Becoming the Light from the Shadows of Abuse

Becoming the Light from the Shadows of Abuse


Living her best life with disabilities – Lisa Cox

November 06, 2020

Hello! I’m Lisa Cox.You’re probably wondering who I am and what I’m all about, right? I should probably warn you I kinda go on about my own stuff for a little bit here. The reason being, I write and speak about it but never retell the same story every time… Sometimes I’ll just give people a link to this page which might be how you got here!Take a look at Sarah’s existing podcasts by clicking the link, https://www.sallyg.com/podcastsand don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss all the new episodes at https://www.sallyg.com/subscribe-to-podcast/Please share with anyone who needs to hear these messages of hope and inspiration.Contact Lisainfo@lisacox.cohttps://www.facebook.com/lisacoxwriter/https://www.instagram.com/lisacox.co/https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-cox-217588a/https://twitter.com/lisacox_coNow, where was I…If you’ve seen my Facebook feed, you’ll know my life is anything but perfect. But I still love it #becausewhynotI’m an optimistic realistic who knows that gratitude is so much more than a hashtag.When people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a writer.The next question is usually, “what do you write?”I was a copywriter in advertising agencies around Australia for years and absolutely loved it. But then I acquired multiple disabilities (I’ll tell you about that later) and all my plans went out the window.These days I’m a freelance writer and contribute to national and international publications like the Huff Post (formerly The Huffington Post) and The Sydney Morning Hera;d.I’ve had two books published and also write about observations from my own life, resilience and mindset, body confidence and self-esteem, fluff-free motivation, women’s and disability issues and other topical matters. My blog is here and I’m also a I’m also a public speaker and presenter.If you want more nitty gritty work info, you can always connect with me on LinkedIn.I speak and write about overcoming challenges, failure, resilience and things like that… anyone who does even a minute of work in the personal development industry or has worked as a motivational speaker will have a story or two in their toolkit to share.So what is mine?Well like I mentioned before, my life is anything but stereotypically ‘perfect’ – take my  Instagram feed for example. Sure, I love messing around with filters but no matter what filter I use I can’t cover up my wheelchair – and nor would I want to.I firmly believe that we all have challenges but we also have choices. My challenges might look different to yours but often the principles are similar.I never planned to have my world turned upside down, I never planned to be disabled and I never planned to lose a lot (including some body parts!). But I did choose to always make the very best of what I do have. Doing this in your life can make the difference between merely existing and truly living with purpose.I’ve spent many years climbing. At first it was rock climbing in Thailand and then it was climbing my way out of a massive health crisis. I’m still climbing today, failing then trying again – but that’s life! This doesn’t define me but my stories, scars and disabilities are such a huge part of who I am today that I wanted to share it with you in a bit more detail here. Plus, it will give you context to some of my work.I can’t really explain what happened in a sentence except to say “I got really sick and became disabled”.But if you’re interested, the longer version goes something like this…At age 24 I had a brain haemorrhage, like a stroke. It was caused by a nasty infection (Streptococcus-A) and to this day, nobody knows how I contracted it.Before that, life was pretty good. I’d been to university and graduated with two degrees (bachelor of business communications and media), played lots of representative sport, travelled overseas, moved into my own place and after years working in the corporate sector, I had just been promoted in my dream job at an advertising agency.