BONUS EPISODE: Vanessa Was Hit By A Train, She's Now A Paralympian

you're listening to a mama mia podcast Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and Waters that this podcast is recorded on hello from Mama Mia this is the no filter podcast I'm Mia fredman and this is a bonus episode of the show you're going to hear an interview today but I will not be the one asking the questions the wonderful liby tricket Olympic gold medalist and co-host of our this glorious Mass podcast one of Mama Mia's parenting shows we'll be hosting some bonus no filter episodes over the next three Thursdays I'm not going to give anything away but she has landed some absolutely extraordinary Australian athletes with some great stories to tell here's Libby in this special bonus episode from Mama Mia I'm Libby tricket and you're listening to no filter we've got a special few interviews over the next few weeks in the leadup to the Paris Olympics and Par Olympics you'll still get your usual Monday no filter interview with Mia fredman of course but you'll also get extra exclusive interviews with some of Australia's most inspiring athletes with Incredible stories that I just need to share with you today's guest is one of the most impressive people I have ever met Vanessa low is 33 she's a sprinter and long jumper and she's about to compete in the par Paralympics for Australia hi my name is Vanessa La I'm a par Olympic gold medalist and Mom de Bay at the age of 15 I stumbled across a incoming train um so got struck by the train and spent about 6 month in hospital a couple weeks in coma and um I was actually really fortunate just to walk away with missing both of my legs I'm still sitting here still living a really good life I think going through my accident was really something that turned into one of my biggest opportunities she suffered multiple broken bones head and back injuries and spent the next 6 months in hospital by the time she left her muscles had wasted away and she weighed just 45 kg a couple of years later she was competing at the world stage in 2012 in London she represented Germany at the par Olympics twice before she began representing Australia at the par Olympics in 2019 she's a Paro Olympic gold and silver medalist six-time World Championship medalist and is the reigning world record holder in the women's long jump in the category t61 sitting in the lead one jump to go already jumped 520 improved the world record twice what about a third time just for fun oh she's hit the board very well Vanessa's immense heart and her story are truly remarkable the way she explains why she does things and how she got to where she is is beyond words something else you need to know about Vanessa before you listen to to our conversation is that her partner Scott Reen is also her coach so the dynamic there is very interesting Scott is a par Olympic gold medalist Sprinter and water skar and not quite two years ago they achieved their finest achievement their first baby together and his name is mato I loved talking to Vanessa about not just her personal successes in sport but about her perspective on life here is Vanessa low all right well Vanessa I'm so excited to chat to you I think since I started following your journey I continue to take things from the way that you talk about life and particularly around adversity and your ability to not only face the life changes that you have particularly been through but we've all been through life changes right some bigger than others but you're able to navigate it in a way that is just so powerful in a really beautiful way I guess I kind of wanted to start with how did you develop that like was that something that you had before your accident when you were 15 or is that something that's come through that experience for you I think it's a bit of both I think grow growing up I was always a very stubborn person and a stubborn teenager and that actually really helps when adversity hits so although my parents were really cursing the stubborness that I grew up with having I think it really came in handy when things got hard and I had these really big goals in my mind to to adapt my life in a way that allowed me to live the life to my fullest after the challenges I faced but also I think this is something that we can learn and we can all learn to find a way to not only like conquer our challenges but actually manage them in a way that opens up opportunities for us and I think that's how I started to really see my unique challenges especially when I got hit with that accident where I lost my legs that there was no such thing as overcoming that adversity and I think it didn't take me very long to realize that and I think so many people over the years are continuously asking me how I managed to overcome the adversity but that's really missing the point because I never tried to overcome it because I knew that was not possible but I think what I really learned through the accident is that some things just happen and life just changes and rather than just trying to return back to how life was before something hid or return back to the body that I had or the life that I had why not open up myself to these challenges and try to find my unique opportunities in that and that really opened up for me the World of Sport and to be completely honest I never would have end up at the Olympics I loved sport and I love playing also sort of sports but I was not the person that was at that point was going to go to be a professional athlete let alone going to the Olympics and when that accident hit my perspective really shifted and rather than just like using sport as a way of exercising and spending time with my friends all of a sudden it became a tool to really find out what I'm capable of and what this new body of mine is capable of and so it was really kind of a vehicle to the new self and yes so in a way my biggest adversity ended up being my biggest opportunity because it opened up a new world and I think this is how I still deal with adversity I always search for not necessarily Silver Lining but for the differences that create new opportunities and all the challenges and what not is whatever is coming my way are really for the things that they can bring to this new life and the life moving forward I love that idea around change and adversity because I I've been doing a lot of reading and understanding around change and like what that looks like and how much we as humans try and resist it like so much like we we I mean we're all control freaks I think to some extent some worse than others and I'm right up there as being one of the worst but you have this idea of how you want things to be and how your life is going to pan out what's it like you know when at a challenging age I mean being a 15-year-old young woman is really difficult anyway and then to be out of nowhere literally struck by a train how do you navigate that when it's it's such an important juncture in your life I think for me I really try to step back into the shows almost of a child like when I even I look at my little Bob and he's like conquering all the challenges that he goes through every single day I mean like he's literally grow to inches overnight and like all a sudden where he used to fit through all of a sudden he's now hitting his head on but like I really try to do just like whatever is ahead of me one thing at a time rather than getting so overwhelmed by the change and the challenges that come with it I actually really try to focus on the one thing that's right in front of me first and then really think about the longterm Solutions or the long-term goals and kind of like the ways that I want to conquer it so really breaking it down into like really small digestible bits and being a little bit more light-hearted about it rather than just being so overwhelmed by you know how have I going to live a life this way how am I ever going to adapt in a way that allows me to live the same life quality because that's all what we want we want the life quality that we picture for ourselves like we have something in our head how our life is supposed to look like and so it's not necessarily the change that is challenging it's like the lack of Life quality that comes with the change that we feel like we will have and so rather than getting so stuck in the idea that this life quality is changing because my Mobility was changing and my Independence was changing and my body image obviously struggled for a long while as well I think I really started to focus on the one thing that was the most urgent on the day and then all of a sudden like I really started chipping away on it and all the really big challenges that was Mobility that was returning back to school because I did not want to use my wheel I wanted to use my prosthetic legs and that was much harder than I anti I ated at being but I made one goal of you know walking down the wholeway 10 times that day and then the next day I had the challenge to do that 12 times and then one week down the road I wanted to do you know the two stories up and down the house and like eding all these little challenges day by day all of a sudden one year down the track I was going to school without using my whe here and so what I felt like was the hardest thing in the whole world if I would have looked at the ultimate goal and the way that I still had ahead of me all of a sudden was really quite doable and I we do that really well when we're kids like we do one thing at a time one thing that seems the most urgent something that we want to figure out today and if we keep doing that every single day all of a sudden we're halfway there I love that I mean you're exactly right if we just break it down it's so much easier to digest I want to come back to that idea around body image though as well because you know when you are 15 you have a body and and then all of a sudden you're going through puberty and you might be getting breasts or thighs or whatever and so many women have this idea that we don't well I certainly didn't want to stick out from the crowd because I was very muscular as a kid and that comes with certain connotations and all of that sort of stuff what was it like to go through that moment and have this massive body change did you feel it in that moment that you were different I really did did and I I think I felt it for a lot longer than I initially thought I did I think it took me probably five six years to really overcome the almost like lack of appreciation of the new body that I had and for a long while when I first had these goals of returning back to like the mobility and to really all the functional bits that allowed me to live the life that I wanted I think I really neglected the fact that although I could do all these things I was always going to walk a little bit differently I was never going to wear these 10inch heels ever I was never ever going to fit into a crowd because when you have two prosthetic legs you naturally stand out you can't wear any skirts or shorts or open shoes without being looked at and I think for a long while I tried to really make up for that fact in putting on Prosthetics that had a full like cosmetic cover around them kind of make them look like human legs and I wore long pants but I couldn't wear any skinny jeans because I couldn't fit my feet through so I couldn't really wear the clothes that I wanted to wear and I couldn't wear the stuff that the other kids or the other teenagers were wearing that stage so even though I could hide them as good as possible I was still going to go stand out because I couldn't wear what I wanted to and I think it wasn't until I was really involved in sport and when I got introduced into running legs which are not sure if you've seen them but they're like black they're made of carbon fiber nothing like human legs because they're not mimicking human legs they actually made after the fastest thing that runs so they actually designed after cheetas and so that's why the shape is coming from and I really SED to appreciate that rather than returning back to something you know that you can't replace or human legs they designed them after something that's even faster than that so I think that's how I really appreciated or started to appreciate that it is really not about returning back to what I had lost and trying to replace it because it simply cannot be replaced ever and I think that's when I really to embrace it and realize I can actually create whatever it is that I want to create in that space and not come from a place of loss but actually come from a place of empowerment and so I think that was the moment where I took off all these cosmetics and all these bits that are trying to make my looks like human legs and like the legs that I had lost but I actually really put on like colorful covers and I really decided to let them stand out and actually gave them the meaning that they deserve because they were never meant to be a tool to return back to the life that I had before but they were really a tool to be the person that I was now and that I'm capable of being in the future do you feel like there's some synergies with that because you've recently well almost two years ago now but you gave birth to Mato do you feel like through that experience and that embracing of change of your body you've been able to navigate pregnancy and the postpartum period and obviously your body will never return to what it was before having a baby and I think as a society we're so obsessed with bouncing back and you know returning to our pre-baby bodies which is just not possible Right do you feel like you were able to navigate that change in your body and embrace it in a way that you may not have done otherwise I think so I I think looking back over the last couple years I mean obviously I had some goals to lose a couple of the kilos that I had gained through pregnancy because I'm still in sport and to some extent like Healthy nutrition and moving is part of my job so naturally I was going to chop some of these killers off but I think the major bit was that I had lost a big part of my mobility in the back end of pregnancy because I couldn't fit into my legs anymore I had so much swelling and I gain a bit of weight and I really started realize how big of a quality life I was living because how fit I was and so that was the goal and I wanted to return back to the fitness that I had and the ability to have all the movement that I wanted and that was capable before pregnancy and when I dove back into the World of Sport and try to return back to that Mobility all of a sudden I had people like talk to me like well you don't look like you just had a baby it's like how does a person look like that just how are you supposed to look I actually don't know what that was supposed to mean does it mean I don't look like a mom because I very much feel like a mom and I very much don't feel like an athlete at the present moment I just feel someone that is trying to live life again with having had birth I just wanted to go return back to not the person that I was before because that person was gone after I gave birth there was a new birth that was born at that point and that wasn't material necessarily that was me as well but I was also really excited to return back to the mobility that I had and so I think a lot of people didn't think that I was trying so hard and training so hard to chop off these kilos and being the same body in the same shape I was before because I knew there was not a realistic goal and not something that was all that important to me but what I really missed in the back end of pregnancy was the ability to move and move to the extent that I wanted it to so that was my big goal and I think it was definitely different world navigating these expectations of being a mom and being an athlete and you know in the whole Athletics World like I guess there are certain body images that surround athletes and how you're supposed to look like an athlete but then there's also certain images and certain expectations around being a mom and all of a sudden I felt like there was a massive Gap in between the two and it was really difficult to actually find my own sweet spot in the middle there where I felt like me the athlete mom at the same time because this is your first Paralympics as a mother what does that feel like because like for my little brain like to think about what was required to get to that level of Elite Performance right like to know all the choices that you have to make to commit to putting your body through it all of those sorts of things and you know in a lot of ways it can become very selfish and you know you're very focused on what you're trying to achieve what's it like now at your fourth par Olympics your second as an Australian and your first as a mother what's it like preparing like is it different in any way I mean I imagine it's wildly different but tell me how it's different what's so wildly different it's so amazing that I feel like I'm still doing the same sport still do the same thing that I fell in love with 16 years ago yet it feels very different and there's a different perspective added to the whole jour journey and I think perspective is the one thing that stands out when I think about my journey of pregnancy and then returning back to life is the perspective change and the way that I look at life and the way that I look at the things that I do and how much of a different why you have every single day I mean I don't get up every single day just to be the best athlete I can be all a sudden I get up because I want to be the best person I can be first so I can be a good mom and I can be a good athlete and so I think that's why I'm going to be a better athlete this year because I'm not just having the athlete mindset but I'm actually really embracing the wholeness as a person and all the aspects that make me me which then allows me to be the person and the athlete that I can be and having Mato on this journey with me is so rewarding and so challenging at the same time I think juggle is probably the word by the same time you let go of all these expectations of being perfect because I realize even without a child I never had the perfect preparation for games ever I mean I've done three games before and I mean one was a CO detour in there one was a stress fracture in my back then the other one had other challenges so there's always something going on so I realized that you don't have to have a perfect preparation in order to enjoy the games and be the best athlete and so really embracing that this is going to be a journey of nothing's going to go perfect there's going to be a lot lot of hiccups of things that I can't control especially when it comes to Mata because they always get sick when it's the least convenient they always have the worst night possible the night before competition and I just expect that I expect that it's not going to go my way but I'm going to embrace all the little aspects that make this journey really unique and I'm going to remember this as probably games that was our family games and I think that's what makes it really special one of my favorite things is like to look at life is just lower your expectations and anything is like just a wonderful gift basically it must be absolutely next level with having a little one on this journey but not only I mean you mentioned it's a family games for you but you and your partner Scott who is also a par Olympic gold medalist by the way and your coach like you guys are a bunch of overachievers and that's okay we still love you like you had this incredible experience in Tokyo getting to share that that was your first par Olympics as an Australian were you husband and wife by that stage yeah we were so you got to experience I mean what would have been just an insanely different par Olympic Games in any circumstances that is just so incredibly different but this is the first one as a family how do you navigate for one I mean having your partner is your coach is such an interesting Dynamic but it's obviously working for you guys so how do you navigate that who looks after Mato when you're training and competing it's ever changing and it's so interesting because like we said before you make plans and then it constantly changes because the baby changes and then it's all of a sudden a toddler and everything that used to be easy is now hard and everything that used to be hard is now easy but I think our relationship was really founded on friendship because we had a long-term relationship for a fair while it was in the end I think 3 years and so we really used to having this big trust and this big base of friendship so that anything that we do together is so much easier because the foundation was already there and then when we came from having that big distance relationship to then moving in with him training together living together and doing basically 24/7 together it really changed and really became our superpower because we actually make each other better and we're actually one of these people that really enjoy spending every minute together together and so when we decided to give this journey go as him as a coach and I as an athlete we knew that we could lean onto the friendship and Trust when things are going to get hard and we knew and we expected it to get hard at some time because there's always going to be differences and we're always going to disagree at some point and so we really anchor back into that big base that we built and so it really works and I'm actually really excited for these games because it felt so it's my heartfelt games almost call it like the one that I feel the deepest in my heart the preparation that almost meant the most to me because it was so challenging in some aspects coming back from pregnancy and birth and then also having my husband and my life partner I guess by my side every step of the journey it's so great and we decided to really enjoy Parenthood in a way that we wanted to be there every second of it and we also realized if he was going to go to daycare I was probably not going to go to Paris cuz we probably going to all be sick for the first year or so so we decided to actually stay away from that and we incorporated Mato into this Athletics journey and there is some big learning curves along there so some things we thought was going to be easy definitely didn't work out but we found a really good system that works for us and we found our perfect Grove now and realized which sessions he's able to come to and he's an enhancement of the session and the day and other sessions we actually found one of the volleyball girls that around the is is helping ning for us so we found a really great combination of having another athlete look after him for a few hours here and there and the rest of the time is really just part of the journey and with all the ups and downs and the screaming while I'm competing um we've done it all so I feel like now to to use into this journey we kind of found our growth you're prepared for anything in Paris last year's Nationals I was literally like at the track and the entire 45 minutes of competing he was screaming murder and like probably everyone was looking around was who brought that screaming baby to the chck like that is my child the joys they just never run to any sort of system do they they just don't and yet they enhance everything yeah it's it's awesome they really do and it brings the human back to the athletic Factor I'm interested in how your experience in London in 2012 so that was your your first Paro Olympic Games and it was in that moment that you didn't perform at the level that you wanted to and you've spoken about how actually after London you decided to retire from sport from Elite Sport and through some friends you ended up moving to America and rejoined the athletic Community I'm so interested to understand because I know from my experience is how intense that desire is to win and how the focus and the intensity and how crushing it can be when those events don't eventuate as you hope them to be what was that experience like for you and then how did you kind of come to what is your beautiful perspective of enjoying every moment as it comes and allowing the performance to come through you it's been such an interesting Journey because I think this was probably the biggest loss that I went through I think everyone sees me on Prosthetics and things it's that was the hardest bit why was it the hardest bit I think that one went straight to my heart I think while the loss of my legs was a physical one the loss of like actually achieving my goal and be successful in the sport was something that I chose to do something I poured everything into and then failing is I think some something that really goes to the heart and I guess preparing for the London Games I really caught up in all the wha ifs and all their possible results and I was already like I didn't even compete and I had already lost because I lost the joy and what I was doing and was so focused on the outcome that I didn't enjoy the journey and I guess Looking Back Now I wish I would have taken everything a little bit more lighthearted and didn't think the world was going to end if I wasn't going to come home with the medal that point because it's really not the point because now after winning two gold medals at two different games I realized nothing really actually changes when you win if you haven't found meaning and what you do before winning then you won't find it after winning and so when I moved to the US and teamed up with a new coach that really brought back that joy and the process and the joy of training and actually finding out why I do what I do which is was the reason I started this in first place I wanted to find out what my body was capable of push our in training I wanted to see how far I can take it how fast I can run how far I can jump and not for the reason of proving people wrong or for the reasons of being in the best in the world I mean of course it's the essence of sport of wanting to be the best and I think it's part of being a good competitor is having the desire to win but if you let that take over in everyday life and in training you lose even though you might be the best in the world on piece of paper but if you haven't find the joy and the contentment in what you do then it's not worth doing at all and it was really that detour through moving to the US and it actually came with a really funny bet because I mean we all know that good decisions are made on wild nights out yeah obviously obviously I went to visited friend in America that I met through the games and I made a bet with her husband rodri that he promised that if I was to move to America he would coach me for the gold medal at the next games wow and I thought yeah deal let's do it and I guess when I signed the deal at that point I didn't take it that serious but then I started thinking about it after being back in Germany and being back in my job and doing my everyday life and I was like that can't be it like I love the job but I also love the sport and I still love going to training and then finding out what I'm capable of and so maybe I need to give this a go and that's when I quit my job and I sold everything that I owned and I moved to Oklahoma City with two suitcases and plan to live up my savings for the next four years so it wasn't really a journey that was super easy but it didn't need to be I just had that one person that believed in my dream as much as I did and that's all I ever needed to full-heartedly believe in myself and fully enjoy the journey because all of a sudden I felt like we were on the same side I had a person next to me that was on the same side as I was he wanted to push limits he wanted to to find out how far I can jump and although it started with the BET of winning a gold medal it was really never about that medal at all I think it was for the first time I actually had someone that believed in me so hard and I think that was a new and something that felt so overwhelming in a positive way and I think that's what made me the competitor that I am still today how important is having that person to believe in you like it's one thing to kind of have that gut feel that you are capable of something but then to have someone external to you reveal that they think that you're capable of so much more than what you've shown how did that just allow you to dig in I guess and do the work that you needed to do I guess it's almost giving you the validation in your dream and as much as like our life is about ourselves right about our own dreams and goals like I think now being 33 years old I realized that anything doing is never worth doing yourself like you can't do it by yourself and also even if you did it's not worth doing because then you have no one to celebrate with that's so interesting as you're an individual athlete it's interesting to that you have that perspective as well it really is because yes I'm the one competing on the day but there's a whole crowd of people behind whether that's my husband or my coach my physios and there's so many people behind the scenes making it possible but not only making it possible but also enjoyable I mean even on a day-to-day basis like I just celebrate like PBS in the gym with my strength and conditioning coach I love going to the track and celebrating with my husband when we did a massive big jump and it's about these little moments of these little Milestones of being able to celebrate how far we come without losing sight of the goal and you know the long-term commitments and the long-term achievements but at the same time we need to really cherish these moments in between and that's why we have to have these people around us that believe in us because they then can celebrate on the same level that we do because they also invested in this journey and they're as invested as us and I think that's what makes every Journey worth doing is having these people by our sides every step of the journey that we can look left and right and all of a sudden you know you see a mess of smile on their lips because you just did something that was amazing and you give them as much joy as you give yourself self if not even more so I guess that's why we need these people and for me I didn't need a person that was my best friend I needed a mentor and I think for me it was always a very distinct difference because my best friend is the person there that you know always validates anything that I say I mean they're always you know backing me but a mentor is there also to call out my and also to call me up when I'm not showing up at this session the way that I should be so rodri and I we yelled at each other on a weekly basis we had more fights and we had good moments but that's what made this journey shaped it in the way that it ended up being and so yeah a mentor was the one thing that I really needed as an athlete and I know everyone is very different in their pit and some need those best friends and teammates but being an individual athlete I needed that mentor I think you're such an incredible and a really unique athlete in that you recognize that it's not about winning gold like you recognize that that's not the thing or breaking world records of which you've done multiple times you're obviously going for your third paralympic gold medal in a row so you you obviously have this like Monger I don't know how to describe it without being rude but like this in you who wants to like get in there and just like win but you also have the perspective that it's not about that like that's not the thing that lights you up I wonder if you can expand on that and help people understand that because I just think it's such a beautiful and unique trait to you thanks I appreciate that it's a very fine line of wanting to be the best and beating the rest of the world essentially but the same time not getting caught up in the end result and when I was training in the US and I had put everything on the line to I guess go for that medal I knew that the one thing I have control over is what I do and I didn't have control over what my competitors are doing and I didn't have control over certain things like I mean certain injuries they're just part of the journey things were always going to go not my way in certain aspects but I always took full full charge and full control over the things that I could and didn't get caught up in the end result because that was something that I knew was not within my control and so I think that's where this really good balance comes from of wanting to do be best in the world because that's the essential part of being a competitor and being an athlete and I mean it's not worth watching the sport when everyone is kind of like okay to not be great I mean you know it's not going to be exciting I go out on the field and I'm the fiercest competitor I mean I believe at that point I'm the best possible athlete and I know I can win because I've given everything that I can along the journey to be there and I think when I was in the US and I trained very hard as we all do but I also did it with a lot of heart and I put everything that I felt like my human me not my athlete me but but my my human me I put that into my athletic journey and I turn it into my craft and turn it into something that I owned and I took full authorship over my personal journey I think that's where I showed up in Rio and won my first par Olympic gold medal because I competed from the heart I want to read to you a quote that you have said and I would love to understand after I read it to you what you want your legacy to be so what you said was par Olympic sport is a little bit of a REM minded that we sometimes need to focus more on what we have rather than what we are lacking I really hope that people understand that you don't have to achieve something amazing in order to be perfect the way you are I really love to encourage people to understand that we aren't our disabilities but what really defines us is the choices we make the challenges we take the way we put ourselves out there and bring whatever abilities that we have individually to the table Society gets better with how different we are what are you trying to achieve this year and and what do you want that to look like as a legacy of your life when people going to watch me compete in Paris this year I really hope that they look at me and they obviously see my very obvious adversity and I hope that they can see themselves in there and I know we all have our adversities they have very personal to us and some are more Visual and obvious to the eye like mine but we all have them and we all have our challenges on this Earth but I really hope they can all see their own little stories and realize that they actually have a choice like no matter the circumstance no matter what happens around us to us for us however you want to say it we always have a choice to really create the life that we want to and I think when anyone would have looked at me about 20 years ago maybe not quite 18 years ago that 15-year-old kid that had no legs they would have never guessed that I was going to show up and do four par Olympic Games competing for medals and jumping five and a half meters along the way I thinkc first and foremost would have seen the adversity and the challenges so that's a legacy I want to leave behind I want people to see us compete there and see their own imperfect lives and say that they all have a choice to create something really amazing amazing and it doesn't have to be gold medals it doesn't have to be you know be on a TV screen or even do something anyone else notices it can just simply be pursue something that's close to your heart and manage all the expectations that we have along the way in a way that we get the most Joy possible out of it and then come on the other side with however we want to express ourselves and share this journey with the world so I want to leave a legacy behind where everyone is willing to pursue something close to their hearts and really find a way to share it with the world what however that looks like for yourself but for me it looks like sharing my journey through Sport and I feel par Olympics has such a great power in that space because you can see our adversities but at the same time you can see our choices that we make and you see not what happens in between in all the difficult years and all the challenges that we have but you can see that you know there is a distinct direction that we can go down to and and above all I really hope that you watch us and don't just see the adversity but you actually see you know what we can all do if we just keep on trying pick one thing every day chip away on it and all of a sudden 10 15 years on the track you look back it's like how far I've come like that's amazing so yeah just pick something that you love drawing and to the way on it I think for me my favorite thing about talking to Vanessa about her experiences in life is just the perspective that she's gained through all of the incredible changes that she's been through and I think in life we all experience change whether you know it's a choice that we've made or something that is thrust upon us and the way that she's been able to navigate that and see it as not something negative but as something to take on and tackle and move with is something that is so empowering and I think that we can all learn from because you know life throws so much at us every single day and we can choose to allow it to shift us and change Us in ways that create a human that we couldn't even imagine before so I hope you loved the conversation with Vanessa as much as I did this episode of no filter was produced by Courtney amuser the executive producer of no filter is Kimberly bradish M fredman will be back in your ears on Monday and you'll also hear me next week too I'm Libby thank you so much for listening because you've made it to the end I'm going to tease you a little bit with our next guest she's a Matilda that's all thank you bye [Music]