![\"Aimee](\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/files\/2010\/02\/533px-aimee_mullins_by_david_shankbone.thumbnail.jpg\")
<\/a>By Scott Allison and George Goethals<\/strong><\/p>\nBorn with fibular hemimelia<\/a> — missing fibula<\/a> bones — Aimee Mullins remembers hating her physical therapy sessions as a child.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0She had to do innumerable repetitive exercises that involved using her legs to bend thick elastic bands to build up her muscles.\u00a0 She loathed them and tried to bargain with her doctor to avoid doing them.<\/p>\n Her doctor told her, "Aimee, you are such a strong and powerful little girl, I think you're going to break one of these bands.\u00a0 When you do break it, I'm going to give you $100."<\/p>\n With these words, her doctor forever changed her worldview.\u00a0 "What he effectively did for me was re-shape an awful daily occurrence into a new and promising experience for me.\u00a0 I have to wonder to what extent his vision and his declaration of me as a strong and powerful little girl shaped my own view of myself as an inherently strong, powerful, and athletic person well into the future."<\/p>\n By any measure, Mullins' life has been a remarkable success story. \u00a0Mullins competed in the Paralympics in 1996 in Atlanta, where she ran the 100-meter dash in 17.01 seconds and jumped 3.14 meters in the long-jump.\u00a0 She is a college graduate, actress, fashion model, and motivational speaker.\u00a0 Mullins works with numerous non-profit organizations and is President of the Women's Sports Foundation.<\/p>\n "I'm going to suggest that this is a good thing.\u00a0 Adversity isn't an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life.\u00a0 It's part of our life<\/em>.<\/p>\n "I'm not trying to diminish the impact, the weight of a person's struggle.\u00a0 There is adversity and challenge in life, and it's all very real.<\/p>\n "The question isn't whether you're going to meet adversity.\u00a0 It's how you're going to meet it.\u00a0 And so our responsibility isn't to shield those we care for from adversity, but to prepare them to meet it well.\u00a0 We do a disservice to our kids when we make them feel they aren't equipped to adapt to adversity<\/em>.<\/p>\n "Find those opportunities wrapped in adversity.\u00a0 Maybe the idea is not so much overcoming adversity.\u00a0 It's opening ourselves up to it<\/em>.\u00a0 It's embracing it.\u00a0 Grappling with it.\u00a0 Maybe even dancing with it.<\/em><\/p>\n "Perhaps if we see adversity as natural, consistent, and useful, we're less burdened by it.\u00a0 Darwin illustrated a truth about the human character.\u00a0 It's not the strongest to survive, nor is it the most intelligent to survive.\u00a0 It is the one who is most adaptable to change.\u00a0 The human ability to survive and flourish is driven by the struggle of the human spirit.\u00a0 Transformation, adaptation is our greatest human skill. Perhaps until we are tested, we don't know what we're made of.\u00a0 Maybe that's what adversity gives us: a sense of self, a sense of our own power<\/em>.<\/p>\n "We can give ourselves a gift.\u00a0 We can re-imagine adversity as more than just tough times.\u00a0 Adversity is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet."<\/p>\n Aimee Mullins' entire motivational speech can be seen at http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/aimee_mullins_the_opportunity_of_adversity.html<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0By Scott Allison and George Goethals Born with fibular hemimelia — missing fibula bones — Aimee Mullins remembers hating her physical therapy sessions as a child.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0She had to do innumerable repetitive exercises that involved using her legs to bend thick elastic bands to build up her muscles.\u00a0 She loathed them and tried to bargain … Continue reading Aimee Mullins: “Dancing” With Adversity<\/span> ![\"Aimee](\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/heroes\/files\/2010\/03\/aimee_mullins_at_the_2009_tribeca_film_festival.thumbnail.jpg\")
<\/a>"People have continually wanted to talk about overcoming adversity," she says.\u00a0 "This phrase never sat right with me.\u00a0 Implicit in this phrase is the idea that success or happiness is about emerging on the other side of a challenging experience unscathed or unmarked by the experience. \u00a0But in fact, we are changed.\u00a0 We are marked, of course, by a challenge, whether physically or emotionally, or both.<\/p>\n