In this conversation, Laura shares her journey of living with spina bifida. She discusses the challenges she faced growing up with disability and the innovative therapies her family sought out to help her thrive. She shares her experiences trying to fit in at school, the isolation she felt, and how she finally gave up her mission to make other people comfortable with her limitations. Laura also reflects on her discovery of the Mind Body Solutions (MBS) program and how yoga transformed her relationship with her body, leading to a deeper understanding of self-acceptance and peace.

"It's that they make lemonade out of lemons. Instead of looking at what's hard about it, they look at how to transform your disability into something beautiful, something intimate, something fun, something other than what it is...(because it's not any of those things)... but it can be experienced differently if you have the right person with you."

In part 2 of our "Pity & Perception" conversation we talk through the delicate dynamics of friendships and what it means to us to feel fully seen, considered, and included.

- Even friends get it wrong - Navigating the stories of those closest to us

- The Complexity of Emotional Reactions

- Feeling Included vs. Excluded

- The Grief of Limitations

- The Importance of Community

- Finding Joy in Difficult Situations

- Creating Intimacy Through Shared Experiences

"Don't we always go through life with our story just ready to slap it on whoever's in front of us? And then just like that we're up and running with that story." Angelique and Samantha dive a deeper into a brief encounter with a stranger that left Anqelique stung by the disconnect between how she sees herself and how he reacted to her disability that we discussed in the episode "Pity & Perspective-Pt 1"