Sick Chick to Trail Blazer: Reclaiming Your World.

Sick Chick to Trail Blazers’ Manifesto
For flipping your fears and being who you want to be
By Grace Quantock

Disabilities don’t have to stop you living your dreams.
Maybe your dreams need to shift,
(and we know it takes courage to reinvent dreams)
but the rewards are palpable and sweet.

You don’t have to be the Sick Chick anymore, turn Trail Blazer.
Every day that you make choices to support your sparkle,
from eating well to resting,
from choosing what works for you,
over what works for everyone else,
you are flying the flag for Trail Blazers globally.

When autoimmune disease jumped up and my body began attacking itself I went renegade and decided my dreams were worth living.

If you don’t know how long you are going to live,
then it doesn’t really matter what you try.

I didn’t have a need to see the Great Wall or the Grand Canyon.
I didn’t think I’d regret having missed out on bar diving
and high table dancing.

I wanted to record and share the healing journey -
- to send out Healing Boxes to people with chronic and serious illness.
- to sleep in the woods, under the stars – fears of snakes and bugs notwithstanding.
Now you are part of it.

I believe women previously sidelined by illness are an untapped force of potential, and that you can stop being a Sick Chick and turn Trail Blazer.

A Trail Blazer…is a woman who is empowered.
• She is taking charge of her healing.
• She is at the wheel of her life, making decisions, informed choices and taking action.

A Trail Blazer is creating the best possible environment to heal in.
• She isn’t other, she’s breaking boundaries.
• She isn’t weird, she is a pioneer,
• She isn’t typecast, she is a living breathing shining adventure story,
• She isn’t redundant, she has so much to offer the world through her presence and her living.

A Trail Blazer is asking what the alternatives are, who has managed this before and how can she find them?
• She is an exceptional patient.
• She is educating the hospital that milk is not the only source of calcium.
• Some Trail Blazers cure the incurable.

A Trail Blazer is giving lie to the invalid stereotype.
• She makes magic out of what she has.
• She writes poetry in her last days.
• She knows that when she dies, she will be going home like a shooting star.

A Trail Blazer knows that she is not an “inspiration”, but she is real and living.
• She lets her condition be a wake up call to live.
• She finds the diamonds in the terrible pressure she is put through.
• She takes notes, gets names, reads books, does yoga, manages the pain, cries but carries on.

Wear glitter. Live well.

And if you take one thing
away from this,
know this:

The disabilities, the diseases,
are just the footnotes.
YOU are the adventure story.

Come turn Trail Blazer Today.