Siobhan Morse is nothing less than a positive bright light in every conversation, but her vibrant personality wasn’t always at the forefront of her life. She has learned to approach life, time and again, from a perspective of gratitude and delight. Although, as it often does, her appreciation for life came at a cost.

Siobhan currently serves as a voluntary adjunct for Baylor Medical College and is the division director of clinical services for Foundations Recovery Network, the addiction services division of Universal Health Services. She finished 271 in her age group in the 2018 Crossfit Open, which put her in the top 5 percentile. She is training relentlessly to compete in the 2019 Games and pursues a better version of herself in aspects of fitness, health, and her profession daily. However, she has another consequential reason to celebrate life. Going on 12 years of sobriety, Morse is in perpetual recovery from opioid and stimulant addiction.

Born and raised in Miami, Florida she has always been an athlete, particularly in the sport of diving. In her younger days, she recalls being “wild”, but those associative traits eventually took a turn. Forced to deal with adverse childhood experiences like trauma and life circumstances, she recognizes these episodes were affiliated with the conducible habits of her addiction. “Addiction is a progressive disorder,” Siobhan states. And starting in her 20s and dominating her 30s, she lived on the street, homeless, using, and immersed in her substance abuse. At 40, Morse entered a treatment center due to state recommendations. Here she says, “I  began to understand the disease concept of addiction and learned to deal with my past.” She was educated on her particular issues, and because of her time at the treatment facility, she grew into a master addiction counselor and was ultimately offered a job leading her to Nashville.

In Music City for 6 years now, she spent the first 3 earning her position as the division director of clinical services. Before that, she earned a master’s degree in health services administration from Florida International University. While at FIU, she participated in a number of research projects, focusing on the severely and persistently mentally ill.  During her time as an adjunct professor at FIU, she taught program planning and evaluation for the College of Urban and Public Affairs. In addition, Morse received her certification as a clinical research coordinator (CRC) from the Associates of Clinical Pharmacology, working with major pharmaceutical companies to investigate new and promising treatments. She holds certifications as an ARISE interventionist and as a master addiction counselor. Morse has several current publications in research journals and has presented at global conferences on substance use and co-occurring disorders. She even wrote the chapter on exercise in recovery that is used today in given treatment centers.

“Recovery is recovery is recovery,” Siobhan says, “we are all recovering from something.” Her education might have earned her certifications and degrees, but what it really taught her was how to recover her own identity. “Recovery can cause a lot of shame and guilt,” she admits, “but that was yesterday.”  She commonly asks herself, “Who do you want to be today?” and “Can I face my past, make amends, and move forward?” In the process of recovery, we have to understand and accept it is likely going to hurt, but once we get through it we become a better person on the other side. She believes the center of everything is rooted in the recovery process, but the gains illuminate in all aspects of life. “You have to tell yourself that you may have been wrong, but you learned from it,” she explains, “The only way to do that is to accept it and own it – you need to establish your integrity again and again.”

Morse also heavily works with Heroes in Recovery, a movement that connects focus groups and promotes a better understanding of addiction and mental illness. People often think, “Can’t you just stop?” or, “If you didn’t do this you wouldn’t be in this situation,” but Siobhan wants them to comprehend these issues as a brain disorder and sickness, just in a different way. On the outside, it may not look like a broken arm or a fever, but it is an illness nonetheless. She explains, “It is a chronic relapsing brain disorder and I believe people are starting to understand that more and more about mental health.”

Everything Siobhan does revolves around recovery. “I do two things in life,” she claims, “help others in recovery through my job, and I do CrossFit for myself.” Beginning in 2015, around the age of 50, she placed well in the 2016 CrossFit open and progressed into an athlete that views her recovery and her chances as a competitor seriously. CrossFit grew to be something different than other sports and today it is where she leaves her heart and her problems daily. She admits, “I’m not a good sit-still mediator, but when I lift heavy weight over my head, I am in that moment.”

Siobhan struggles with body image, specifically body dysmorphia, where one sees themselves as the way they use to be when in reality, they have physically and mentally changed. However, she says CrossFit made her feel empowered. She finds the beauty in being surrounded by others working hard and working to be better, instead of focusing on looking good. It gave her new movements that in turn translated to a new mentality. He describes, “It changed from simply doing exercise to how I looked and felt. Now, more prominently to what this body can do.” After 12 years of realizing the abuse she submitted her body to, she says, “To be where I am now – that is the place where miracles live.”

She has learned life can get pretty messy, but you have to move through it, and she is willing to let go of things that hold her back in order to push herself to a positive place. “I am embracing the mess that comes with CrossFit and with recovery,” she says. Although she didn’t know anyone in Nashville prior to moving here years ago, she says CrossFit Old South has become fellowship and family and full of love supporting her everyday intentions.

This year, Siobhan has learned another aspect of recovery – how her body needs to heal and recover between workouts. Her focus remains on competing every day, but not just for the CrossFit Games. She competes with herself to embrace the lasting issues brought on by her past endeavors and practices that diligent mentality every time she is in the gym, thankful it has translated to her daily responsibilities. The knowledge she gained and the opportunities she received all stemmed from a sickness she was forced to face head-on. She continuously uses that knowledge to educate others, while still celebrating her personal growth.

Born and raised in Nashville, Chase Akers has a quiet strength about him. On the surface, some might describe him as shy considering he is usually behind the music as a local Disc Jockey. However, his humility is a genuine representation of removing any ego, seeing as he has had his fair share of hardships. “It is me vs. me – always,” he asserts. “If I start comparing myself to others, dark thoughts seep in. It’s no longer me against myself and it becomes me against the world – that is a weight too heavy to bear.” Instead, he says to himself, those thoughts are unnecessary and remembers the embrace of love and support.

Born three months premature, Chase’s neck suffered too much pressure during delivery and caused a stroke. After a month in the hospital, he came home weighing one pound and fitting in his father’s hand.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is caused by abnormal development or damage to the parts of the brain that control movement, balance, and posture. For Chase, it was the nerve damage at birth caused by the excessive pressure on his spinal cord. CP varies from invisible to completely immobile and is a permanent movement disorder that appears in early childhood. Chase’s CP was recognized when his parents noticed his inability to crawl during infancy. Often, symptoms of CP include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, or tremors. While symptoms may get more noticeable over the first few years of life, underlying problems do not worsen over time.

Chase’s specific case is called spastic diplegia, a form of CP where muscle tightness is the exclusive impairment and have neuromuscular mobility issues (rather than paralysis). Certain movements or poses will cause spastic episodes that Chase describes as “very painful”. Spastic diplegia is usually in the muscles of the lower extremities, such as the legs, hips, and pelvis, as the case for Chase. “This is why I train in multiple fashions,” Chase explains, “I want to wake up those nerves so they know they can do this.”

Although he will always deal with spastic diplegia, at the age of 5 he underwent 8 invasive surgeries. These surgeries would pull and stretch the affected muscles, the bones would be broken and reset, and he was placed in a lower-body cast to allow the extensive process to heal. His muscles were forced to be lengthened and the bones meant to realign in the hopes his lower body function would become manageable in his later years. His recovery consisted of 3-5 years and the entire first year was spent in a cast. The remaining few years of recovery were in multiple braces. “It was nothing to be afraid of,” he expresses, “I am not fragile, just a normal person that had a stroke at birth.”

“I grew up thinking, ‘I’ll turn 21 and grow out of this,’ like acne or something,” he explains. “But then I’d wake up and it would still be there.” At 24, Chase came to the unsettling realization that it wasn’t something he would outgrow. He recalls that concrete moment when his retrospect shifted to a positive outlook despite any previous dismay.  He woke up from a haze of inhibition and distinguished he was overcompensating his physicalities with an abrasive personality. In his clarity, he no longer felt the needed to be excessive. “I didn’t need to be this presence that said, ‘Please validate me!’” he says and thought, “‘Why are you trying to be someone you weren’t made to be?’ There are a million other things I was made to be, so I had to shift my perspective. The things I could be were more important than the things I was not.” He had his body, his mind, and his heart and allowed himself to be weak and vulnerable, but he wanted to be more for himself. “I’m not just someone to embody CP,” he says.

Once he discovered this feeling, he says it felt like the world around him supported the effort. It wasn’t optimism, Chase says, it was empowerment. He says, “You can be optimistic about everything in the world but still not feel empowered by community and knowledge,” and elaborates, “The first two steps to any kind of change is community and knowledge.”

His first experience with community support started at a college Pilates class. He claims, “I was still chubby and weak, but I forced myself into company so I could learn from those around me.” Here, the instructor would help him move into selective positions and while grimacing from the pain she would say, “I’m proud of you.” It might have ignited those nerve sensors into discomfort, but Chase says it changed various negative thoughts into positive affirmations. His feelings of inadequacy transformed into a new movement with new meanings. Essentially, Chase’s body was recovering through movement, but so was his mind. 

“I reminded myself ‘I can do all things,’ as my mother told me as a child.” His mother’s biblical reference of Philippians 4:13 would become a mantra in many ways. “When you say ‘I can do all things’, it means I can do all things,” Chase explains. But Chase isn’t referring to skydiving or squatting 200 pounds, “I mean I can feel love – I can look in the mirror and love and accept myself.” He says, “It doesn’t have to mean surface-level things. I can have a community and go to a gym and not be afraid or intimidated. I can love my life and myself for exactly who I am and the things I am capable of.”

This affirmation has now become an everyday approach. As he aged, those words became less biblical and more of a vow he latched onto. “My family didn’t see me as their disabled son,” he notes. Therefore, he learned to see himself as they did. He says, “I was going to do the things I wanted because that is what they wanted for me.” Chase says he is closer to his family because of CP. It was a circumstance they chose to fight together and with that adversity came a special bond. Although, he admits it made him “grow up humble” his stance remains, “My family championed me from day one,” and he believes CP was a driving factor in his biggest support system.

“CP doesn’t necessarily get worse, but I do believe it can get better,” Chase says. Most people can rehabilitate whatever the battle may be, but Chase’s disability is incurable. There is no cure for CP and his acceptance of that fact helped in accepting himself – that was and continues to be his true recovery.

This is why Chase’s recovery story is a little different from the rest. His journey was finding something he never had. Growing up with a multitude of limiting factors, he had to overcome an implemented mentality. His recovery process is of course physically demanding, but his real recovery is in its mental feat. The dark place was a series of thoughts and phrases that spiraled into depriving his own life and questioning self-worth and ability. His mental battles consist of “what if’s” and negative self-talk, but with the help of a community providing love with no limitations, Chase patrons the healing process.

“What makes it more challenging is that I’m recovering from not knowing what I want, who I am, or what I am capable of. I have to keep working to progress my mental challenges while acknowledging the physical ones.” Chase’s recovery is learning how to live with the life he has been given and all of its factors, but still setting himself apart as an individual. Ironically and quite beautifully, Chase gives a lot of this credit to becoming a part of something bigger – his community.

Recovering from a disability is unmasking the odds and the person it makes you become. Chase admits, “We spend a lot of time hating ourselves because of limitations. The biggest part of my recovery story is uncovering just that.” We can all relate to finding our way in this world, it’s called growth, but by no means is it easy. It begins with acceptance and continues with overcoming the negative self-talk. Chase replaced his self-deprecations with memories of the words, “I’m proud of you,” and “I can do all things,” and believing them instead of giving into self-preservation. Chase’s message illustrates an invaluable lesson to us all. “Any wall you put up will harm you more than any wall you will ever let down, and the walls of self-doubt will destroy you more than any disability ever could.”

Katie Giglio is among the slim 10 percent of people that fully recover from a stroke. At 27 years old, her recovery was never something she expected to share. And although her story may sound like the perfect combination of friends, doctors, drug dosage, timing, and recognition, in reality, it was another combination of things that got her in this gut-wrenching situation that has forever changed her narrative.

In 2015, after a Crossfit Open workout, coined 15.4, she decided to join her friends at their usual spot, La Hacienda Taqueria, for a celebratory meal. Little did she know the familiar 10-minute drive would host a plethora of damage to her near future. Katie recalls only a few vivid details of that moment, but she remembers her head feeling weird as soon as she hit the red light outside the gym. Still in route, she missed the turn and recalculated to the restaurant, pushing aside the discomfort. Arriving in the parking lot and somehow managing to park her car, she began to feel her face droop and her left arm and leg lose feeling. When Katie realized she couldn’t sing along to her car radio, the horrifying reality sank in that something serious was wrong. “I heard my own voice and the words sounding slurred, but I wasn’t sure if I was hearing myself right,” she describes.

While texting a friend she knew wouldn’t understand her, she attempted to convey her inability to move or exit the driver’s seat. Her friend, already in the restaurant, passed the phone to another friend of Katie’s, who happened to be a nurse. Luckily, Melissa Wiley’s specific education – a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) and labeled an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (ACNP) at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) – prepared her to recognize the typical symptoms and classic indications of a stroke. Wiley’s quick assessment, despite her disbelief, substantially decided Katie’s miraculous outcome.

The emergency responders from the Nashville Fire Department arrived within minutes, however, the normal protocol for Katie’s condition was to be taken to the nearest hospital in order for a doctor to determine a diagnosis, once a stroke is diagnosed, the hospital would then decide how to proceed with treatment. But seeing as the VUMC has the highest qualification of stroke care (Level 1), Wiley explained her position with the center as a neurology nurse practitioner, and strongly advised the EMT to take her to “not the nearest hospital” but to the VUMC in order for Katie to receive a dose of TPA within the 3-hour window.

TPA is also known as tissue plasminogen activator and is a protein involved in the breakdown of blood clots. This drug, administered within the 3-hour window, would reverse the systems caused by a stroke. Katie was awake during the surgery, as required, however, she felt very little. She says, her feeling went away slowly during the process, but “during the surgery, her feeling came back just as slow.”

The surgery and administration of TPA helped to dissipate the blood clot in Katie’s spinal stem and allow the blood to flow freely to the brain again. During a stroke, a blood clot appears to block the blood flow to the brain, usually sitting at the top of the spine, and the brain suffers from a lack of oxygen and various cells begin to die. When brain cells die, multiple abilities controlled by the affected area are lost. But for Katie, the TPA dosage reversed these, otherwise common, inhibiting possibilities. “I went back to the gym after 10 days and one week of that in the hospital,” she recalls.

Katie’s miraculous case was later explained as a result of her on-going stomach issue, known as Ulcerative Colitis. A problem diagnosed in November 2015 that caused inflammation in her colon and flair-ups that caused bleeding. On no medication at the time, the doctors determined this was the perfect storm to lead to a stroke since the inflammation and internal bleeding are root causes for a blood clot.

“I was ready to jump back in immediately,” Katie says, but she quickly learned to approach life at the gym with a different mentality. “I had to slow down and remember what my body just went through,” she explains. She had to rework both sides of the body in order to regain simultaneous function. Her left side felt slower so timing was noticeably off on lifting weights and jumping rope. “I felt the only side effects during Crossfit,” Katie claims. Although, correcting her timing and working her full body at an intensified rate, restored her system for everyday life to go on as normal.

“I’m a better athlete than I’ve ever been,” Katie says. Her diet became a major influence in athletic performance but had to be controlled in order to not trigger flare-ups. She recognizes her food choices were the main contributor in her Ulcerative Colitis causing a stroke. She explains, “the quality of food plays a large role in my routine now and even though I cannot cure it, I have learned I still have some control of what I feel like.”

Katie learned a multitude of lessons that she’ll take away from her recovery story. She says, “Food was the medicine to my recovery and now nutrition is a major passion of mine.” After her stroke, Katie lost weight by simply eating better. It took 9 months to lose 40 pounds, but she has now stabilized her stomach problems and maintained that healthy weight for 2 years. Out of a terrifying experience came positive changes, and Katie’s recovery led to a routine of healthy habits and a life she loves and works hard to preserve.