If you watch any John Hughes film of the eighties, that was my childhood experience.

It's an objective fact that I am a double amputee, but it's very subjective opinion as to whether that makes me disabled.

At some point in every person's life, you will need an assisted medical device - whether it's your glasses, your contacts, or as you age and you have a hip replacement or a knee replacement or a pacemaker. The prosthetic generation is all around us.

It's society that disables an individual by not investing in enough creativity to allow for someone to show us the quality that makes them rare and valuable and capable.

The best beauty secret, besides sleep and plenty of water, is do whatever it is - before you go out, before you need to feel beautiful - do whatever makes you feel confident. If it’s putting on a great dance record and rocking out in your apartment, do it. If kissing someone for 10 minutes makes you feel confident, do it.

There’s an important difference and distinction between the objective medical fact of my being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion of whether or not I’m disabled. Truthfully, the only real and consistent disability I’ve had to confront is the world ever thinking that I could be described by those definitions.

The legs that I have made are far more perfect than the ones nature would have given me - my mother's side of the family have awful legs.