Flexibility challenge: Put these over your shoulders? 😏 + A long personal backstory... (13 pics)

Ever since my spinal injury a little over a year ago, I’ve been working on rebuilding my strength and range of motion. While I’m not fully back in the gym yet, it feels like progress compared to the early days when I'd lay on the ground in pain all day, scared to move and trigger another episode.

Unfortunately, I know I’m probably not the only one who’s dealt with nerve pain and sciatica, so beyond the spicy photos (I think these might be my favorite ones ever 👀), what I really want to share is a big thank you for being part of my journey, both in physical healing (a few of you have shared with me your own journeys with pain, hence my Reddit account name) and in rediscovering things I love like yoga. While I’m still working on little things like being able to touch my toes again (I used to be able to "palm the floor" in seconds) I know the spine takes time to heal, and having little goals keeps my progress concrete and helps me stay motivated.

Ones of the few good things that came out of my injury is... you guessed it: my love for Lululemon. It sounds silly, but having cute and comfy workout clothes helped my motivation even on bad days. When I started physical therapy, I was still struggling to make it to class (literally), and even though my professors kindly gave me extensions and allowed me to attend class through Zoom, I never felt more alone in school. It was my first year of grad school, and moving to California and being in my dream program was something I desperately wanted to do right.

Now that my second year is finally starting, I feel lucky to be in a much better place both mentality and physically, thanks to PT and Lulu. My daily pain levels have gone from a 8/10 to a 2-3/10 and sometimes even a 0/10! I can take long walks, run short distances, and even tie my own shoes (no one tells you how hard it is to put on socks and shoes when you can't bend over! I ended up creating a contraption using a plastic folder and Chinese zongzi strings to get those darn things on and off. It looked kind of like:

I'm sorry that looks terrifying forgive me I'm clearly not an art student, I study animals...)

Anyways, I’m excited to start another year of vet school and keep moving closer to the ultimate dream of opening my own clinic. Growing up without much, I've seen what people do for their pets even in the worst situations, and I hope to use my clinic mainly to support underprivileged families and their pets. Everyone deserves the same level of care, but sadly in the US the quality of healthcare often depends on things we can’t control. If I can help change that even for just one person, all these student loans would be absolutely worth it.

Here's to another year of school, a new platform to share myself on, more window shopping (more like fitting room shopping), another Lululemon haul (bless WMTM), and more happy, healthy animals!