Nie Nie

Last week, American Fork Hospital held a girls night out. Nie Nie was the guest speaker and the whole reason we (Rachel, Emily, and I) went. I like to follow her blog and have done so for some time now because she's such an inspiring woman and has a lot of faith. I was excited to actually get to meet her in person and hear about her accident. For those of you who don't know, Stephanie and her husband were in a horrible plane crash 3 years ago. Stephanie was burned on over 80% of her body. I love the way she has responded to this trial, instead of tearing her down, this experience has strengthened her and in turn has inspired those around her.

Here's my paparazzi shot.

I wish I would have taken notes because there were so many things she said that touched me. I appreciate and respect how positive she is and that she can still see the beauty in life though she has had many trials. She said of all the hard times (and there have been many), her daughter not being able to look at her for 3 months was the hardest. I can't imagine what that would do to you as a mother, she said she felt like a monster. She doesn't feel that way anymore and I'm glad that she's confident enough to speak about her experiences in front of a crowd (she does this all the time and has spoken all over the country) because I left uplifted and came home feeling grateful.

The main message she wanted to share with us was a message of hope. Hope that things will get better and hope to be happy, though life can be very, very hard at times, we need to keep going. One of the things I took away from her speech was to learn to appreciate the little things in life. Nie Nie needed to re-learn how to do many things after the accident, walking and using her muscles mostly. Now little things like tying her childrens' shoes, buttoning buttons, and zipping zip-loc bags are happy moments for her. I take those moments for granted everyday and need to learn to appreciate the simple things in life that I don't realize make me happy. Sometimes I don't like cooking dinner or cleaning up after my husband and child - but what if I never had the chance to do that again? I would miss it.



Rachel and I even made it on her blog, check out the back of my head here. I'm the one in the blue shirt towards the back and Rachel's in hunter green.

After Nie Nie spoke, there were tons of booths set up with all sorts of girly things - it was a girls night out after all. They offered free food, massages, hair styling, nail painting, health tests/screenings, educational stuff, life insurance info, etc. You name it, they had it. I was able to get some good information on varicose veins (I have spider veins and they WILL turn into varicose veins...gotta love genetics) and I got a perfect worksheet that states who will be responsible for Leila if we die (we've been thinking a lot about that lately). Can't forget the awesome SWAG too. Love my GNO's with my favorite gal pals.