Title:
Lizzy O. | Faith, Motherhood, and Social Media Advocacy
Subtitle:
How Lizzy O. Finds Strength, Embraces Authenticity, and Advocates for Inclusion on Social Media
Transcript:
Alycia Anderson: Welcome to pushing forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice each week. We will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths. Let’s go.
Lizzy O: Hi.
Alycia Anderson: Hey, Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I’m Alycia Anderson.
Today we have a guest whose story is not only impactful, but it’s the real deal. She is a dedicated mother. She’s a vibrant content creator. She’s a fierce advocate for accessibility and living the life that you choose.
After a car accident, she embraced her new reality with grace and resilience and she’s become a powerful influential voice for not only women, for mothers. For inner able couples across the social media world.
Lizzy O, welcome to the show and thank you for gracing us with your presence.
Lizzy O: I’m seriously so excited.
Alycia Anderson: Me too. You have become this light on social media. Lizzy is a phenomena. Like she’s got hundreds of thousands of followers and she’s creating lifestyle content that, that really paints a beautiful picture of the disabled path in so many different ways.
Can you share, maybe a little bit about your disability, your experience and, the intersectionality of the identity of who you are.
Lizzy O: Alycia. You’re so kind and you said so many nice things about me And thank you once again for having me on here My goodness, where do I start with my journey? well I’m just gonna start from the craftsman because as I always tell people like a lot of people their journey starts Starts with, they were born with disabilities and I am not. I wasn’t. So I had a car accident when I was a teenager. This was back in 2008. The car accident led to a spinal cord injury and that’s how I became disabled. Um, once the doctor told me that I was not gonna be able to use my legs anymore, I was like, what do you mean, you know? And one of the questions I had back then was, will I still be able to be a mother?
Because I saw myself. As a mom I saw myself having children. I saw myself getting married, but I was a teenager and you would think I had questions like You know what teenagers would think about but I was mostly just worried about like motherhood And would I still be able to have children and the doctors told me?
Well this is still fairly new but we’re gonna watch and see if your period comes back and if you’re able to Carry, we don’t think it shouldn’t be possible But if it’s possible Then yes, you can go ahead and do that.
So, um, after the car accident, I think I just online one day and I was looking at inspiration, looking for inspiration black, because I’m black in a wheelchair and I was like, barely any results coming up.
Everything coming up was very clinical and very, very much so like. You know studies not really real life and at that point again, I was a teenager I was so into watching youtubers doing vlogs daily vlogs and just sharing their life and how they wear fashion I was into fashion beauty all of the things and I just couldn’t find someone that I Felt like representing me.
So I said to myself i’m gonna start a blog not even youtube at this point And so I started my blog and I just wanted to share things. I was doing I was the diy lady because I had to You Figure out how to live life as a wheelchair user and a lot of that included diy I would like do it yourself, you know do things yourself and that’s how I just started From that I got into youtube from that.
I was on instagram from that. I started sharing more about my life and my journey You know, I got engaged during that period. So of course I posted that on my social platforms and then I got married and it’s on there. And now I had children life. I feel like my content is very much lifestyle. It’s just, um, me. And in the process of doing that, being kind of that person, that inspiration, I don’t realize the inspiration too much, but that person that someone like me or a new person that just be newly disabled can find. Online and say, okay, if she’s doing it, then I can see how she did it. Or I can talk to my doctor about that, or I can try to do that.
So that’s how I really, that’s my journey is how I want to put it. So, yeah.
Alycia Anderson: so important. And I love that kind of the motivator was the representation wasn’t there. And I also love. That the whole do it yourself DIY.
Lizzy O: Yes. Because, I think as disabled people, disabled women, we have to adapt and figure out a lot of things that maybe aren’t.
Totally.
Alycia Anderson: And the fact that you are amplifying that is really powerful. That’s really cool.
Lizzy O: Thank you. Yeah.
I was very much into that. Especially in the fashion space. It was like the jeans were no longer for me. You know? And I discovered that if I bought my trinity pants, have VANS on them. And I can just wear maternity pants even though i’m just a teenager And then I would post about that and I got so many page views And I was like, oh my god people want this content I’m gonna keep posting more the kind of shoes I wear on the water how I dress up in dresses And I can still put my legs together like stuff like that.
The young girls were like, yes, please Tell us how you’re doing it. And of course I had some older ladies also following me And now i’m one of those older ladies because now I mean listen.
Alycia Anderson: you just taught me something I’ve never thought about. Maternity pants being something that can be accessible.
Lizzy O: Yes. Maternity outfits. want to.
Alycia Anderson: Wow.
Lizzy O: Now we have more adaptive fashion. But back then, fashion was basically like non existent. Yeah, so back then I had to like, just fend for myself and I started discovering like, hey, maternity fashion don’t want restrictions either. They don’t want pressure either. So I could just get maternity jeans And they don’t have zippers and buttons. They just have the bands.
Alycia Anderson: So you mentioned your marriage and all of that.
Lizzy O: Can you, I love your love story. Like, do you mind.
Tell us all a little bit about how you met your partner and, and that whole story?
Well, I met him, we say through mutual friends. Now he said he knew about me before he…
Absolutely. I never knew about him. But we, I went to the movies one day with my friends and he went to the movies with his friends. So like back then, kids would just go to the movies, right?
And then you would meet up with a friend group here and a friend group there. And we met each other. We were just like, okay, friends, and he wanted to date me. And I was like, um, sir, no. And this was before my accident, I should say, when we met. Um, so I was just you know, like every regular teenager meeting friends at the movies and um, we became friends And after my accident, it was like I still want to date you and I was like, are you sure? Are you really serious about this? You know, it’s like yeah, I want to marry you even I was like, sir, let’s relax.
Oh, and so we dated for I want to say Six years because we’re very like teenagers. So and then he proposed after we graduated college and started setting up our lives And then we got married yeah, and Now we have two kids, please lord Uh fell in love with him.
It was just one of the most consistent friends I had And our friendship just naturally bloomed into love. I was just like, okay, yeah, we’re definitely going to date. And he was consistent, very consistent, very passionate, much so letting me know that this is what he wants. And what was, what was there not to love?
I just naturally just fell in love with him. And I was like, okay, let’s give this a shot. And a shot turned into one year dating, two year dating.
And then we got engaged and then boom. married and now we have two kids.
Alycia Anderson: So you talk a lot about, being in an inner abled. Couple relationship. can you define what that is for anybody who might not know. And then also, talk about, some, some of the societal perceptions.
Lizzy O: Think it’s an interesting topic.
Yeah. What that is basically is when one person is disabled and the other person is not. It could be the girl, it could be the guy, basically saying, hey, I am someone who identifies or I have a disability and my partner does not. So you are in an interabled relationship, just like they have the whole interracial, you know, black wife, white man, or vice versa. So, um, for us, don’t see ourselves as that. Honestly, I don’t really particularly wake up every day and say I’m in an interrable relationship. I just feel like for what I do online and for the people that want to find that kind of. Content or inspiration. I have to use those kind of hashtags to kind of like, okay, I’m here.
If you’re looking for that, I guess, and then again, I go back to the emails I get from girls or comments. I get from people who are like, did you feel like you had to particularly date someone who is not disabled so I think people should focus more on, are you compatible? Are you in love with this person? Do you want this person? It’s not whether you’re interabled or disabled together or whatever the case is. And for us, it just worked out that way that, you know, he’s not and I am.
And I’m Nigerian as well, I have to mention that.
So, with regards to that, you know, of society, certain stigmas were surrounding our relationship. Even that I didn’t, there were so many things that I didn’t think about until like, we actually made our relationship very public.
And we were like, talking about? You’re going to date someone that’s older and you got questions and I got questions and it’s just like, guys, we’ve forgotten that love is the most important thing.
Alycia Anderson: That’s really beautiful too. That’s awesome.
Lizzy O: Thank you. Thank you.
Alycia Anderson: So let’s switch to motherhood, motherhood is a huge part of your platform.
Lizzy O: Did disability impact your decision making process as you decided to say , okay, green light, go. I think this would be a helpful conversation for all the girls that are listening to this.
So, of course, um, this is something I thought about and something I kept thinking about even after I had. Gotten engaged and then got married my husband. We had the conversation before marriage and I at that point. I don’t know if this is TMI, but I saw my period regularly. I know some people after a car accident. It doesn’t come back or they never regulate back to how it’s supposed to, but mine did come back.
And so it was just a matter of.
We’ll see if you get pregnant when time comes and if you don’t we have doctors for that We’ll talk to somebody but I knew for sure that I wanted to carry And once we got married We knew that we were not going to start trying for a baby for at least a year because we wanted to enjoy each other but we wanted children.
So once we did the one year, then it was like time to start trying. And I was like, Oh my God, first, first month trying and I didn’t get pregnant. I was like, Jesus, what is happening? And the doctors are like, girl, it doesn’t happen just because you’re ready for it. You need to be patient. And eventually, I did get pregnant. And, um, naturally, of course, we didn’t do anything. Just did what you had to do. And, um, got pregnant.
I’m trying not to go too off on a tangent here, but if you are somebody who wants this as well, first things first, seek medical professionals.
Let them watch your body, tell you what your body can do, be realistic with yourself. I also was on certain medications at a point that if I continued taking them, I wouldn’t have been able to get pregnant. So I had to, you know, Get off certain things. Of course, everybody’s story is different. If it’s a medication you absolutely need, then you cannot win yourself off of it.
But I was able to not need those medications anymore. Went myself off of all of that. Started my prenatal vitamins. And physically, I was 100 percent independent. So, pregnant wise, I felt like We’ll just see how my body tolerates being pregnant.
And we’ll just take it from there. I, I was, I am still a very much happy go lucky girl. We’ll just see how it goes. And that is how I live my life. So my doctors were like, uh, you should be healthy enough to carry this baby to term. And when it comes to birth, when we get to that bridge, we’ll just cross it.
Some people have to do CS, but some people can push it out. And I made sure. Very much that this was a journey. I documented it on my youtube channel So if you’re interested check that out I documented my first pregnancy very much in detail because this was new territory to me And like I said, I wanted to be that Referral point reference point for anybody that needed the references right.
So I documented it. Um, pregnancy was easy for me ish, you know, let me not say too easy Okay, cuz my first pregnancy was so kind to me my daughter my second pregnancy However, my son that boy gave me a run for my money. I looked like everything I was being through But my daughter I documented I documented the whole thing, went to regular checkups just like every woman who’s pregnant was.
I didn’t have any complications whatsoever throughout pregnancy. Sometimes I threw up, but that was all like trying to, as a woman, okay? I don’t know anybody that you’ve talked to, but as a woman in general, disability or not, pregnancy is different for everybody. You know what I mean? So the disability aspect honestly for me was more so thinking that if I was not walking, then something would happen.
Not work well, but it wasn’t, it was not a concern at all. The doctors were like, matter of fact, you get to rest because you’re sitting all the time, a…
Alycia Anderson: um, mothers and pregnancy, that’s the representation to you and, and a lot.
Lizzy O: few other ladies. Yes. Now we have more people.
Alycia Anderson: it gives you so much more hope. When you got pregnant, when you got the, okay, yes.
Lizzy O: Yes. Yes.
Alycia Anderson: moment? Like how?
Lizzy O: Oh…
Alycia Anderson: And what was that moment?
Lizzy O: Like, I just knew I was pregnant before I did the test, but I have no confirmation, right? So, we, I recorded it. Again, it’s on YouTube. Um, my husband and I, we went to the restroom. I was like, I gotta cap and get some pee out of my body so I can check this thing. And then once it became clear that, yeah, you’re pregnant.
Alycia Anderson: Let’s talk about motherhood, disability, and societal perceptions. How has that been?
Lizzy O: uh again me personally i’m able to shut things out when you’re just in your enclosed environment is almost like Easier to manage. But when you put yourself on the internet, people who know nothing about you will make assumptions about you or put their own limited beliefs on you. And you have to be able to like compartmentalize even and say, y’all don’t know nothing about me. we went to Disney recently and can imagine my husband. the stroller for our little boy and my daughter who is just like happy go lucky to be at Disney Probably just like daddy daddy look daddy look and she and daddy get no rights and I couldn’t see people around us Like my this man is just carrying the weight of the world or the load cuz she’s on a wheelchair And I’m just like I can see it in their faces and if I let that Seep into my soul. No, I don’t allow that to happen because the truth of the matter is I know what I contribute to raising our children to our relationship just life in general like i’m not gonna let y’all and your assumptions Limit demean my contributions to this relationship. And I, I try to put that kind of Stuff into my content. Like I call my husband lovingly online. I’m like, look, label just did this label. Just be that can do it myself, but he’s going to do that.
Alycia Anderson: But that’s a really good point is, in a relationship, we lean on our partners, no matter what, like disability or not.
Lizzy O: It’s a relationship. You can’t say, because you’re trying to prove that you’re not disabled, so you’re going to just do everything all on your own and burn out. And you’re not going to seek or enjoy the benefits of being in a companionship and a partnership. And if my concern is dwelling on what other people are seeing or their assumptions or their perspective, then I’m not nurturing what is actually in front of me, which is my relationship.
Alycia Anderson: Yeah. Yeah.
Lizzy O: What advice would give to women that are starting out through this path of all of these things you’ve gone through?
Um, personally, my faith is a huge part of my personality in general. I’m a Christian. I lean on God. And God, without Him, I don’t even think I’d be here right now, because I have to lean on Him a lot, especially at the beginning of my craft. just like leaning on the Bible, the Word of God, like, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Number one. Point blank. Period. And, um, After that, it’s like finding yourself and just we hear so much about self love and self love it’s actual deep work and if you need a therapist to do that work please get one get one make sure your mental is in a good Place make sure you are aware of who you are and what you want in life Not what society says you should have not what your parents have thought you should have not what the man that’s showing interest in you because Trust and believe somebody might be showing interest in you and you don’t want them Don’t say because you’re disabled you’re going to go for that person.
Because people make you feel like you are not worthy. Don’t let anybody, okay, if you’re listening to this and you hear nothing, don’t ever let anybody make you feel less than.
Alycia Anderson: We’ll put all of your information in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here today.
Lizzy O: You’re a beautiful, wonderful mama.
So much. Thank you guys for being here with us.
Alycia Anderson: Thank you to our pushing forward community for showing up again for this conversation today. This has been pushing forward with Alycia and that is literally how we roll on this podcast. We will see you next time.