When Ella was 12, she spent a week at ZGiRLS summer camp rock climbing, mountain biking and jumping off cliffs into the water. A lot of it scared her. One of her mentors asked her a question she never forgot: tonight, lying in bed, do you want to remember that you didn't do it? Or that you jumped?
She jumped.
Eight years later, she was on top of the world. She'd walked on to her college cross country team with no expectations, gotten faster every race, and become the first runner from her school to qualify for nationals in eight or nine years. That spring, her lacrosse team won its conference.
Then her hip started hurting.
For eight weeks she limped. She was told it was tendinitis. Then bursitis. Then something else. She knew it was more, and she kept pushing to be heard. When the MRI finally came, she walked in thinking she'd be cleared. She walked out on crutches. A stress fracture in her femur, the biggest bone in her body. Surgery the next week.
"This was the true ZGiRLS test. If I was listening all those years."
She was listening.
Two weeks after surgery, she took a short walk up a hill. Coming down, her leg started shaking, and she wanted to quit. She kept going. When doctors, insurance and her own body were all out of her hands, she focused on what she could do that day. She took up swimming. She spent hours on the bike. That same summer, on crutches, she earned her EMT license.
"I'm not comparing myself to what I used to do. This right now is what I have to do."
Now she's running again. And she's letting it be scary.
"Learning to trust your body again, when my whole world got turned upside down. It's like, yeah. Do it scared."
The ZGiRLS tool she reached for: Do it scared, and control what you can.
From Ella, to you:
"I want everyone to have the opportunity to gain the skills that I gained at such a young age. In your 20s, that's when it really shows."