her situation really dawned on her and she felt the enormity of it.

It wasn't her just grappling with how awful it is to not be able to move your body in that way.

It was not being able to curate an image of herself for others.

It was not being able to be a certain way to impress other people.

And her change, almost by brute force,

caused Olivia to have to confront who she really was.

There's no version of curation when you're in that setting.

And over time, especially by seeing how much her care team of physical therapists and rehab specialists loved her as a real person who was unfiltered and unvarnished and not that perfect version of her that she'd always tried to maintain, that she started to love herself.

And that is the power of change.

You get these unexpected lessons.

She said she might have gone her entire life not knowing how much she was placing her self-worth in other people's opinions had this not happened.

And that now, as a 27-year-old, she feels more self-assured and more self-confident than she ever could have imagined.

And she's so grateful to her change because she said, this mental state that I'm in of self-assuredness could have taken me decades to achieve if I had gotten there at all.

And I think there's something so beautiful in that.

And there's another woman, Tara, who has a really traumatic experience in childhood, and it leads her to develop a deeply avoidant attachment style.

And then through another big change in her life, she recognizes this avoidance and is able to slowly work towards a more secure form of attachment.

And so, again, I find it so inspiring when I learn about how sometimes the hardest, worst moments of our lives can actually be the keys that unlock these new versions of who we can be.