Its only fitting to kick this party off by really tearing down ALL my walls, letting my guards down, exposing myself a bit and sharing some extremely personal things that I have held in for many years out of fear as I really want you to get to know who I am, what I stand for and what I'm all about. So...without further ado.....
Hi.....I'm Lacy Salander.
I am a 30-something small town North Dakota gal, a wife, a mom, a fitness/nutrition/health enthusiast, animal lover, go-getter, GOAL-digger, business owner and an MRKH warrior....just to name a few.
HOLD UP a sec....a lot of those are fairly standard details one might share about themselves and makes sense.....all except ONE thing...my 'wall', my personal 'cross'. The root of where so many of my experiences in this life have lead me to where I am today. We'll touch on that a little deeper another day as its quite a topic on its own.
First let me back track a bit...
Growing up I loved being active. I did it all--ponytail softball, track, basketball, cheerleading. I wasn't one who was gifted with that amazing athletic talent but I sure loved a good competition and being a part of a team. Have always busted my tail practicing and had always been healthy and in pretty good shape. Because I was SO active growing up, every year that I had to go in for a check up {ya know, the MUST HAVE sports physical before you could play that I just dreaded} one of the first questions that they ask ya as a female...."When was your last period?" Geez doc.....I haven't had that yet (says the 14 yr old freshman pumped for basketball season). My mom told me the few years prior (as did the doc) that it's pretty normal for girls who are very active to have a very delayed "monthly friend." So....I brushed it off, and figured...meh, guess I'm lucky!
***Enter the insecurities as friends talked about 'aunt flo' and how bad she sucked....which forced me to close off and keep my mouth shut as I had no clue what they were going through, couldn't relate, and felt like the odd man out.***
15 yr old check up....no period.
16 yr old check up...no period.
Red flags started going up how strange this was....so we decided it was time to do some further testing. After some ultrasounds with a local doctor, they said everything looked 'normal' and to just be patient. Tests on my kidneys showed they were perfectly normal.
My mother nor I were ready to settle for what these results were showing, so we ventured off across the state to get another doctors opinion.
We set up an appointment with an OB about 3 hours away. After a day of what seemed like eternity, drinking water up the ying yang for ultrasounds, being poked at and being extensively tested on, we were asked to go to the doctors personal office and wait. We waited having no clue that the information she would be delivering would change the course of my life and completely tear me apart.
With a very somber expression on the doctors face, she shared with mom and I, they had discovered I was born without a uterus or a cervix. We sat in complete shock.
"You will never have a period. You will have difficulty being sexually active. You will NEVER carry a child or be able to give birth."
That day, I lost all hope.
I lost a BIG part of myself and my womanhood. I lost faith. I was angry. I was mad at God. I started to question my parents and if maybe it was it their fault. I became depressed and self destructive and I really truly hated my body and myself.
I was stripped of all the important things that were exciting about being a woman. I was stripped of the things many of my friends were experiencing together and that they would experience together later in life, while I sat on the sidelines and tried to pretend I was happy for them, when all I wanted to do was remove myself from their presence.
The doctor who diagnosed me, I remember sharing an image in a book of what I potentially looked like inside but she really didn't know much about it or have a real name for what my condition was. I spent the next few years doing my own research and discovered what I have was MRKH, Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser Syndrome.
One thought I instantly had after the day I was diagnosed was "Who in the hell is going to want to love me? Create a life with me and one day marry me when I'm broken and will never be able to give a man one of the most precious gifts you can give...children." At the time I was about a year into a relationship with the guy of my dreams--the guy I was so in love with and who we had talks about "hypothetically" if we got married one day we would have a baseball team of kids....all boys and one girl so that the brothers could protect their one sister. We were 17 & 18 years old. I had the biggest knot of my life filling my throat when I told him the news....and I'll never forget how comforting he was and how he told me he loved me no matter what and would NEVER leave me, and especially not because of this. That was a pretty big conversation for a couple of high school kids. But it was in that moment, I was able to breath easy because I knew THIS was the man I was destined to be with and no matter what we were going to figure things out and we would be alright. 8 years of dating and we finally got married!
After 3 yrs of marriage and a lot of years of praying and discussing we decided to begin our journey to starting to grow our family through adoption. Over the years we strongly felt God was calling us to be parents and that adoption was how we were to start. We began the process in 2007. It was the most wonderful experience. After only an official 6 months of start to finish with the process, our lives were blessed with a baby boy. It was the happiest moment of my life, holding him for the first time and knowing that I was his mom and that he was going to be the light of our world. God gave us so much when he gave us our son, Jaxon.
While I had the life I wanted, the family I had dreamed of, part of me still had so many inner struggles, a lot them stemmed from my MRKH diagnosis.
I was incredibly self conscious of my body and was obsessed with the scale. I went through body image issues for a lot of years before getting married. I went through a phase early in my diagnosis where I took dexatrim pills and would starve myself, and made myself try to throw up when I'd eat. That was short lived because I hated to puke. Years down the road when college hit I gained the standard freshman 15...only mine was 20. Eating fast food, late night pizza with roommates, excessive partying. It was a spiral out of control. I found myself in my early 20s falling into modeling. I found something that taught me about body image and it gave me an opportunity to shine and something to focus on. I started doing local jobs walking a LOT of runways for fashion shows. I loved that it brought out my inner "Sasha Fierce" and made me feel confident and that for that brief time I could be someone completely different.
It was after getting into modeling, I got connected with a personal trainer for a few months at a gym to help get me in shape. I became a cardio queen. Started some unhealthy habits again of not eating much, taking caffeine/ephedra pills when I worked out because a friend said they worked so well for energy (which I had none of). That ended after hearing of a Vikings football player collapsing and dying on the practice field due to pills like that. I worked out, I casually smoked at work with the ladies to suppress my appetite, I drank blended iced mocha big train coffees like they were going out of style . Weighed myself 20x a day and pinched any bit of fat on my body and was disgusted by who was staring me back in the mirror. On my wedding day, I remember weighing myself that morning being proud to have basically starved myself down to 134 lbs at 5'11. I had bony arms and you could see ribs and I was happy about that? But was I really...
Fast forward down the road, married, happy family and a 2 year old. I put all that weight back on and had tried so many gyms and different diets and nothing worked anymore. I felt I lost myself and needed SOMETHING to change. A friend of mine was a personal trainer and I had always heard her raving about a workout at the gym called Turbo Kick and how much she loved the creator Chalene Johnson and how she had a workout on DVDs you could do at home and that she was coming out that summer with a new program called Turbofire. I decided to look into it because going to the gym with a 2 yr old really wasn't an option so a home workout sounded like something worth a shot (plus I was pretty self conscious being in a gym surrounded by people who were fit and looked like they knew what they were doing when I clearly did not). I saw the YouTube of the program and watched it over and over about 20 times and it gave me goosebumps every time I watched and just KNEW it was for me. In August of 2010 I decided to take the plunge and follow the 20 week program. I gave it 100%...I did not miss ONE workout...not one single workout. I tracked every bite of food I ate for the entire program and finished in January 2011. I not only lost 20 lbs and 18 inches, but for the first time I was actually proud of myself. I felt GOOD in my skin for the first time probably ever. I found the ME I was meant to be. Chalene helped me realize every day I'd push play and spend my morning with her that I am capable of so many things. That I was WORTH IT. That I was doing this for ME, and it was going to help me feel better about myself, be a better mom, better wife. It did those things and so much more.
With my new found lifestyle and confidence I started telling the world about it and how excited I was. That they needed to do this program because it was a complete game changer..and when I fall in love with something, whether its a new shoe, a movie I saw or a life changing workout, you bet your booty I'm going to tell people I know they need to check it out. In the middle of this journey a dear friend of mine actually had shared with me that there was actually an opportunity staring me right in the face, which I could be spreading this love and passion I had developed and reach out to MANY people, help them and potentially turn it into a career. Say what??? The company which put out this program, Beachbody, was a company which wanted to give their customers a kick ass experience and then pay them to share their success with others and to lock arms with them to help do what we could to end the obesity epidemic in this country. Since I was already telling people about my passion and love for it...sending them to my girlfriend who was a coach, she told me I should just start this business and see where it takes me. So with some research, I decided to jump on board as a Team Beachbody coach....really not knowing 100% yet what that title meant. I knew that I was gonna get a discount on the workouts that were changing my health physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and that I was going to be able to use it as a vehicle to inspire, encourage and help others achieve the same sort of transformation I did.
That was in 2010. 4 years later, I have maintained everything that I had achieved from the start of my journey, I have helped HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of people to find themselves, to say yes to life. I have watched people lose 70 lbs, get off of various pills, and to regain confidence again. There's nothing quite as rewarding as texts and emails from people saying THANK YOU for changing my life. It has opened doors and opportunities for me that I never would have ever imagined. I have been able to pay off debt, been given opportunities to travel, take my husband on an all expense paid cruise for a week as well as meet so many new friends who are like minded, positive and want to see me succeed in all aspects of life. I have been able to create a team of individuals who are on this mission with me and seeing them create success for themselves and create financial security has been overwhelmingly exciting. I look forward to the day when I can freely pick up our son from school and drop him off, to retire my husband from his job and be 100% present in my families life without having to miss a single thing. That type of freedom is priceless.
My walls are down....I am an open book and I feel that if I can help give hope to or encourage even one person by sharing my past struggles, who I am and how far I have come, and where I'm going that this post, and this blog will be all worth it in the end.
I truly from the bottom of my heart thank you for taking the time to stop by and learn a little more about me. I would love to hear from you if you are reading this. Leave me a comment, or send an email to lacy.salander@yahoo.com. Maybe you have struggles like I had, or know someone who has. Maybe you are an MRKH warrior and feel alone, are struggling with infertility and adoption is something you want to learn more about. Maybe you are struggling with your own personal health journey and feel lost and unsupported. I want you to know something....you are not alone and I am here for you. <3
xoxo,
Lacy
