Push Girls Episode 2 review: Watch Me

After a great intro on the four girls in Episode 1, the show gets deep and dirty.

SPOILERS AHEAD ****

“Once a dancer, always a dancer,” Auti says in the second episode of the series, after revealing her tragic injury story (on the night of her injury, she sold herself for $500 to a male friend to pay rent).

And Mia shares she might be too strong. “Sometimes I don’t think I have any tears left to cry.”

Gotta love Angela’s meditation sounds. Maybe it helps her deal with her paralysis? And in a scene at Tiphany and Angela’s house (they’re roommates), Tiphany transfers out of her chair onto a bench at the kitchen table to “look normal.” “Sometimes you just need to do that.” Yeah, I can relate to that.

Auti enters a ballroom competition with an able-bodied pro ballroom dancer that she worked with in Musical Chairs. “I want people to see you dance. Not be the girl in the wheelchair. “I want people to think you’re going to dance out of your chair.” After some intense practicing where he really pushes her, she had to figure out how to keep her legs strapped in with her husband’s help and has an understandable freak-out session when her straps don‘t cooperate. Been there. Loved that they showed that.

Her hubby Eric is so great; always calm under pressure (us girls in chairs should always have a guy with that kind of temperament). And at the competition, Auti and her partner end up winning 1st place in the show dance category. They looked insane. Wc-dancing on fire I swear. Also, really loved Auti’s glam competition dress. So glad the country gets to see this chick.

And Mia gets deep about her relationship with her bf of 2 years. They are on completely different pages when it comes to kids (really glad my boyfriend and I are on the same page). They meet at her place to talk, and sad….he breaks up with her. “I am who you want, but not what you want.”

Why I Run My Site

I received a beautiful letter validating the very reason why I’ve been running this site, Beauty Ability, since 2003.

It came from the mother of a 17 year old girl who recently found my site. Having “up there” confidence and thinking you’re beautiful is never easy when you’re a teenager, let alone when you’re in a wheelchair.

Hi Tiffiny,

I found you through my daughter Leanne.  Leanne has Spina Bifida and uses a chair.  We live in the country and she is the only person here that uses a chair.  She has gone through all of her life with no true peers and now that she is 17 and watching the world go on around her it has been rough. 

She has not been able to see any positive in her life for some time.  Throughout each day I hear “I hate my life” more times than I can bear.  Throughout her life I have worked to find opportunities to introduce her to the disability community, without success. 

Push Girls: Reality TV Finally Finds Us

Push Girls - Reality TV Series helps those with spinal cord injuriesI wrote more about what “Push Girls” means to me for Easystand. Check it out:

Push Girls premiered last Monday, the new reality show on the Sundance channel profiling four “hot babes” in wheelchairs. As a babe in a wheelchair myself (hey I’ve been called that), this show is the televised messiah I’ve been waiting for.

The show’s premise – showing the world that you can still be beautiful, have a full life, a great job, have men that want you, and still drive a fabulous car (has been my personal goal since my injury).

You have no idea how frustrating it is for people to be shocked when you can achieve any of these things. A “push girl,” so say the shows producers, keeps on pushing despite anything that comes her way. I kinda like it. Read the rest of this entry…

Locomotor a waste of time?

Maybe I’ve been paralyzed too long, but there are a bunch of new therapy programs out there that I question.

Let me preemptively say that locomotor training has a lot of great benefits (it’s good for weight-bearing, making your muscles move, organ-hanging party time).  It’s a pretty intense therapy where they strap you into a harness (that’s attached to a bar above your head) and hang you above a treadmill. Read this entry

SCI Superstar: Jesse Billauer

The ocean can be a dangerous place. Sharks, big waves with multiple personalities, fugly Man o’ Wars, but you don’t have to tell Jesse Billauer this. He’s a born and bred Cali boy who came out of the womb with a surfboard attached to the hip.

Jesse, at 17, was living the semi-charmed life of a California teenager – young, athletic, gorgeous (still is) and staged to be one of the next big surfers; it was an idyllic life. But his world turned upside down in 1996 when the crest of a wave threw him off his surfboard.

Jesse hit his head on a sandbar and became a C5-6 quadriplegic on impact. Despite a severed spinal cord, which can be a tough SCI blow to receive, Jesse wasn’t about to say adios to a rock star life. If anything, his energy for life has only become more pronounced. Read the rest of this entry

A spoon, a girl and a cell phone

Long ago when I was a newbie in rehab, they sent me home with a reacher as my designated method for picking up stuff on the floor, and then life happened.

Sans-reacher, you have to use a lot of crazy stuff – a broom, a stick, a grocery bag, even a big saggy purse – to pick up stuff from the floor (people with disabilities are ninjas of creative solutions when they have to be).

And in this video by Annemarie Hopkins, a wonderful woman who founded 3eLove.com (and sadly passed away in ’09), proved you can do a lot more with a kitchen spoon than just stir tomato soup. Read this entry