We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Natalie Neale. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Natalie below.
Hi Natalie, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
For as long as I can remember, resiliency has always been a trait embedded into me. Being an amputee, I have always seen my challenges as a gift, and one of my life-long goals has been to inspire others. I always felt that I needed to give justice to this challenge bestowed onto me instead of running away from it, even though I may never know why. My resiliency did not come without hardship though, and I found that being vulnerable physically and emotionally was required. As a kid, I had always pushed myself twice as hard, because I felt the need to prove that I was just as capable as everyone else. I wanted to prove everyone wrong. The journey to get to where I am now was not easy, but it made all the difference. I went through the ebb and flows of feeling separate from everyone else, my legs not looking like everyone else. But then I began to realize that even though I may look broken, I am still whole. Resiliency has always been a part of me because I know that the best way to honor my obstacles is to use it to help others and be a mentor.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am an artist to my core, and the main focus in my artwork is to illustrate the different hardships I have had to overcome throughout my journey with a disability. My main medium is oil painting, but I am drawn to all the different creative endeavors that paint can achieve. I love to create my own personal painting series that are extensions of me. But I also have a passion for creating murals for the purpose of the community. I have completed 4 murals in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex within the last year, with my most recent one being TCU’s 150th year celebration mural. One of my passions is working with kids, and I have worked a variety of jobs involving children and art. One of my future goals is to work with kids with disabilities and to be a mentor to them.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Strength goes hand in hand with resiliency, and is something that I found essential in my life. I needed the inner strength to keep going at times when the emotional and physical challenges that came with my disability seemed to overcome me.
I think the most important perspective to harness is gratitude. Having a mindset that is thankful can truly change perspective. When I wake up and put my prosthetic leg on, I take my first few steps of the day, I always pause and remind myself how grateful I am to be able to walk on 2 legs. Therefore, my day is already a good day because of something that seems so simple, yet is a huge accomplishment.
Empathy has been a quality that I found to be an outcome of gratitude, but nonetheless significant. Having kindness or empathy towards others will never be something I regret. Life is not easy for anyone, and everyone faces their own battles, so showing kindness.. even in the most simplest of ways, can be life-changing.
What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
On May 18th of 2022, I had a reconstructive surgery on my amputation to remove a neuroma that has caused me a lot of pain in my life. The physical recovery was somewhat easy. What I was not prepared for was the emotional and spiritual recovery. For the first time in my life, I had to face one of my biggest fears, vulnerability. My entire life, I have had a prosthetic, aka “my mask”, to cover up a part of my identity. Now all of the sudden, I am bandaged up for several months. And if I want to go out in public, I am without my mask, and am in a more vulnerable state than I had ever been before. I had hit the lowest valley in my life, and had to deal with the feeling of being truly vulnerable. I challenged myself and went out to public places in order to face my fear. I spent the first half of my senior year of college on crutches, going to classes and leading a student organization all without my leg on. It was hard but I knew it needed to happen in order for me to become a better person. Vulnerability is still something I struggle with, but I have grown so much since my surgery, and my perspective has changed.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @natalieneale_art
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-neale-4a2a71283
