The amputee life is weird. I don’t mean tragic. I don’t mean inspirational. I mean weird.

There are moments nobody puts in the brochure. You learn pretty quickly that children will stare at you with absolutely no attempt at discretion. Adults stare too, of course. They’re just worse at pretending they aren’t. Kids will occasionally ask the question everyone else in the room is thinking. “What happened to your leg?” And honestly, I appreciate that. At least the kid has the guts to ask.

Adults perform this elaborate choreography where their eyes move from your face...to your prosthesis...back to your face...back to your prosthesis... Nothing to see here. Meanwhile, I’m thinking: Dude. You can look at it. It’s not going anywhere. Probably.

There are also those wonderfully bizarre moments when something involving your prosthesis reminds you: Oh yeah. This is my life now. Maybe you’re sitting on the edge of the bed at two in the morning staring across the room at your leg. Not metaphorically. Your actual leg. It’s over there. You’re over here. And the bathroom is somewhere in between. Freakin fantastic.

There are wardrobe considerations. Travel considerations. Shower considerations. Socket considerations. Sweat considerations. Skin considerations. TSA considerations. And an entirely new category of household conversation: “Has anybody seen my leg?” That’s a sentence I never anticipated needing.

But eventually the weird becomes normal. You adapt. You learn. You laugh. And, somewhere along the way, you stop thinking about being an amputee every waking minute of every day.

Then one day someone sends you a message, a DM, a post comment. And you discover another part of amputee life nobody bothered mentioning. Apparently, some people think this is hot. Not me. Not my sparkling personality. Not my rugged good looks.

The missing leg. It’s hot.

Wait. What?

You’re attracted to me because I’m missing my leg? My leg? The first time I encountered what the amputee community commonly calls a “devotee,” I genuinely thought someone was screwing with me. Then there was another message. And another. Eventually you realize: Oh. This is actually a thing. And now we’ve entered a very different neighborhood. A neighborhood that Mister Rogers did not create.

When Attraction Gets Complicated

Human attraction is strange. Let’s acknowledge that right away. People are attracted to tall people, short people, tattoos, accents, feet, uniforms, certain body types, certain hairstyles and approximately 40 billion other things that make absolutely no sense to the person sitting next to them.

I’m definitely not interested in policing attraction. And I certainly don’t believe that someone who finds an amputee attractive is automatically creepy, dangerous or psychologically disturbed. Maybe somebody thinks prosthetic legs are sexy. Okay. I’ve survived worse news. But there is something profoundly different about someone finding me attractive and someone being attracted primarily to the fact that a piece of me is missing. That’s where things start getting complicated. Because suddenly you’re forced to ask a question most people will never have to consider: Do you want me—or do you want my amputation?

There’s a difference.

And somewhere beyond attraction exists fetish. Beyond fetish can exist fixation. And at the extreme edges of fixation, there are people who don’t merely find amputees desirable. There are people who desperately desire amputation itself. That’s the part my brain struggles to process. Because I know what amputation actually costs. Not financially. Although, trust me, there’s that too. I mean what it costs a human being.

Then I Saw the Story

Recently, a documentary called The Monster and the Surgeon brought this uncomfortable corner of the conversation into public view through the story of Neil Hopper, a British vascular surgeon who was also an amputee. His story ventures into extraordinarily dark territory involving his own amputations, disturbing sexual material and criminal conduct. I’m deliberately not going to describe the most graphic elements here. You can find them. That’s not what this essay is about.

In fact, part of my concern is that stories involving amputation can become irresistible precisely because they’re shocking. Amputation becomes the hook. The curiosity. The spectacle. “You won’t believe what this guy did...” And millions of people click. But sitting on the other side of that screen are people like me. People who actually live this. And watching the most extreme possible relationship with amputation become entertainment raises a question I can’t easily shake:

What happens when something that profoundly changed my body and my life becomes someone else’s object of desire, obsession, entertainment—or aspiration?

That’s a strange question to have to ask about your own anatomy.

Imagine Wanting the Thing We Survived

I recently talked about this with another amputee. He gave me an analogy that stopped me cold. He said, imagine someone wanting cancer. Not wanting attention because they had cancer. Not pretending to have cancer. Actually, wanting the disease itself. Imagine someone deliberately trying to introduce cancer cells into their body because they desperately wanted the experience of chemotherapy, radiation, hospital stays, hair loss and everything else that accompanies becoming a cancer patient.

Think about that.

Because that’s approximately how incomprehensible intentionally pursuing limb loss can feel to someone who actually lost a limb. I didn’t fantasize about becoming an amputee. I didn’t aspire to it. I didn’t wake up one morning thinking: You know what would really add some texture to my life? Losing a leg.

Life made that decision for me. And then handed me the bill.

Here’s Where It Gets Complicated

Because I need to tell you something that might seem contradictory.

I love my life.

I really do. I love who I’ve become. I love many of the people I’ve met because I became an amputee. I’ve had conversations, traveled places, hosted interviews, experienced opportunities and formed friendships that probably never would have existed had my life followed a different path. Being an amputee has become woven into my identity. I’m not embarrassed by it. I’m not ashamed of my body. I’m not sitting around wishing someone would restore me to some previous version of myself. This is me. And I genuinely like this guy. Well… most days.

But here’s the other truth: I would never wish limb loss on you. Ever. And those two ideas are not contradictory. That’s something I desperately want people to understand. Building a beautiful life after something difficult does not make the difficult thing beautiful.

Read that again…

Building a beautiful life after something difficult does not make the difficult thing beautiful.

The fact that I adapted does not mean there was nothing to adapt to. The fact that I laugh about being an amputee doesn’t mean there aren’t days when it sucks. The fact that I can walk doesn’t mean walking is effortless. The fact that technology has given me an extraordinary prosthetic leg doesn’t mean I wouldn’t prefer flesh, bone, muscle, nerves and an ankle that doesn’t require charging, maintenance or a billing code.

Resilience is not retroactive consent.

I built a life around something I never asked for. That’s very different from wanting the thing itself.

Amputation Isn’t a Horror Movie

This is where I struggle with stories like this. Because the reality of amputation is rarely sensational enough for television. Most of it is painfully ordinary.

It’s socket appointments. It’s sweat. It’s skin irritation. It’s your prosthesis fitting perfectly on Tuesday and feeling like it belongs to somebody else on Wednesday. It’s getting up to use the bathroom at three in the morning. It’s learning how to stand in a shower. It’s wondering whether the beach is worth the logistical operation required to enjoy the beach. It’s airport security. It’s insurance. Oh, sweet Jesus, the insurance. It’s dating. Sex. Work. Parenting. Getting older. Falling down. Getting back up. It’s laughing with another amputee about something nobody else in the room could possibly understand. It’s occasionally looking at your body in the mirror and remembering that once upon a time it looked completely different.

That’s amputee life.

It isn’t a horror story. And it isn’t an inspirational montage either. It’s a life. A complicated, ridiculous, frustrating, heartbreaking, funny and occasionally beautiful human life. That’s why I’m uncomfortable when amputation becomes tabloid material. Not because these extreme stories shouldn’t be told. They should. Mental illness should be discussed. Dangerous behavior should be confronted. Crimes should be investigated. And people experiencing a profound desire to harm or permanently alter their bodies deserve serious professional help, not encouragement, exploitation or celebrity. But there’s a responsibility that comes with telling these stories. Because there’s a difference between examining darkness and selling tickets to it.

Don’t Make the Spectacle the Story

Maybe that’s what bothers me most. We live in an economy of attention.

The strangest person wins. The most disturbing headline wins. The thumbnail gets darker. The music gets creepier. And suddenly an extraordinarily rare situation becomes someone’s introduction to an entire population. That’s how distortion happens. A person watches one bizarre story involving amputation and subconsciously files it away under: AMPUTEES.

No. Please don’t do this, please.

There are millions of people living with limb loss and limb difference. They’re raising children. Running businesses. Teaching classrooms. Driving trucks. Playing drums. Running marathons. Making terrible dad jokes. Arguing with their spouses. Paying mortgages. Missing flights. Folding laundry. Falling in love. Getting divorced. Having sex. Watching Netflix.

Living.

Most will never become documentaries. And that’s kind of the point.

So How Do We Keep Our Dignity?

I’ve thought about this question a lot. When somebody turns amputation into a fetish...when someone else turns it into an obsession...when another person does something so extreme that the world suddenly can’t look away...how do those of us actually living with limb loss keep our dignity?

Maybe I’ve been asking the wrong question.

Maybe our dignity was never theirs to take.

A documentary can’t take it. A devotee can’t take it. A stare can’t take it. A headline can’t take it. And one deeply troubled person’s relationship with amputation certainly can’t take it.

We don’t protect our dignity by pretending the strange corners of this world don’t exist. We protect it by continuing to tell the truth. The whole truth. That limb loss can be brutal. And funny. And lonely. And absurd. And frustrating. And empowering. And boring. And occasionally, somehow, beautiful.

My body isn’t a curiosity. My missing leg isn’t an invitation. And the life I’ve built afterward isn’t evidence that amputation is something anyone should want. It’s evidence of something entirely different.

It’s evidence of what a human being can do when something they never wanted happens anyway. I love my life. I wouldn’t trade the people in it. I wouldn’t erase what I’ve learned. I’m proud of the man I’ve become. And I will continue walking through this strange, funny, complicated amputee life with my head held high.

But would I wish limb loss on you?

Not for one second.

And maybe that’s the distinction worth talking about.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

A dear friend of mine recently invited me to spend a long summer weekend with her and her family.

“You should come out,” she said. “We have beautiful grounds, a lake, jet skis, a hot tub, walking trails... you’ll love it.”

It sounded perfect.

In my mind, I could already picture it. Warm sunshine dancing across the water. The smell of fresh-cut grass. The laughter of friends echoing across the lake. A dock stretching out over calm water. Evenings around a fire pit with stories that somehow become funnier after sunset.

It was exactly the kind of invitation anyone would be excited to receive.

I smiled.

And then, almost instantly, my brain went to work.

Not in a romantic, “I can’t wait” kind of way. More like the control room at NASA five minutes before a rocket launch.

Jet skis?

Can I get on one? Better yet... can I get off one without becoming the afternoon’s entertainment? Am I wearing my everyday leg? Should I bring my water leg? How many liners? Three? Four? What if one gets soaked? What if it doesn’t dry? How many prosthetic socks should I pack? Better throw in every thickness known to mankind because apparently my residual limb enjoys changing size just to keep life interesting.

Where will I change? Can I take my leg off comfortably? Will there be someplace private, or am I about to become the halftime show? How far is it from the house to the dock?

Grass?

Gravel?

Mud?

Uneven stones?

Please... no decorative river rock. Whoever invented decorative river rock clearly never met an amputee. Before I had accepted the invitation, I had already spent an entire weekend there.

Mentally.

That was the moment it hit me. The exhausting part wasn’t the weekend. It was the weekend I had already lived inside my head.

People often ask what it’s like to wear a prosthetic leg. Honestly? That’s the wrong question. The better question is this:

What’s it like to think through every movement before it happens?

Most people don’t realize that many amputees experience life twice. We live it first in our minds, and only afterward in reality. Every new environment becomes a puzzle waiting to be solved. Every curb has to be evaluated. Every staircase negotiated. Every unfamiliar surface inspected. Every transfer rehearsed before it happens.

Every hotel bathroom becomes an architectural mystery. Is it a walk-in shower? A bathtub? Is there a slippery marble floor apparently designed by someone who believed friction was optional? Will there be grab bars, or am I about to audition for America’s Funniest Home Videos?

The average person never gives these things a second thought. For many amputees, they’re part of the opening chapter of every single outing. I remember the first few years after receiving my prosthesis. Friends would invite me out to dinner, and before I looked at the menu, I looked at the building. I actually Googled restaurants, not because I wanted to see the food. I wanted to see the entrance.

Were there stairs?

Was there a ramp?

How far was the parking lot?

Could I even get inside without turning what should have been a relaxing evening into an obstacle course? Nobody knew I was doing it. They just thought I was deciding where I wanted to eat. In reality, I was deciding whether I could manage the journey.

Vacations are even more fascinating. For most people, packing means clothes, toiletries, maybe a charger or two. For an amputee, packing can feel like preparing for a small military deployment.

Legs.

Liners.

Sleeves.

Socks.

Extra socks.

Even more socks because apparently feet aren’t the only things that change size. Cleaning supplies. Backup components. Medication. Compression garments. Charging equipment if you’re using a microprocessor. And what if phantom pain strikes?!

By the time we’re done packing, TSA probably assumes we’re transporting parts for a small robot. The funny thing is, none of this feels dramatic while you’re doing it. It just feels... normal. Until someone without limb loss watches the process unfold. Then you realize you’ve quietly become a logistics expert.

People often assume the physical challenge is the hardest part of limb loss. Sometimes it is, but more often than not, the hardest part is thinking.

Not worrying.

Thinking.

Planning.

Calculating.

Adapting.

Preparing.

Anticipating.

It’s the invisible work no one sees. And eventually, something dangerous can happen. Your brain starts doing math, not arithmetic, emotional math.

Is this trip worth all this preparation?

Is this concert worth navigating the parking lot?

Is this party worth standing for three hours?

What if the terrain is worse than I imagined?

What if I fall?

What if my leg starts hurting halfway through?

What if everyone has to wait on me?

That’s when invitations quietly begin disappearing, not because people stop inviting you, but because you stop accepting. Not from fear definitely not from laziness, but from exhaustion.

There comes a point where staying home feels easier than rehearsing another adventure before it even begins. I know many amputees who wrestle with this very thing. The planning becomes so overwhelming that life slowly starts shrinking. The invitations become “maybe.” The vacations become “next year.” The parties become “you all go ahead.” The world doesn’t close its doors. We simply become too mentally tired to walk through them.

It makes me wonder whether there’s another question we should be asking ourselves. How do we become spontaneous again? Can we? Or is spontaneity simply different after limb loss? I don’t know that I have the perfect answer. I still catch myself mentally walking through every unfamiliar place before I ever arrive. I still wonder about parking lots, hotel bathrooms, docks, stairs, sidewalks, airport terminals, restaurant entrances, and whether someone’s idea of “just a short walk” was developed by an Olympic marathon runner. I probably always will.

But I’ve learned something over the past several years. The life waiting on the other side of all that planning is usually worth it. The friendships are worth the extra liners. The laughter is worth the backup socks. The sunset by the lake is worth wondering how I’m going to get down to the dock. The memories are worth the mental miles.

I’ve also learned to give myself grace. Some days the prosthesis wins. Some days my body says, “Not today.” Some trips don’t go as planned. Sometimes disappointment is part of the journey, and that’s okay. Grace isn’t pretending the experience wasn’t difficult. Grace is understanding that difficult experiences are still experiences worth having. Maybe courage isn’t reaching a place where we stop thinking. Maybe courage is accepting that we’ll probably always think a little more than everyone else...

...and going anyway.

Because here’s what I’ve discovered.

The world applauds the amputee who climbs the mountain, finishes the 5K, walks across the stage, or learns to walk again. Those moments deserve every bit of recognition they receive.

But the greatest victories often happen long before any of those moments.

They happen quietly.

In a bedroom while packing an extra liner “just in case.” In front of a computer, studying the entrance to a restaurant you’ve never been to. In the parking lot, taking one last deep breath before stepping into an unfamiliar place. In the thousand silent decisions no one else will ever know you made.

The world measures the miles we walk. It rarely measures the miles we travel before we ever leave the house.

Those are the mental miles.

They are walked in uncertainty.

They are walked in preparation.

They are walked in courage.

And perhaps that’s the lesson limb loss has been trying to teach me all along. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It isn’t having the perfect prosthesis. It isn’t reaching the point where life suddenly becomes easy again. Courage is saying yes... even after your mind has spent hours imagining everything that could go wrong.

Because on the other side of those mental miles are sunsets that take your breath away, laughter around a fire pit, friendships that grow deeper, memories that become part of your story, and a life that is still waiting to be lived.

The mental miles never completely disappear.

But neither do the beautiful places they lead us to.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

There are conversations that disappear before you’ve even started the car. You laugh, exchange a few stories, promise to do lunch again soon, and by the time you’ve merged onto the interstate you’ve forgotten what was said.

Then there are the conversations that refuse to let go.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my kitchen with someone much younger than me when I admitted something I hadn’t really admitted to anyone else. It wasn’t exactly a confession, but it was close.

“Can you answer a question for me, because I think YouTube has broken my brain.”

She looked up from her phone with the kind of smile that suggested she was about to enjoy whatever came next.

“What are you talking about?”

I laughed because I already knew how ridiculous this was going to sound.

“You know those people who post videos of themselves eating?”

She nodded.

“I can’t stop watching them.”

She looked at me for a second, waiting for me to explain.

“It’s not even the food,” I said. “Well... it is the food, but it’s more than that. They’ll spend fifteen minutes making the perfect bowl of ramen. They’ll slowly slice the soft-boiled egg in half so the yolk runs everywhere. They’ll lift the noodles just enough to let the broth drip back into the bowl before taking the first bite. Then they’ll lean into the microphone so you hear every slurp, every crunch, every chew. Every sip of broth sounds like you’re sitting across the table from them.”

At this point she was trying not to laugh.

“And barbecue...” I continued. “Don’t even get me started on barbecue. Some guy spends fourteen hours smoking a brisket, then films himself slicing into it like it’s the Mona Lisa. The knife glides through it, the juices start running, he squeezes the meat, because apparently that’s a requirement now, and then comes the slow-motion bite. Every chew. Every little satisfied nod. It’s almost hypnotic.”

I paused for a second before adding, “The crazy part is, I’m usually not even hungry. Half the time I’ve already eaten dinner. I just... watch.”

Then she looked up, trying very hard not to laugh.

“Rick...”

“What?”

“You’re addicted to food porn.”

I laughed.

“No, I’m watching people eat.”

“Exactly.”

“No... those are two different things.”

“They’re really not.”

She said it with such confidence that for a second I wondered if I’d somehow missed a cultural meeting where everyone agreed this was now normal. Apparently, I’d been living under a rock while the rest of society collectively decided that ribs, macaroni and cheese, and smoked burnt ends had entered an entirely different category of human experience.

I kept thinking about it.

Food porn.

It sounded ridiculous.

It wouldn’t leave me alone.

For the next several days I started noticing how casually we use that word. House porn. Car porn. Travel porn. Golf porn. Tool porn. Office porn. Somewhere along the way we had taken one of the most taboo words in the English language and attached it to things as innocent as cinnamon rolls and espresso machines, and somehow everyone immediately understood exactly what we meant.

The more I thought about it, the less ridiculous it sounded.

Not because I suddenly believed I had a problem with barbecue videos, although the evidence wasn’t exactly helping my case, but because I became fascinated by what we were really describing.

Nobody watches a beautifully filmed brisket because they’re gathering nutritional information. They’re watching because it makes them feel something.

Satisfaction.

Comfort.

Anticipation.

Maybe even longing.

I realized I wasn’t watching food.

I was consuming a feeling.

That thought sent me down one of those internet rabbit holes we all know a little too well. One search led to another, then another, and before long I wasn’t reading about food anymore. I was reading about advertising, consumer psychology, dopamine, attention spans, and the strange relationship human beings have with visual pleasure.

The more I read, the more I started thinking about my own habits.

I have watched a man restore a rusty axe he found buried in the woods.

I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in restoring axes.

I’ve watched people power wash filthy driveways until they looked brand new. I’ve watched leather craftsmen restore old briefcases. I’ve watched someone spend twenty minutes making a Japanese chef’s knife so sharp it could slice through paper without leaving a tear.

Not once did I think, “I’d like to do that.”

I just liked watching it happen.

Transformation has become entertainment.

We don’t simply enjoy before-and-after stories anymore.

We crave them.

Home renovation shows.

Weight-loss journeys.

Old barns becoming dream homes.

Classic cars brought back from the dead.

Restaurant rescues.

Extreme makeovers.

The internet is filled with stories that begin with something broken and end with something beautiful.

Maybe that’s what we’re actually addicted to.

Not food.

Not houses.

Not knives.

Could it possibly be… Hope.

I started paying attention to my own scrolling habits, and the pattern became impossible to ignore. I rarely stopped for ordinary things. I slowed down for transformation. For redemption. For impossible comebacks. The algorithm had figured that out long before I had.

It knew exactly what I wanted before I did.

That realization bothered me more than I expected.

Social media companies like to tell us they’re connecting people, but that’s not really what they’re doing. They’re learning what emotions hold our attention the longest. Every pause, every replay, every extra five seconds teaches the algorithm a little more about what keeps us engaged.

It doesn’t know me.

It knows what keeps me looking.

There’s a difference.

That distinction stayed with me for several days. Somewhere between work meetings and podcast interviews, I’d catch myself wondering what else we consume without realizing it. We consume news differently than we did twenty years ago. We consume politics. We consume outrage. We consume other people’s vacations, marriages, home renovations, career successes, and failures. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve become better at consuming lives than actually living our own.

It was somewhere in the middle of all that reading that I stumbled across a phrase I’d never heard before.

Inspiration Porn.

I actually stopped reading and said it out loud.

“Inspiration... porn?”

The words felt abrasive.

Almost offensive.

My first reaction was to reject them completely.

Who would describe inspiration that way?

Then I kept reading, diving deeper.

The phrase was coined years ago by Australian disability advocate Stella Young. She wasn’t criticizing people for being inspired. She wasn’t arguing that disabled people shouldn’t be celebrated. She was asking a much more uncomfortable question.

Who is the inspiration really for?

That question followed me for days because I couldn’t answer it.

Was it for the person living the story?

Or was it for everyone watching?

At first I wanted to dismiss the whole idea. It sounded cynical. After all, people have stopped me countless times over the years to tell me they enjoyed the podcast or that something I shared encouraged them. They’ve shaken my hand, thanked me, even hugged me. Every single one of those moments has been genuine, and I’ve been grateful for every one of them.

So why was this phrase bothering me?

The answer didn’t come from an article.

It came from memory.

Eight years ago, I woke up in a hospital bed and my right leg was gone.

People sometimes ask what that moment felt like, and I always struggle to answer because they’ve already imagined it. They expect a dramatic turning point, a movie scene where life suddenly comes into focus. They expect me to tell them I discovered courage or purpose or some profound truth about the human spirit.

The truth is much quieter than that.

I woke up confused.

I looked down.

I realized my leg was gone.

Then I wondered what happened to the life I’d been living the day before.

Nobody was filming.

Nobody was taking notes.

Nobody was looking for an inspirational quote.

I wasn’t thinking about resilience.

I was thinking about whether I’d ever feel normal again.

Those first weeks weren’t filled with motivational speeches. They were filled with questions. Would I work again? Would I drive? Would people stare? Would I always be “the guy with one leg?” Would I ever stop thinking about the leg that wasn’t there anymore?

Those questions didn’t have quick answers.

Some of them still don’t.

That’s the part of recovery that rarely finds its way onto social media.

Recovery isn’t one moment.

It’s a thousand ordinary Tuesdays.

It’s learning how to stand again.

Learning how to trust your body again.

Learning how to laugh at yourself because sometimes that’s easier than feeling sorry for yourself.

It’s discovering that prosthetic liners smell a lot worse than anyone warns you about.

It’s taking your leg off in the car after a long day because your residual limb has had enough, then sitting there for a minute before driving home simply because it feels good to let your body breathe.

That isn’t cinematic.

It’s just life, the life of an Amputee.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing extraordinary people through the podcast. Paralympians. Veterans. Entrepreneurs. Parents. Kids. People who have survived things I can’t even begin to imagine. The public usually remembers the highlights. The marathon. The mountain climb. The championship. The standing ovation.

I remember something completely different.

I remember the pauses.

The moments when someone stopped talking because they were trying not to cry.

The guest who admitted he still struggled with depression years later.

The woman who laughed while telling me about the worst day of her life because humor was the only way she knew how to survive it.

Those moments never become the promotional clips.

They’re too complicated.

Too human.

Too unfinished.

And maybe that’s where this entire conversation changed for me.

Maybe the problem isn’t inspiration.

Hope has extraordinary value. I needed it after my amputation. I searched for people who looked like me living lives that convinced me my own wasn’t over. Without those stories, I honestly don’t know how much longer it would have taken me to believe there was still a future worth chasing.

The problem isn’t hope.

The problem is in the editing.

We edit our lives until only the triumphant moments remain. We celebrate the marathon but quietly skip over the months of physical therapy. We applaud the finish line but rarely talk about the nights someone lay awake wondering if life would ever feel worth living again.

If that’s all a newly injured amputee sees, what happens on the day they don’t feel inspirational? What happens when getting dressed feels like an accomplishment? What happens when they’re grieving while everyone else seems to be climbing mountains?

That’s a heavy burden to place on another human being.

The older I get, the less interested I become in heroes.

Heroes live on pedestals.

I’ve never met anyone who actually lives there.

I’m interested in people.

Messy people.

Funny people.

Broken people.

People who still haven’t figured everything out.

People like me.

Maybe that’s why the phrase “Inspiration Porn” has stayed with me. Not because I agree with every part of it, and not because I think we should stop celebrating remarkable stories, but because it forced me to examine what I was actually searching for every time I picked up my phone.

Maybe I wasn’t watching food at all.

Maybe I was looking for evidence that ordinary things could still bring joy.

Maybe the person watching an amputee cross a marathon finish line isn’t really looking at the amputee.

Maybe they’re looking for proof that terribly broken things can become extraordinarily whole again.

If that’s true, then perhaps the real conversation has never been about disability.

But if my story ever becomes something you consume, I hope you don’t stop at the finish line.

Stay for the questions.

Stay for the doubt.

Stay for the ordinary Tuesdays that never make the highlight reel.

Because that’s where life actually happens.

The finish line may inspire you.

But the journey...

That’s where you’ll find me.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

You Are Not Done

There comes a moment after an amputation when life starts feeling normal again.

Not the old normal. That version is gone. But a new normal begins to emerge.

You find yourself driving without thinking about every movement. You learn the quirks of your prosthetic. You know where it rubs, where it doesn’t, and how many hours you can comfortably wear it before your body starts negotiating otherwise. Family gatherings don’t seem quite as intimidating. You begin accepting invitations again. Maybe you stay a little longer than you used to. Maybe you laugh a little more. Maybe for the first time in months, you’re no longer measuring every moment against what life used to be.

You begin living again.

I remember reaching that point. I was getting around fairly well. I was more social. More independent. Dare I say it, I was even becoming confident. The endless cycle of doctor’s appointments, therapy sessions, fittings, adjustments, setbacks, and frustrations had finally begun to loosen its grip on my life. The amputation was no longer the first thing I thought about every morning.

Then reality arrived.

Usually reality shows up in an envelope.

A credit card statement. A medical bill. An insurance notice that somehow explains nothing while simultaneously asking for more money. A mortgage payment. A car payment. A utility bill.

The world is remarkably patient while you’re learning to walk again. What it is not particularly patient about is waiting to be paid.

Recovery has a funny way of creating the illusion that you’re moving forward while your financial life quietly burns to the ground behind you.

Months away from work become years without income. Savings accounts shrink. Retirement accounts suddenly look less like retirement accounts and more like emergency funds. Family members step in to help because that’s what family does. Friends organize fundraisers because they care. People rally around you during the crisis.

I remember sitting at my kitchen table with a calculator, stacks of bills spread across the surface, trying to determine which ones got paid first and which ones would have to wait.

It was a strange moment because fear and logic were fighting for control of the room.

By nature, I am a problem solver. I had spent my entire career analyzing businesses, identifying bottlenecks, creating systems, building operational discipline, and developing strategies to navigate difficult situations. When a company faced a challenge, you didn’t panic. You assessed the situation, established a critical path, and built a plan.

So that’s exactly what I did.

I stopped looking at my situation as an amputee and started looking at it as an operator.

How do we survive this? How much runway do we have? What expenses are essential? What can be delayed?

How much pressure can the operational engine withstand before something breaks?

It sounds clinical now, but at the time, it was survival. The reality was that my life had become the business I needed to save. Every decision mattered. Every dollar mattered. Every week mattered. And while that exercise gave me a sense of control, it also revealed an uncomfortable truth.

Eventually, the math stops working.

At some point, no amount of budgeting, forecasting, negotiating, or planning can replace income. Sooner or later, the spreadsheet points toward the same conclusion.

It’s time to go back to work.

This is the part of recovery we don’t talk about enough.

The person waiting for disability approval understands it. The person whose disability claim was denied understands it even better. The cancer survivor navigating medical debt understands it. The injured worker waiting on compensation understands it. The single parent rebuilding after a health crisis understands it. The veteran transitioning back into civilian life understands it.

The details may differ, but the feeling is universal. At some point, survival is no longer enough. You begin craving contribution. You want your independence back. You want your dignity back. You want to earn your way again. And that is usually the moment when another challenge appears.

The journey back to work.

For amputees, that journey often begins with an identity crisis that would almost be funny if it weren’t so real.

Do I mention the amputation on my resume? Should it be under special skills?

Professional speaker. Manufacturing executive. Amputee.

That seems weird.

What if they look at my social media before the interview? What if they discover I’m an amputee before I walk through the door? Should I bring it up first? Should I wait until they notice? Do I address the elephant in the room, or in this case, the prosthetic leg in my pants?

The questions sound absurd when spoken out loud. Yet every amputee I know has wrestled with some version of them.

Because beneath all those questions lies a deeper one.

How will they see me? Will they see resilience? Will they see strength? Will they see determination? Or will they see someone broken? Will they quietly wonder whether I can still do the job? Will they question my abilities before I ever open my mouth?

For me, those questions hit particularly hard because I had spent decades building a career before my amputation. I wasn’t trying to figure out who I wanted to become. I already knew who I was.

I had built businesses, led teams, driven EBITDA growth, created operational discipline, and scaled manufacturing and distribution organizations beyond expectations. I had accumulated decades of knowledge, experience, mistakes, victories, lessons, and scar tissue.

I knew my value. At least I thought I did.

Then one day I found myself staring at a prosthetic leg and wondering if that single fact was somehow capable of overshadowing everything else.

It is amazing how quickly insecurity can challenge even the strongest résumé.

The confidence gap is real.

Long before you’re trying to convince an employer of your value, you’re trying to convince yourself. You begin questioning things you never questioned before. You replay conversations that haven’t happened yet. You imagine objections no one has raised. You create barriers that don’t exist. The loudest critic in the room is often the voice inside your own head.

I had to fight that voice every single day.

The voice that whispered maybe you’re not what you used to be. Maybe someone younger is better. Maybe nobody wants to take a chance on you. Maybe your best years are behind you.

It took every fiber of my being to silence those thoughts and walk into those interviews as myself.

Not as an amputee.

Not as someone seeking sympathy.

Not as someone hoping to be accommodated.

As a leader.

As an executive.

As a problem solver.

As someone who had spent an entire career creating value. Somewhere along the way, something unexpected happened. I went back to work thinking I was rebuilding my career.

What I was actually rebuilding was myself.

At first, I wasn’t even sure what I was worth anymore. So I showed up early. I stayed late. I pushed harder than I probably needed to. I volunteered for difficult assignments. I looked for opportunities to create value. I wanted results. I wanted proof. I wanted evidence that the person I had been before the amputation was still somewhere inside me.

Every early morning. Every late evening. Every challenge accepted. Every obstacle overcome. Every problem solved. Every small victory became another brick in a foundation I thought had been damaged.

The more I worked, the more confidence returned.

The more problems I solved, the more I remembered who I was. Not who I had been. Who I still was. I wasn’t rebuilding companies.

I was rebuilding me.

Piece by piece.

Day by day.

I was creating the next version of myself. The version buried beneath the fear, insecurity, and self-doubt. The version that still believed extraordinary things were possible.

And perhaps that is the lesson hidden inside the journey back to work.

For some people, returning to work means returning to the exact job they left. For others, it means reinventing themselves completely. The tradesman who can no longer perform the same physical labor may discover a gift for estimating, project management, or training the next generation. The service worker who struggles to stand for eight hours may find opportunity in a remote position they never would have considered before. The technician becomes a consultant. The laborer becomes an entrepreneur. The worker becomes a teacher.

The role changes, but the value remains.

Too often we define ourselves by what we used to do instead of what we still have to offer. Work is not simply about earning a paycheck. Work is contribution. Work is purpose. Work is dignity. Work is the quiet satisfaction that comes from knowing you still have something meaningful to give.

The truth is that life occasionally forces all of us to reinvent ourselves. Amputation is simply one of many ways that journey begins. The goal isn’t to become the person you were before.

The goal is to become the person you are now.

The now version. The version shaped by adversity. The version strengthened by struggle. The version carrying scars, lessons, wisdom, and perspective that did not exist before.

And if you’re standing at the edge of that journey today, wondering whether you still have value, wondering whether there is a place for you, wondering whether anyone will see what you have to offer, let me leave you with this:

You are far more than the thing that happened to you.

You are far more than the challenge you’re facing.

You are far more than the insecurity whispering in your ear.

You are not done.

Not even close.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future.

Not just the normal kind of future thinking we all do as we get older. I mean the real future. The one that suddenly feels like it’s accelerating right in front of us whether we’re ready or not. Artificial intelligence is everywhere now. Every time I open my phone, I see another AI-generated image, another fake influencer, another perfectly crafted motivational quote written by a machine trying to imitate human emotion. The internet is starting to feel strange to me. Less human. Less grounded. Almost like reality itself is becoming filtered through algorithms trying to predict what people want to see instead of reflecting what life actually looks like.

And somewhere inside all of this, I started wondering where amputees fit into the picture.

The thought first hit me during a conversation with another amputee girl I had been speaking with recently. We were talking about AI-generated images, and she casually mentioned something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since. She said, “Have you noticed AI has absolutely no idea what a real prosthetic looks like?”

The second she said it, I realized she was right.

Go type “amputee with prosthetic leg” into almost any AI image generator right now and see what comes back. Most of the time it looks like something out of a Marvel movie. Giant robotic legs. Chrome-plated mechanical devices. Futuristic cybernetic limbs with glowing lights and impossible joints. Sometimes the prosthetic doesn’t even physically make sense. The proportions are wrong. The mechanics are wrong. The socket systems are wrong. Half the time it looks like the machine creating it has never actually seen a real amputee in everyday life.

At first, I laughed about it. But then I started wondering why.

A few days later, I was recording another podcast episode with an amputee guest, and during our conversation, he handed me his prosthetic leg for a moment while we were talking. I remember sitting there holding it in my hands. It caught me off guard immediately because of how heavy it was. Not metaphorically heavy. Physically heavy. Dense. Solid. Real.

The carbon fiber was scratched up everywhere. The finish was worn down around certain edges. There were marks and little scars all over it from everyday life. Door frames. Parking lots. Stairs. Concrete. Airports. Ice. Gym floors. You could literally see life written all over the thing. It wasn’t sleek. It wasn’t futuristic. It wasn’t robotic.

It looked battle-tested. Human.

And suddenly I realized how disconnected the AI version of prosthetics is from the reality of them.

Because maybe AI isn’t misunderstanding amputees at all.

Maybe culture is.

After all, AI only learns from us. It absorbs our movies, our imagery, our assumptions, our fears, our fantasies. And maybe somewhere along the way, society developed this strange idea that prosthetics are either tragic symbols or superhero technology. There doesn’t seem to be much understanding of the space in between.

But real prosthetics live in the middle.

They aren’t magical devices. They are survival tools. They’re frustrating sometimes. Exhausting sometimes. Expensive. Uncomfortable. Beautiful in certain ways. Brutal in others. They become part machine and part autobiography. Every scratch means something. Every modification tells a story. They’re not fantasy objects. They’re deeply personal pieces of equipment people build their lives around.

That’s the part I don’t think AI understands yet.

Actually, maybe it’s the part society doesn’t understand yet.

Because amputees live in daily negotiation with reality in a way most people don’t have to think about. We are reminded constantly that something is missing. Not philosophically missing. Physically missing. Every morning starts with that awareness. Every step exists because of adaptation. Every public space requires calculation. Every trip, every staircase, every icy sidewalk, every crowded airport exists slightly differently for us than it does for everybody else.

And I think something happens psychologically when you live that way long enough.

You stop believing in perfection. You stop believing strength looks polished. You stop believing survival is cinematic. You realize very quickly that real resilience usually looks awkward up close.

That’s what fascinates me about this moment we’re living in culturally. The world seems obsessed right now with artificial perfection. AI smooths skin. Perfects bodies. Generates flawless lighting. Writes polished captions. Creates inspirational moments that never actually happened. Even emotion itself is starting to feel optimized and manufactured online.

Meanwhile amputees are still living in the analog world.

Pain is analog. Phantom pain is analog. Socket sweat is analog. Falling in a parking lot is analog. Putting your leg on at six in the morning to pee when you’re exhausted is analog. There’s nothing artificial about any of it.

And yet, at the same time, technology is racing directly toward us faster than almost anyone realizes. AI-assisted socket design. Pressure mapping systems. Adaptive knees. Osseointegration. Neural integration. Machine-learning gait systems. Some of what sounded impossible ten years ago is already beginning to happen.

Honestly, part of me finds that exciting.

Maybe AI eventually helps create lighter sockets. Better alignment systems. Smarter knees. More comfort. Better mobility. Better quality of life for amputees who have spent decades physically fighting their own equipment just to move through normal life.

But I also wonder what happens culturally as prosthetics become more advanced.

Will society begin seeing amputees as enhanced humans instead of disabled humans? Will prosthetics become luxury technology? Will the humanity eventually disappear beneath the hardware?

And maybe the biggest question of all is this:

Who gets to define us in this next era?

Actual amputees?

Or algorithms trained on fantasy?

Because right now AI still doesn’t truly understand the amputee experience. It understands the mythology of prosthetics. The superhero version. The cinematic version. But it doesn’t understand the quiet reality of it. It doesn’t understand the exhaustion. The adaptation. The grief. The humor. The loneliness. The small private victories nobody applauds because they happen behind closed doors.

It doesn’t understand the sound of a prosthetic foot hitting hardwood floors in the middle of the night.

It doesn’t understand the emotional weight of rebuilding your identity around absence.

It doesn’t understand what it feels like to wake up every single day and physically reassemble yourself before facing the world.

Maybe one day it will get closer.

Or maybe this is one of those experiences that will always require human beings to tell the story themselves.

And maybe that’s where amputees fit into the future after all.

Not as symbols. Not as superheroes. Not as victims.

But as reminders.

Reminders that human beings are still more complicated than technology. Reminders that survival is messy. Reminders that adaptation leaves scratches. Reminders that resilience rarely looks polished in real life.

Because honestly, I think the future desperately needs something right now.

Not more fantasy.

More reality.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

For a long time, this wasn’t a project.

It didn’t live in a folder. It didn’t have a name. There was no outline, no pitch deck, no clear next step. It was something quieter than that; something that kept showing up in conversations, in moments between podcast recordings, in the stories that didn’t quite end when the microphones turned off.

It was a feeling more than an idea. A persistent one. That, despite all the progress, all the awareness, all the stories being told… something was still missing. Not absent. Just incomplete.

Because if you step outside of the limb difference community, outside of the circles where these conversations are normal, expected, and understood, you begin to see the gap. Not in a dramatic, obvious way. It’s subtler than that. It shows up in the way people ask questions. In the way they hesitate. In the way they default to inspiration when they don’t quite know what else to say.

The needle has moved. There’s no denying that.

There are more athletes now. More visibility. More voices willing to speak openly about what it means to live with limb loss or limb difference. The community has found ways to connect, to support, to lift each other in ways that didn’t exist not that long ago.

But step into the mainstream… into everyday life, into the broader public, and it becomes clear that most people are still only seeing fragments.

A highlight here.
A headline there.
A carefully packaged moment of “overcoming” that fits neatly into a narrative people are comfortable with.

What they don’t see is the full picture.

They don’t see the families navigating it alongside us, adjusting in real time, learning as they go. They don’t see the identity shifts that unfold slowly, sometimes painfully, without a clear roadmap. They don’t see the ordinary moments, the ones that don’t feel like inspiration, the ones that feel like life. And that realization doesn’t hit all at once. It builds.

For me, it built over time, through the podcast, through conversations with people from all over the world, through stories that stayed with me long after they were told. The AMP’D UP211 Podcast has reached more than 50 countries, connecting with people in ways I never could have imagined when it started.

And still, there was this quiet truth underneath it all: We were mostly speaking to people who already understood. People inside the community. People adjacent to it. People who didn’t need to be convinced that these stories mattered. That’s not a flaw. It’s something I’m incredibly proud of. But it’s also a limitation.

Because the people who need to understand this life on a deeper level, the ones outside of it, aren’t always the ones tuning in. And that’s where the idea began to take shape. Not as a replacement for anything that already exists, but as an extension of it. A different lane. A bigger stage. A way to take these stories and place them where they’ve rarely been allowed to live.

In the mainstream.

I AM AMPUTEE didn’t arrive fully formed. It emerged slowly, piece by piece, shaped by the people whose stories deserved more space than a single conversation could hold. The vision became clearer over time: this wouldn’t be one story, or one perspective, or one version of what it means to live this life. It had to be broader than that. More honest than that. A full spectrum.

Athletes pushing the limits of what the human body can do. Veterans carrying experiences that most people will never fully grasp. Young amputees still discovering who they are, building identity in real time. People later in life learning how to rebuild after everything they knew shifted overnight. Some thriving. Some still searching. Most somewhere in between. Because the truth is, there is no single narrative that defines this experience.

And maybe that’s the most important thing the world has yet to fully understand. At some point, the idea stopped being something I thought about… and became something we started doing.

We pressed record.

Not in a studio with perfect lighting and controlled conditions, but in real spaces, with real people, capturing moments that don’t wait for you to be ready. Conversations that move in unexpected directions. Silences that say as much as words. The kind of footage that doesn’t feel produced, because it isn’t.

It’s early. Very early.

Right now, we’re building something that will eventually become a teaser, a sizzle reel designed to show what this project can be at its highest level. That piece will be used to approach production companies, studios, and streaming platforms later this year. It’s the bridge between where this is now and where it has the potential to go. But there’s something important about this stage that I don’t want to skip over.

This part, the beginning, the uncertainty, the belief before validation… matters. Because this isn’t just about awareness. That word gets used a lot, sometimes so much that it loses its meaning.

This is about understanding.

Real understanding changes things. It shifts how people see you when you walk into a room. It changes how families are supported. It influences conversations that happen quietly, behind the scenes, in moments that never make it onto a screen. And for amputees, and for the people who love them, that shift isn’t abstract. It’s personal.That’s why this matters now. Not later, not when it’s finished, not when it’s packaged and ready for release.

Now.

Because the process of building it is part of the story. And if you’ve been following this journey in any capacity, through the podcast, through the conversations, through the community, you’re already connected to it in some way. This is simply the next step.

Taking something that has lived within a community… and giving it the opportunity to be seen by the world. I’ve thought about this for a long time. Long enough to question it. To put it off. To wonder if it was the right time, or the right approach, or even the right person to push it forward. But some ideas don’t go away.

They stay with you until you either act on them… or accept that you didn’t.

This wasn’t one I was willing to let go.

I AM AMPUTEE is in motion now.

And for the first time, it feels like the story is about to reach beyond us.

Exactly where it needs to go.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

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“Hey, isn’t it Limb Loss Awareness Month?” someone asked me recently. “You represent amputees, right?”

It was a simple question, honest and well-intentioned. The kind people ask when they are trying to understand something they have never experienced. I smiled and shook my head. “No,” I told them. “I don’t represent amputees.” I could see the confusion for a moment, like maybe that wasn’t the answer they expected. Then I added, “But I stand with them. Fully. Proudly. And without hesitation.” And I meant that, because what I have experienced, and what I have seen in others who walk this path, is something most people will never fully understand from the outside looking in.

April is Limb Loss Awareness Month, and every year there is a quiet misunderstanding that surrounds it. The world tends to see limb loss as a story about what’s missing, the tragedy, the loss, the moment everything changed. And to be fair, that part is real. There is a moment, a before and an after, a line in your life that you don’t get to erase or redraw. But what the world misses far more often is what comes after. Only after comes the real story. The climb. The journey. The rebuilding. The rise to something greater than you ever imagined you would have to become.

Because limb loss is not just a concept. It is not something you can fully understand from a distance or reduce to a single moment in time. It is waking up in a body that no longer feels familiar. It is looking down and realizing that something fundamental has changed, and it is not changing back. It is learning how to move again, one awkward, uncertain step at a time, learning balance again, learning confidence again, learning how to love again, not in theory but in practice, in real life, in real moments where falling and failing are possibilities.

It is the grind that nobody sees. Endless prosthetic fittings, adjustments, re-adjustments, the quiet frustration of a socket that fits one day and then, for reasons you cannot fully explain, does not fit the next. It is pressure wounds that come out of nowhere, skin that breaks down, long days when every step is a reminder that your body is working harder than it used to just to do what used to be simple.

It is standing in a room full of people and feeling the shift. The glance that lingers a little too long, the question someone wants to ask but doesn’t, the silence that follows when people don’t know what is appropriate so they say nothing at all. It is the mental math of everyday life, how far is the walk, where can I sit, what happens if something doesn’t go right.

It is insurance battles that feel like negotiations for your own mobility. It is employment conversations that change once your body becomes part of the discussion. It is relationships that evolve, sometimes stronger, sometimes strained, sometimes gone. It is opening your closet and realizing that something as simple as clothing is no longer simple. It is explaining your body, your limitations, your capabilities, over and over again, to people who have never had to think about theirs for even a second.

And some days, if we are being honest, it is exhausting. Some days it is frustrating in a way that is hard to articulate. Some days it hurts in ways that are both physical and invisible at the same time. That is the part people don’t always see, but it is real.

And yet, in the middle of all of that, something else happens. Something so incredibly powerful. Something that defines this community far more than the loss itself.

The amputee community is full of people who refuse to shrink. People who wake up inside that reality and still choose to move forward. Veterans who find new ways to serve and lead. Athletes who return to competition, not because it is easy, but because it matters to them. Entrepreneurs who build businesses. Parents who show up for their families every single day. Kids who adapt faster than most adults ever could and remind us what resilience looks like in its purest form.

These are not stories of perfection; they are stories of persistence. We did not choose limb loss, but we chose what came next. We chose resilience.

And that is where this story becomes bigger than amputees. Because if you zoom out for a moment, you start to realize something. Everyone loses something. Maybe not a limb, but something. A dream that didn’t work out, a relationship that ended, a version of yourself that you thought would always be there, health, stability, and certainty about the future.

Loss is part of the human experience. The difference is not who avoids it, the difference is who learns how to rebuild after it. That is the lesson. That is the connection.

Some of us lost a limb, but all of us, at some point in our lives, have to learn how to rise.

Limb loss is not a small thing. It changes everything. But what I see in this community, day in and day out, is something that deserves to be recognized. The courage to keep going. The grit to adapt. The determination to build a life that still has meaning, purpose, and direction. That is not ordinary, that is extraordinary.

So this month is not about asking for pity. It is about creating understanding. It is about recognizing that behind every prosthetic, every altered step, every visible difference, there is a person who has done the work to keep moving forward.

If you are part of this community, you already know what you have had to rebuild; you have lived it. If you are not, take a moment to think about your own life, the things you have had to put back together, the ways you have had to adapt. That is where we meet. That is where this becomes human, for everyone.

Resilience is not rare; it is shared. It is built in the moments nobody applauds. It is built when things don’t go according to plan, and you choose to keep going anyway.

You can measure what is missing. You cannot measure what remains. And what remains is unstoppable.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

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Three days before the surgery, the room gets very quiet.

Not because there aren’t machines humming or nurses moving in and out. There’s plenty of noise. But the kind of quiet that settles in your chest when something irreversible is coming.

You start doing strange things. You stare at your foot longer than you ever have in your life. You wiggle your toes like you’re memorizing them. You catch yourself thinking ridiculous thoughts like, Should I take a picture of it? As if a photograph could substitute for bone and nerve and thirty or forty or fifty years of history.

Family members sit near the bed trying to behave normally. Someone mentions the weather. Someone talks about parking validation. Everyone avoids the word amputation like it might speed the clock up if spoken out loud. But the clock is moving anyway.

The morning of surgery feels like being escorted somewhere you didn’t volunteer to go. The gurney squeaks down a fluorescent hallway. Ceiling tiles pass overhead one by one like countdown markers. You try not to look at your leg. You try not to bargain. You try not to think about waking up without it.

When the anesthesiologist says, “Count backwards from ten,” you want to laugh at the absurdity of it. As if this is just another routine procedure. As if you aren’t seconds away from crossing a line you can never uncross.

And then you wake up.

There is a weight at the end of the bed where your leg used to be. You don’t immediately look. You already know.

Phantom sensation is a cruel joke. Your toes itch. Your calf cramps. Your ankle feels twisted at a strange angle except it isn’t there. Your brain hasn’t been notified of the change.

Someone asks your pain level on a scale of one to ten. You want to tell them the scale is broken.

The days after are not cinematic. They are awkward bed transfers and spilled urinals and learning how to balance while brushing your teeth. They are sweating through physical therapy sessions that feel more like humiliation drills. They are the first time you try to stand and your body tilts sideways like a building with a bad foundation.

You will fall at least once. Maybe in the bathroom. Maybe in front of someone you wish hadn’t seen it. There is nothing heroic about falling naked while trying to navigate a shower bench.

There is paperwork. Endless paperwork. Insurance phone calls that begin with “Unfortunately…” Prosthetic fittings where the socket pinches and rubs and leaves angry red circles on your skin. The first time you put the prosthesis on feels less like triumph and more like strapping on a foreign object that has not yet agreed to cooperate with your body.

You look in the mirror and tilt your head. You are still you. But not entirely.

Somewhere in the middle of this, weeks, maybe months later, you venture back into the world. Grocery store. Gas station. School pickup line. You’re hyperaware of everything. The sound of the prosthetic foot on tile. The slight hitch in your gait. The way people glance and then quickly look away.

And then it happens.

A stranger, or maybe a coworker, or a distant relative, smiles warmly and says, “You are so inspiring.”

It lands hard. Like a lightning strike in a clear sky.

And this is where amputees quietly split into two camps.

For some, that word feels like validation after a season of invisibility. Because nothing about this journey felt inspiring while it was happening. It felt terrifying. It felt humiliating. It felt like loss layered on loss.

You remember the first night home when you couldn’t get comfortable no matter how you shifted your body. You remember the first time you tried to get back into your car and realized muscle memory no longer applied. You remember the anger at fate, at doctors, at yourself.

So when someone says, “You’re inspiring,” it feels like they see something you’ve been too exhausted to claim. They see the discipline it took to relearn balance. They see the quiet courage of walking back into public space. They see the stubborn refusal to disappear.

One amputee once told me, “If surviving the worst year of my life and still showing up every day isn’t inspiring, what is?”

For them, the word is not patronizing. It’s acknowledgment. It says, I see what this cost you.

Some embrace it fully. They build platforms. They mentor newly injured amputees. They post gym videos and marathon finishes and beach photos without apology. They understand that visibility can change narratives. There is a kind of joy in reclaiming the story.

And there is nothing shallow about that.

Sometimes being called inspiring feels like someone handing you back a piece of identity you thought you lost.

For others, the same word feels misplaced. Because they didn’t volunteer for this. They adapted because the alternative was decay. They got up because gravity doesn’t stop working when you lose a limb. Bills still come. Kids still need rides. Work still expects productivity.

One amputee told me, half laughing, half irritated, “I put on pants. Why am I inspirational?”

There can be a subtle sting to it. A sense that the compliment reveals more about the speaker than the subject. Would you call a two legged person inspiring for grocery shopping? For going back to work? For walking their dog?

Sometimes inspiring feels like the bar for disabled people has been lowered to survival.

And then there’s the pressure. Once you are labeled inspiring, you are expected to perform strength. You are not supposed to admit that some mornings you hate the prosthesis. That phantom pain can hijack your mood. That you still grieve the simplicity of tying two shoes without thinking.

Inspiring can become a costume.

And some amputees are simply too honest for costumes.

They don’t want applause for doing what necessity demanded. They want normalcy. They want space to be irritated. They want to exist without being a lesson.

There is nothing bitter about that. It is a defense of humanity.

What rarely gets discussed is how fluid this is. The same person might accept the compliment one day and resent it the next. After finishing a 5K, inspiring feels earned. After struggling to get a stubborn prosthetic liner on for the third time before 8 a.m., it feels absurd.

The amputee community doesn’t disagree because one side is enlightened and the other is oversensitive. It disagrees because limb loss reshapes identity in deeply personal ways. For some, the word honors survival. For others, it oversimplifies it. Both reactions come from lived experience. Both are authentic. Both deserve room.

So if you find yourself telling an amputee they’re inspiring, understand something. You are speaking into a story that began in a quiet hospital room, under fluorescent lights, with a countdown no one wanted. You are speaking into phantom pain and bathroom falls and insurance battles and identity reconstruction.

Sometimes that word will feel like sunlight. Sometimes it will feel like a spotlight.

And if you are an amputee reading this, wondering which camp you belong to, you are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to accept the compliment. You are allowed to reject it. You are allowed to laugh at it. You are allowed to roll your eyes and still keep walking.

There is no correct emotional response to losing a limb. Only honest ones.

And maybe that is where this conversation actually settles.

Maybe the word inspiring was never meant to be dissected under a microscope. Maybe it is simply a human attempt to name something we do not fully understand. When people say it, most of the time they are not trying to diminish you or elevate you. They are trying to process what they are witnessing. They see adaptation. They see courage. They see someone standing after something that might have flattened them.

Language is imperfect. Gratitude is awkward. Admiration sometimes comes out clumsy.

But it usually comes from a good place.

And life is bigger than a single word.

Limb loss is not a marketing slogan. It is not a personality trait. It is not a motivational speech. It is a deeply human experience wrapped in fear and grit and frustration and grace. Some days it feels heavy. Some days it feels powerful. Most days it simply feels like living.

If someone calls you inspiring and it feels right, receive it.

If someone calls you inspiring and it feels strange, let it pass.

If you are the one saying it, say it gently. Say it with respect. Say it knowing you are speaking into a story you cannot fully see.

At the end of the day, none of us chose every chapter of our lives. We are all adapting to something. We are all carrying something invisible. We are all learning to walk through parts of life we never trained for.

Maybe that is what people are really reacting to.

Not perfection. Not heroism.

Just the stubborn, ordinary miracle of a human being continuing forward.

And that is not about pedestal or pity. That is not about labels or debates.

That is just life.

And life, in all its broken and beautiful forms, is worth honoring.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

I wake up before my alarm, because of course I do. Big days don’t allow for peaceful sleep anymore. My brain has been awake for hours, running simulations like it’s preparing for a lunar landing. Today is not just a travel day. Today is a first. First flight. First airport. First time voluntarily entering a fluorescent maze designed by people who clearly hate the human body, especially the body of an Amputee.

My prosthetic leg is waiting on the floor like it knows what’s coming. I stare at it longer than usual. This thing and I have already been through some shit together, but today feels like escalation. Today we’re going public. Nationally. Possibly internationally if things really go off the rails.

I put it on carefully, methodically, like I’m assembling something that might explode if I rush. Too tight means pain later. Too loose means a viral moment on TikTok that I absolutely do not want. I stand up and test it. A few steps. A few turns. The leg behaves. I don’t trust it yet, but we have a fragile ceasefire.

Getting dressed takes longer than it used to. Shoes are now a strategic decision, not a fashion one. Comfort wins. Pride loses. Do I have the liner socks I need, what about an extra gel liner? I look in the mirror and tell myself I look normal. The mirror agrees because mirrors are liars.

The Uber ride to the airport is quiet. The driver chats. I nod. Inside my head I am rehearsing every possible interaction I might have to explain in the next twelve hours. Yes, it’s a prosthetic. No, it doesn’t come off easily. Yes, I can walk. No, I don’t want to demonstrate… I wonder how far the gate is from the terminal.

The moment I walk into the airport, my senses get assaulted. Lights. Noise. Movement. Everyone walking fast like they’re late to something important, which apparently, they are. I immediately feel like the slow kid in gym class again. I adjust my pace, not too slow, not too fast, just fast enough to look competent and slow enough to not face plant in front of Starbucks.

Check in goes smoothly, luggage is checked, which makes me suspicious. Airports do not reward confidence. They wait until you relax and then they strike.

Then comes security. Oh, mighty TSA Gods, please be kind.

I already know this is going to be a thing. I step into the line and instantly regret every life choice that brought me here. Someone jumps out of the way when they see me, like I’m on fire or some kind of traffic cone. I explain the leg to the agent, who nods calmly like this is just another Tuesday, which somehow makes me feel worse. They wave me to the side for “additional screening,” which is the politest way anyone has ever said we are about to make this awkward. The swabs are out, the powder testing kit, then the strange questions… can I touch it? Does this come off? Are you uncomfortable with being touched?

I stand there while people shuffle past me, pretending not to stare while absolutely staring. I am officially a human train wreck; gapers delay in real time. The agent asks questions. I answer in a stoic tone. Another agent appears. My leg gets swabbed like it’s a time bomb. I am ninety percent sure my prosthetic has now been tested for explosives, drugs, and possibly intentions.

“Any pain?” he asks.

Buddy… emotionally, yes.

Eventually I am cleared, alive, un-arrested, and profoundly tired. I put myself back together on a bench like Humpty Dumpty after a great fall. Shoes on. Belt on. Leg adjusted. Deep breath.

I finally find my gate and immediately scan for seating like a predator. Sitting now feels like winning the lottery. I lower myself into a chair and feel my entire body exhale. People scroll. Kids cry. Someone eats something that smells illegal. I just sit there, staring at the plane through the window, thinking about how insane it is that I am about to get on it.

Boarding starts. Of course, it does. I stand up slower than everyone else, pretending I am just very calm. The line moves in jerks. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. My leg starts sending feedback. Not pain exactly. More like commentary. I do everything I can to ignore it.

A gate agent asks if I need assistance. I appreciate the offer and hate the question. I say no, because pride is a hell of a drug. We both know I am lying a little.

The jet bridge feels like the final boss of a video game. Narrow. Sloped. Carpeted in a way that feels personal. I focus on each step. The floor is flexing in an unfamiliar way, a way that is new to me, a way that makes me dizzy. I am hyper aware of my body, my balance, the people behind me who definitely think I am walking weird. I do not look back. Stay focused man, you’re almost there.

Inside the plane, the aisle is tight and chaotic. People stop suddenly. Bags swing. Elbows exist. I move carefully, apologizing too much, gripping seatbacks like they owe me money. I find my seat and lower myself into it like it is a throne.

I am sitting. I made it. I am not on the floor. I have not caused a scene.

This feels monumental. Ridiculous. Triumphant. Completely underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time.

As the plane starts rolling, I stare out the window and laugh to myself like a lunatic. Not because it’s funny exactly, but because this is apparently my life now and there’s no suggestion box. This is the kind of laugh you make when life has officially jumped the shark and you’re too tired to pretend you’re surprised. Surprise challenges. Bonus levels. No tutorial. No pause buttons. Just a rebuilt body and a boarding pass asking you to keep up.

I didn’t look graceful today. There was no cinematic slow motion. No swelling music. No moment where strangers quietly nodded and whispered about my courage. I was awkward and stiff and overly cautious. I muttered profanity under my breath like it was a coping strategy. I walked slower than I wanted to and faster than I should have. I negotiated with my own body in public and lost a few rounds.

But I’m sitting here. Seatbelt on. Leg attached. Heart still racing a little, but steady. I made it through the drop off, security, the looks, the lines, the waiting, the chaos, the doubt. I didn’t bail. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t decide it was easier to stay home.

And for a first flight, first airport, first time trusting this new version of my body in a place that does not give a single shit about your learning curve, that feels like a damn victory.

Not the Instagram kind. Not the inspirational poster kind. The real kind. The quiet, exhausted, holy shit I actually did that kind.

So if you’re new to this, if your body still feels foreign, if the idea of navigating the world again feels overwhelming and absurd and unfair all at once, hear this from someone who just white knuckled it through an airport and lived to tell the story. You don’t have to be graceful. You don’t have to be inspiring. You don’t have to do it perfectly.

You just must keep showing up. One first at a time. One ridiculous, exhausting, brave step at a time.

There is life out here waiting for you. Loud, messy, a beautifully flawed life. And when you’re ready, it will meet you exactly where you are.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

The New Year arrives the same way it always does now. Quietly. Through a screen.

I’m sitting where I usually am in the morning, phone in my hand, prosthetic already on, Sarah’s tea pot whirring while it heats up. My body feels familiar, not easy, just familiar. That alone feels like progress. I open my phone and start scrolling, not because I’m searching for answers, but because it’s what we’ve all been trained to do. We scroll to see what the world has decided matters today.

The messages come fast.

New year, new you!
This is your year!
No excuses!
Level up!
If you want it badly enough, you’ll make it happen!

Interesting… apparently all I needed this whole time was better branding and a calendar refresh. Ugh.

The images are polished and relentless. Smiling faces at the gym. Before and after photos taken under suspiciously perfect lighting. Vision boards taped together with confidence. Promotions announced. Engagement rings lifted toward the camera like proof of worth. Everyone declaring their intentions loudly, publicly, with the kind of certainty that makes you wonder if doubt has been outlawed.

Social media doesn’t show you the work, it shows you the announcement.

I pause. I really do try to take it in with an open heart. I tell myself there’s nothing wrong with hope, nothing wrong with ambition, nothing wrong with wanting more. I remind myself that these posts aren’t aimed at me personally. They’re just part of the annual ritual, the collective agreement that January gives us permission to pretend we are suddenly in control.

Still, something tightens in my chest.

Because I’m not standing at a starting line anymore.

I’m standing in the middle of something unfinished.

My leg is still gone. My body still requires attention, patience, negotiation. My mornings still begin with routines that don’t fit neatly into motivational slogans. Trauma doesn’t reset because the year changes. Grief doesn’t check the date before showing up. Healing doesn’t move faster just because everyone else decided it’s time to sprint.

You can’t outrun healing just because the calendar tells you to.

This is something the amputee community understands deeply. That strange tension between wanting to be inspired and needing to be honest. Between seeing possibility and knowing your limits. Between cheering for other people’s momentum and quietly managing your own endurance.

Another post slides past. Someone celebrating consistency. Someone announcing a massive personal win. Someone declaring this is the year they finally become who they were meant to be.

Honestly, I can’t help but think how many people are quietly continuing while others are loudly starting over.

I set the phone down and look around the room. The light is soft. The house is quiet. My prosthetic feels snug, a little tight, a reminder that my body is still adapting, still negotiating its relationship with gravity and time. There is no breakthrough happening here. No announcement to make. Just presence.

And then it lands, not like a revelation, but like a truth that’s been waiting patiently…

I didn’t need a new year.
I needed time.

Time to learn my body again.
Time to sit with discomfort instead of rushing past it.
Time to build patience when motivation ran out.
Time to understand that progress doesn’t always look like movement.

Here’s something no one puts in a quote graphic. Continuing is harder than starting. Starting is exciting. Continuing is quiet, repetitive, and often invisible. Continuing doesn’t get applause. It doesn’t photograph well. But continuing is where real change happens. Continuing is the unvarnished truth.

Starting over is loud, continuing is honest.

I’m not starting over. I can’t. And honestly, I don’t want to.

Starting over suggests erasing what came before, as if survival was just an inconvenience we should hurry past. As if the hardest chapters are only valuable once they’re neatly wrapped and archived. But everything that brought me here matters. Every hard day. Every slow adaptation. Every moment when simply staying felt like the bravest option available.

So as the New Year unfolds around me, loud and shiny and well intentioned, I choose something quieter.

I choose to continue.

To continue listening to my body instead of arguing with it.
To continue honoring the pace this life requires.
To continue building strength that doesn’t announce itself.
To continue showing up without needing to perform transformation for anyone else.

I pick my phone back up, scroll a little more, then set it down again. The noise will still be there tomorrow. The slogans will keep coming. The pressure to reinvent will never really go away.

But so will I.

Not reset.
Not reinvented.
Still becoming.

And that feels like enough to carry me forward.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

I wake up before the alarm again. Not because I’m rested, but because my mind has already started lifting weight.

Morning is when I feel it most. Before the day can distract me, before noise and people and expectations take over, there’s a quiet reckoning that happens in bed. I lie there for a moment and take inventory. Body first, then breath, then mood. My leg is still gone. That truth greets me before my feet ever touch the floor. Some mornings feel manageable. Others feel heavy in ways I can’t explain yet. Either way, the day is coming, whether I feel ready or not.

Getting up is automatic now, but the awareness never fully leaves. The transfers, the balance, the small adjustments I’ve learned to make without thinking. I swing my intact leg down, brace, and reach for the prosthesis waiting beside the bed. Donning it still requires focus. The pressure around my residual limb, the snugness of the socket, the brief discomfort before everything settles. I pause until my body agrees to the fit. I move through my routine, brushing teeth, washing my face, catching my reflection just long enough to register myself before moving on. The mirror no longer feels hostile, but it doesn’t feel friendly either. It’s neutral. And that, strangely, feels like progress.

As I sit in the shower chair, water hitting my shoulders, I notice how often my mind wants to drift backward. To what I lost. To what feels unfair. To the questions that still don’t have answers. I shift slightly, aware of the missing weight where my leg used to be, aware of how my body now balances itself differently. I let those thoughts come, but I don’t let them run the show anymore. That part took practice. Reps I never asked for.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I had been training without knowing it.

At first, I thought strength would come back the way it always had in my life. Through effort. Through pushing harder. Through refusing to quit. That’s how I’d always built myself. But this was different. This wasn’t a muscle you could bully into growing. This one required something far more uncomfortable.

Vulnerability.

The first time I felt it, I didn’t recognize it as strength at all. It felt like exposure. Like standing in the middle of the room without armor. Like choosing to stay present when everything in me wanted to shut down or lash out or disappear. Like walking into a space knowing people might notice the prosthetic, the gait, the subtle differences, and not knowing how that would land.

Driving to my first appointment of the day, I catch myself bracing for the world. The looks. The moments. The unpredictability. My foot rests on the pedal, the artificial ankle responding a half beat slower than my brain expects. There was a time when this alone would have sent my nervous system into overdrive. Today, I notice the tension, but I don’t fight it. I acknowledge it, the same way you acknowledge a sore muscle after a hard workout. It’s there. It doesn’t mean something is wrong.

Inside the building, someone says something awkward. Not cruel, just clumsy. As I walk down the hall, I hear it, the faint squeak of my artificial foot against the floor, a sound only I seem to notice. A few months ago, it would have stuck to me for hours. Today, it registers, then passes. Not because it didn’t matter, but because I chose not to give it more weight than it deserved. That choice still feels new. Still fragile. But it’s real.

This is the part no one talks about. The part where you realize you can’t control what people say, how they react, or whether they understand you. You can’t control the glances at your leg or the assumptions people make when they see it. But you can control how much space those moments take up inside you. That realization didn’t arrive all at once. It grew slowly, like muscle fibers rebuilding after being torn.

By midday, fatigue sets in. Not physical, emotional. The kind that comes from staying aware all day. From choosing not to numb out. From staying open when closing off would be easier. I sit in my car for a few extra minutes before heading home, shifting my prosthesis slightly to relieve pressure, phone in my hand, typing out thoughts I don’t want to lose. Writing has become my chalkboard, my training log. Proof that I showed up, even when the reps were ugly.

There were days early on when loving myself felt impossible. Days when it felt reckless. Risky. Like setting myself up for disappointment. Days when the sight of my prosthetic leaning against the wall felt like evidence of everything that had been taken. But self compassion turned out to be the hardest lift of all. It required me to stop measuring myself against who I used to be and start honoring who I was becoming.

That shift didn’t feel like victory. It felt like surrender. And then, unexpectedly, it felt like power.

Later that evening, as the house grows quiet again, I notice something subtle. The anxiety that used to spike at night doesn’t fully take over anymore. The spiral doesn’t gain momentum the way it once did. I still feel everything, including the dull ache where my leg ends, but I’m no longer drowning in it. I’ve built enough strength to tread water.

This is when I understand what has been happening all along.

I did not rebuild my life by getting stronger in the ways people recognize. I did not reclaim it by conquering fear or silencing doubt or pretending this never happened. I rebuilt it one internal repetition at a time. One breath where I stayed instead of fleeing. One moment where I chose response over reflex. One night where I told myself the truth and did not look away.

I did not wake up healed. I did not wake up confident. I did not wake up whole. I woke up willing. Willing to train the only muscle that trauma could not take from me. Willing to stand inside discomfort without abandoning myself. Willing to keep going, even when going felt pointless, even when love for myself felt undeserved.

Before bed, I sit on the edge of the mattress and remove my prosthetic. The release is immediate. Pressure fades. Balance shifts. Absence announces itself. My leg is still gone, and it always will be. But the silence around that fact no longer terrifies me. It simply exists, the way truth does when you finally stop fighting it.

I stretch. I breathe. I sit with the body I have, not the one I remember. I think about how far I have come, not in steps or milestones, but in capacity. In resilience. In my ability to remain present inside my own life.

This is not a story about overcoming. It is a story about staying. About choosing myself again and again, quietly, imperfectly, without witnesses. About training a strength no one applauds, but one that holds me upright when everything else feels uncertain.

I still have days that undo me. I still get tired. I still doubt. But now I know something that changes everything.

I know how to train.
I know how to flex.
And even on the days I feel fragile, I know I am not finished.

Because the light did not arrive all at once.
It grew slowly, inside the work.
And now it is strong enough to carry me forward.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

I ran into an old friend recently. We will call them Absolutely Not Naming Them Here Because They Might Be Reading This, which feels like the kind of sarcasm I have earned at this point. It was one of those unexpected run-ins, the kind that pulls you out of your head before you have time to prepare. One second I was focused on whatever errand I was pretending to care about, the next second I was face to face with someone from my old life, the life where my body worked, the life where conversations were easy, the life where I never had to rehearse my facial expressions before opening my mouth.

And I froze.

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It was not a cute little pause; it was the kind of freeze where everything inside you stops moving. My mind crashed, my throat locked, and I could practically hear an internal error message. I knew they meant well; they always had. But what followed was a conversation that scraped something unbearably raw inside me. They smiled and said I looked great, and they kept their voice soft and earnest and added that I was such an inspiration, and then came the classic line that makes every amputee’s soul want to walk into the ocean: “I cannot imagine what it has been like.”

Inside my head, a thousand responses fired at once. Really? You cannot imagine? Try harder. Or, My life detonated, and I am still sweeping up fragments. What part of this looks great to you? Or the one that hovered like smoke: Do you think telling me I look great fixes the part where I do not even recognize the person staring back at me in the mirror? I wanted to say all of it. Every angry, exhausted, sarcastic truth. None of it made it out.

Because here is what amputees learn very quickly, especially early on. People do not actually want the truth. They want the digestible version of your suffering. They want the PG edition, the one with a hopeful lesson at the end. They want to connect with you without having to feel the weight of what you have lived.

And here is the cruel irony that made all of this even worse. I have always been a communicator. My entire life has been built on expression, articulation, connection. I have always been able to name my feelings before they fully form, like grabbing a glass before it hits the ground. After my amputation, that part of me evaporated. Trauma rewired something fundamental. My thoughts were sharp, but my tongue felt heavy, and my chest felt tight, and every time someone looked directly at me I could feel the words scatter like startled birds.

It felt like losing the ability to breathe. To interact. To belong.

I was suddenly a stranger in my own social world, and everyone around me spoke a language that no longer made sense. I tried humor. I tried sarcasm. I tried the kind of trauma bonding only amputees really understand, the half-joking acknowledgment that sometimes humor is the only thing standing between you and complete emotional collapse. None of it worked. Every conversation left me more isolated, more misunderstood, more aware of how far I had drifted from the person I used to be.

The truth became painfully clear. The people in my life could not hear me because they could not imagine the world I now lived in. And I could not blame them, but God, I wanted someone to try harder than a compliment and a sympathetic head tilt.

Backed into an emotional corner I did not know how to escape, I started writing. Small notes in my phone, journal entries, half-thoughts I typed when sleep refused to come. Angry sentences. Grief-soaked fragments. Sarcastic observations. Confessions I could not say out loud. Writing became the only place I did not freeze, the one space where my interior world did not require translation. It was mine. Completely mine. The only thing I could control in a life that felt like it had been stripped down to its studs.

Somewhere in that quiet scribbling, something shifted. I realized that I could not control what people understood. I could not control their reactions, their clichés, their well-intentioned but shallow attempts at comfort. But I could control mine. I could choose what I allowed in, what I allowed to define me, what I allowed to linger. It was not a sudden revelation; more like a whisper that repeated itself until I finally listened. Acceptance was slow. It required muscle, not magic. It needed repetition and patience, not epiphanies.

Eventually, the emotional static between me and the world softened. Not because people finally understood me, but because I stopped expecting them to. And once that expectation dissolved, something surprising happened. The silence between us felt less like a barrier and more like a boundary I had earned the right to draw. A space that protected me rather than isolating me.

That is where healing really began. Not in being understood, but in learning to hear myself again. And in realizing that even if the world cannot speak my language yet, I can still write it.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

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Eight years ago, in the early days of my amputation, I found myself sitting in a hospital hallway in my wheelchair, still healing, still waiting, and flooded with unknowns. I can still recall the way the hallway smelled like antiseptic and quiet resignation. The floors were polished, but nothing felt clean. Everything around me was sterile, except my emotions, which were raw, jagged, and uncontained.

I remember the hiss of oxygen machines in the background, the distant squeak of rubber soles on tile, the faint hum of fluorescent lights overhead. It felt like the world was moving around me while my life had come to a grinding halt.

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That’s when he sat down beside me.

He was an above knee amputee, older than me by maybe 10 or 15 years. His gait was uneven but strangely confident, the kind of stride you earn from living long enough with a prosthetic to stop hiding it. His face carried the softness of someone who had fought his battles and learned when to let them go. His eyes, though, his eyes had that unmistakable calm you only see in people who have survived something big and made peace with the leftover pieces.

He didn’t introduce himself right away.
He didn’t lecture me, didn’t try to fix me, didn’t offer sympathy I wasn’t ready to accept. He just sat with me, elbows resting on his knees, watching the same hallway I was staring at like it held answers.

Eventually, he turned to me and said, quietly, almost in a gravelly whisper:

“You look like you’re holding your breath.”

I was. In every possible way.

When I finally exhaled, everything poured out… fear, anger, confusion, the sense of loss that clung to me like fog. I told him I didn’t know who I was anymore. I told him I didn’t know how to rebuild a life that felt like it had collapsed overnight. He listened the way only someone who’s been there can listen. Not interrupting. Not rushing me. Not judging the mess I was spilling at his feet.

When I finally burned myself out, he nodded slowly and said:

“You remind me of me. A long time ago.”

Then he shared a line I had never heard before, a line that didn’t come from any book, any scripture. A line with no clear author, no source, no neat origin story. It’s been misattributed to theologians and thinkers for decades, but in truth, it’s a wandering piece of human wisdom that’s been kept alive because pain always recognizes pain.

He said:

“When God wants to make a man powerful,
He breaks him first.”

I felt my jaw clench.
How could breaking be anything but cruelty?
How could any version of God, or fate, or life, want this for someone?

He didn’t flinch at my reaction.
Instead, he leaned back against the wall, exhaled, and continued:

“Whether you see it through faith, fate, destiny, or just the hard math of life… the message is the same… breaking isn’t punishment. It’s preparation.”

He talked about the night he lost his limb in a car accident, the disbelief, the anger.
He talked about the months he spent fighting himself as much as he fought his circumstances. He talked about trying to walk again while feeling like every step was a negotiation with pain.

He told me how he stopped seeing his amputation as the end of him and started seeing it as the fire that forged him into someone steadier, sharper, more grounded.His voice never wavered. Not because he had everything figured out, but because he had survived enough to trust the process, even the ugliest parts.

Then he looked at me… really looked at me… and said:

“You’re not being punished, kid.
You’re being rebuilt.”

At that moment, I didn’t believe him. Not fully. Maybe not even a little. But the way he said it stuck with me in a place deeper than belief, it lodged itself somewhere in my soul like a seed waiting for the right season.

And now, eight years later, I still carry that line with me.
Not as gospel.
Not as doctrine.
But as a compass.

A reminder that breaking and becoming often happen in the same breath. Because every amputee eventually learns this truth:

We aren’t just broken.
We are reforged.

Pain sharpens us.
Loss humbles us.
Rebuilding teaches us who we really are.

And if you’re early in your journey right now, if your world feels cracked open, raw, unfamiliar, hear me when I say this:

You are not done.
You are not ruined.
You are not less.

You’re standing in the chapter where the breaking happens.
Where the nights feel long.
Where nothing feels steady.
Where the path is covered in debris that used to be your old life.

But this chapter is not your ending.
It’s your becoming.

One day, you’ll look back at this moment, the moment you were certain everything had been taken from you, and you’ll understand that it was the very ground where your strength was born. What felt like the end will reveal itself as the exact place you began to rise, rebuilt with an immense power you never knew you were capable of.

He knew that before I did.

It was the truth he gave to me.
And now I’m passing that truth to you.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

So, it’s time to leave the comfort of home.

Inside these walls, I’ve started to get the hang of things. I know every surface, every transfer, every shortcut. My assistive devices have their places, the floor plan has become muscle memory, and “home sweet home” has taken on an entirely new meaning. I can move around freely now, even in dimly lit rooms. This space, once filled with grief and awkwardness, has slowly become a place I can breathe again.

But sooner or later, home starts to feel like a cocoon, and every cocoon eventually cracks open. So I tell myself, Okay, it’s time. Time to go out there. Time to rejoin the world.

I’ve got clunky but adequate mobility, just enough confidence to get by, and a few practice runs under my belt. I figure, what could possibly go wrong?

Oh, right. The X factor.

No one warned me about that one, the unpredictable, deeply human, and sometimes excruciating reactions of other people seeing my very naked prosthesis.

It’s summer, I’m in shorts, and it’s the first time I left the house alone, I felt like I was walking onstage without rehearsal. Every motion felt amplified, every sound too loud. It wasn’t the mechanics of walking that scared me anymore, it was the awareness that everyone could see me walking.

Fueling my car felt like a public performance. At the grocery store, I could sense people’s eyes darting toward me, then away, then back again. Some stared like I was a rare artifact; others made sure not to look at all, which somehow felt worse.

And then there are the whispers. Not mean, just... curious. I can feel them ripple through the air, soft but sharp, like static.

One woman actually froze mid-step in an aisle, staring as if I’d just walked out of a sci-fi movie. I smiled, nodded politely, and kept moving, pretending not to care, but my heart was pounding so loud I could hear it in my ears.

Then there are the kids.

Kids are a minefield. They don’t filter, they don’t fake, and they don’t hide their wonder. Some just stare wide-eyed, fascinated, like I’m part robot, which, technically, isn’t wrong. Others look scared, unsure if they should ask what happened. And then there’s always that one brave kid who blurts out the question adults want to ask but never do:
“Hey mister, what happened to your leg?”

That one’s tricky. Sometimes I’ll give them the simple answer—“I got hurt, and now I have a cool new leg.” Other times, depending on the day, I’ll smile and say, “Shark attack.” Kids love that one. Adults, not so much.

But then there are moments that stop me in my tracks—the times when I can’t play it cool.

Once, I pulled into a parking lot, planning to grab a quick drink. I parked, turned off the car, reached for the door handle… and froze. A family was walking by; a mom, dad, and two young kids.

Suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about my thirst anymore. I was thinking about what I must look like. I pictured the parents whispering, the kids staring, maybe the uncomfortable glances that would follow me all the way to the counter.

My hand stayed on the door handle. My leg felt heavy, both of them did. For a few seconds, I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed, not by pain, but by fear of perception.

It’s amazing how powerful that can be, not what you see in others, but what you think they see in you.

Eventually, I took a breath, opened the door, and stepped out. The family walked past. The dad nodded. The mom smiled. One of the kids waved. That was it. No whispering, no shock, no pity.

And in that quiet moment, standing in a parking lot with a prosthetic leg and a racing heart, I realized something important, not everyone is staring out of judgment. Sometimes, they’re just trying to understand. Sometimes, they’re not staring at all; it’s just me, still learning how to exist in this version of myself.

The truth is, we all stare. We stare at what we don’t understand, what scares us, what inspires us, what we hope we’ll never have to endure. We stare at difference because it challenges the illusion of sameness.

And for those of us who live in bodies that demand attention, we learn that staring doesn’t have to mean shame. It can mean curiosity, empathy, even connection.

Still, on the bad days, I’ll admit it, I hate it. I hate being reminded that I can’t just blend in. But on the good days, I catch someone’s eye, smile first, and think, Yeah. You can stare. I’ve earned it.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

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Morning.

I wake before the alarm, like I always do. For a few seconds, the world feels normal: the hum of the room, the thin light pressing through the blinds, the familiar outlines of furniture that haven’t moved. Then I shift my weight, and everything tilts.

It’s strange how quickly your brain betrays you. For that brief second before memory catches up, I forget. I swing my legs out of bed and am met with a ghost, a reminder that my body doesn’t match the one in my head.

The mirror waits across the room. I catch a glimpse of myself and flinch. It’s me, but not me. Like someone copied my face and left the edges smudged. Even the eyes look different, maybe it’s exhaustion, maybe it’s loss, maybe it’s both.

I drag myself into the bathroom, still half-asleep, still pretending this is fine. Showering used to be automatic; now it’s a sequence of transfers, assistive devices, and mental math. I sit in a plastic chair beneath the water, and the angle feels wrong, like I’m watching someone else’s morning from a strange perspective. The showerhead spits unevenly, steam filling the small room, and I stare at the tiled wall, balancing with one hand while trying to wash a limb that isn’t there. I drop the soap, curse at gravity, then laugh because it’s so absurd, this careful choreography just to feel clean.

The mirror fogs up when I step out, and for a moment, that’s a gift, blurred reflection, blurred truth. Then I wipe it clear, and there I am again, a patchwork man stitched together by time and stubbornness. I look into my own eyes and think, Who the hell are you?

Getting dressed is an exercise in patience and compromise. Clothes that used to fit don’t. The jeans bunch weirdly around the prosthetic. Shoes never feel balanced. There’s a small mountain of trial-and-error fashion in my closet, a museum of failed attempts at “normal.”

Driving still makes me nervous. It’s not the mechanics, it’s the vulnerability. The fear that something will slip, that I’ll be exposed somehow. I’ve learned how to adapt, but adaptation doesn’t mean peace. It just means you found a new way to fake control.

By the time I reach wherever I’m going, work, an appointment, it doesn’t matter; I’ve already fought a dozen invisible battles. People say, “You look great!” and I smile, because they need me to. But inside, I’m exhausted from pretending that the mirror tells the whole story.

Interactions with friends are the strangest part. They hug too gently, speak too carefully, laugh too quickly at my jokes. Some avoid the topic entirely, like it’s contagious. Others lean in too close, overflowing with inspiration talk and “you’re so brave” speeches. I’m not brave. I’m functioning. There’s a difference.

Sometimes I catch myself nodding through conversations I don’t remember, just trying to survive the noise. No one notices how tense I am, how I’m constantly aware of the space my body occupies, the subtle whir of the prosthetic, the imbalance that never truly goes away.

By the time the day starts winding down, I’m a collage of moments, the good, the awkward, the painful, the quiet victories no one sees. Taking off the leg at night feels like peeling away the performance. I sit on the edge of the bed and stare into the mirror one last time. The reflection looks tired, older, both familiar and foreign. It’s still me, but it’s not the me I remember.

Here’s the thing about mirrors, they show you form, but not fight. They capture surface, but not survival. They never tell you that the man in the glass has rebuilt himself a hundred times just to make it through an ordinary day.

So I turn off the light. The reflection fades, and in the dark, I finally feel whole, not because I recognize the person staring back, but because, for once, I don’t have to.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

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When they told me I’d be getting my first prosthetic, I thought, Finally.
I pictured myself walking out of that clinic like a cyborg reborn, maybe a little awkward at first, but mobile, strong, human again.
No one told me I’d have to wait.

“Now we’ll fit you for your prep socket,” they said.
Prep socket? What the hell is a prep socket?
It sounded like an appetizer before the real leg showed up.

Weeks went by, measurements, insurance delays, evaluations, more waiting. I remember thinking, Wait a minute… I thought they just hand you a leg and you go home! (Wouldn’t that be nice?)

By the time it finally arrived, I was half excited, half terrified. This thing: this beautiful Frankenstein creation of carbon fiber, metal, and hope, was about to become part of me.
I imagined it would just… click. Like putting on a shoe.
Instead, it felt like trying to dance in a bear trap.

The moment I stood up, my balance was gone, my limb screamed in pain, and I was sweating like I’d just run a marathon uphill. My brain couldn’t compute what my body was doing. All I could think was, Seriously? This is it? This is how I walk now?

The disappointment hit hard.
For a second, the wheelchair looked like a luxury sedan.

I’d survived amputation. I’d survived rehab. And now I was supposed to survive… this? The wobble, the hesitation, the fear, it all set in like slow torture. I was no longer learning to walk; I was learning to fail gracefully without tipping over.

And while I was wobbling down parallel bars, soaked in sweat and doubt, I kept seeing images of Paralympians sprinting, amputees hiking mountains, and cool prosthetic models strutting down runways. Meanwhile, I’m here thinking, Forget the runway, I just want to make it to the damn bathroom without face-planting.

The truth no one tells you is that the physical part isn’t even the hardest.
It’s the mental game, the constant negotiation between your willpower and your pain tolerance. It’s your brain screaming “walk” while your body whispers “not yet.”
It’s the shame of struggling with something that once came naturally, and the slow realization that progress is measured in inches, not miles.

Somewhere in the frustration, humor sneaks in.
Because eventually, you have to laugh.
You laugh at how your prosthetic squeaks in quiet rooms.
You laugh at how every step sounds like an old floorboard.
You laugh because if you don’t, the weight of it all will crush you.

And that’s where the lesson hides, in the absurdity, in the sweat, in the in-between.
You stop asking for miracles and start noticing the micro-victories.
Standing for five seconds longer.
Walking to the mailbox.
Falling and getting back up without breaking your spirit.

This isn’t the movie montage part of recovery.
There’s no soundtrack, no instant triumph, no medal waiting at the end of the hallway.
It’s just you, your stubbornness, and a leg that doesn’t quite feel like yours… yet.

But maybe that’s the beauty of it.
Maybe the art of walking again isn’t about moving forward fast, but about accepting that the journey itself is slow, messy, and maddeningly human.

So, I breathe.
I stand.
I take one uneven step, then another.
And in the silence between each, I remind myself:
This isn’t failure; this is becoming

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

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Waking up after an amputation feels like falling off a cliff.
Not metaphorically; I mean the free fall, the panic, the instant you realize gravity has already won.

Only, in this version, you survive.
You’re conscious, you’re breathing,
but the world as you knew it is gone.

I remember that first morning; the fluorescent lights; the cold air biting at what was left of me. There’s a silence hospitals have, the kind that amplifies every thought you’re trying to outrun.
And there I was, staring at the space where my leg used to be, trying to convince myself that this was real.

Then came the noise inside my head.
What the hell just happened?
What am I supposed to do now?
Why me?
It’s not fair; none of it is.

My career? Probably done.
My marriage? Hanging by a thread.
The drums I loved since 5 years old? Out of reach.
Everything that made me me was suddenly behind glass, and I didn’t know if I’d ever touch it again.

I’d like to say I faced it bravely, but I didn’t. I cursed; I cried; I stared at the ceiling until the pain meds and exhaustion blurred together. I hated my body, my luck, my life. And beneath all that hate was fear; thick, paralyzing fear that maybe I was no longer the main character in my own story.

Recovery didn’t come in waves of inspiration.
It came in fragments; in the quiet arrival of people who refused to let me sink.
A family member who sat in silence when there were no right words.
A friend who cracked an awful joke that somehow made me laugh.
A therapist who didn’t promise healing, just a place to dump the chaos.

Then came the slow crawl of curiosity.
I started listening to music again; tentatively.
And one night, in the dim glow of my phone, I typed a search of the question that had been haunting me:
“What do amputees look like?”

I wasn’t just searching for images; I wanted to see what survival looked like, the faces of people who’d lost and still lived.
I wanted to know if they smiled, if they danced, if they ever stopped feeling broken.
I wanted to know if I could belong to this strange new tribe of the rebuilt.

Some days felt endless. Others offered the faintest flicker of rhythm.
I began to mark progress in inches; a day without tears, a night of real sleep, the courage to stand up and fall over and stand again.
Somewhere in that monotony, a pulse returned. Not my old one, but something new; uneven, awkward, real.

Eventually I made a list; not dreams, just goals small enough to feel almost stupid.
Wear the prosthetic for more than an hour.
Take out the trash.
Drive again.
Run an errand without feeling like everyone was staring at the missing part of me.

The truth is, they were staring.
People don’t see you anymore. They see what’s gone.
They see questions they don’t know how to ask.
And sometimes they look away, because your presence reminds them how fragile their own comfort really is.

Getting back out there was surreal; like re-entering a world that hadn’t noticed I’d disappeared.
I learned to smile through the awkwardness, to crack a joke before someone else could. Humor became armor. Vulnerability became my secret weapon.

And while I’d love to say this is where I found redemption, it’s not that simple.
This is just where the noise quieted enough for me to start hearing my own heartbeat again.

There were still mountains to climb; physically, emotionally, spiritually; but for the first time since the surgery, I realized something quietly defiant:
I was still here. I was alive.

Maybe broken, maybe unfinished, but alive.
And sometimes, that’s where inspiration begins; not in victory, but in survival.

Rick Bontkowski
Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

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If you’ve ever listened to The AMP’D UP211 Podcast, you know it’s never just about the story; it’s about the truth inside the story.

The quiet moments between the struggle and the comeback.

The courage to rebuild when no one’s watching.

The honesty it takes to say, I’m not who I was, but I’m becoming who I’m meant to be.

I started this Substack because there are things you can’t always say in a microphone; thoughts that need space, not sound.

Here, I’ll share the reflections, lessons, and fragments of life that have shaped me as an amputee, a creator, a business leader, and a man learning, every day, what resilience really means.

You’ll find essays about transformation, identity, music, and the moments that test our faith in ourselves.

Sometimes I’ll expand on themes from the podcast.

Sometimes I’ll write about what’s happening in real time; the setbacks, the small victories, the wisdom that comes from the trenches.

If the podcast is where I talk with people, this is where I talk to you.

So, welcome, not just to a newsletter, but to a space built on truth, compassion, and the relentless pursuit of better.

Subscribe, share, and join me in keeping this conversation alive.

Because resilience isn’t something we arrive at; it’s something we practice, together.

Rick Bontkowski

Host, The AMP’D UP211 Podcast

CEO, Drummer, Amputee, Storyteller

“Strength isn’t built in comfort; it’s built one choice at a time.”