The Surprising Power of Mind Over Matter: How One Woman Body Builder Survived a Devastating Crash and Now Olympian

Most people think a tragic accident or life-changing diagnosis means the end of hope until they hear Cindra Stolk's story. After a devastating car crash left her with shattered bones and a prognosis that she’d never walk again, she refused to accept it. Through relentless determination, she mastered her mind over matter, proving that resilience can rewrite even the bleakest endings. Her journey from wheelchair to marathoner is a testament to the extraordinary power of belief, perseverance, and quiet strength showing you that what seems impossible today can be your next victory tomorrow.In this compelling episode of The Resilience Files, Cindra shares her raw, honest account of surviving a life-altering trauma and her unwavering mindset that propelled her recovery. You'll discover how her active lifestyle and mental toughness played a crucial role in defying the odds, transforming her pain into purpose. We break down the emotional hurdles of needing help, fighting injustice, and confronting loss, lessons that resonate deeply if you're facing your own battles. From advocating for others to turning tragedy into activism, her story is a masterclass in resilience and hope. You'll learn:

• The critical mindset shifts that can help you overcome devastating setbacks
• How physical strength fuels mental resilience, even in life-threatening situations
• The importance of refusing the voice of 'can't' and cultivating belief in your capacity to heal
• Practical steps to rebuild your life after trauma—emotionally, physically, and spiritually
• Why not all scars are visible—and how invisible wounds can be even more powerful

This episode matters because without the right perspective, life's hardest moments can lead to despair. But with resilience, they can become the foundation for a stronger, wiser you. Whether you're navigating health crises, facing adversity, or supporting someone in need of hope, Cindra’s story will inspire you to discover your inner strength and rewrite your story. Perfect for anyone dealing with injury, illness, or setbacks—especially those feeling overwhelmed or alone. If you believe recovery is impossible, think again. Your comeback starts now. Follow Cindra's inspiring journey at her website or social channels, and remember—your story isn’t over. It’s a new chapter waiting to be written, with resilience as your ink.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When you feel like life has dealt you a hand of unfair cards. Instead of voting, you double down. You're stuck in the game. You face battles. You felt broken. But hey, do us a favor. Put your hand on your heart. You feel that? You're still here. Welcome to the Resilience Files Unlocked, where survival meets transformation. Welcome to the Resilience Files Unlocked, where survival meets transformation. I'm your host, Carrie Bernanz, actress Sunwoman. This space was created for you. It's honest conversations about survival, reinvention, healing, and quiet strength. And it takes us to a place where we keep going, even when life throws us a hand of unexpected cards. I am so excited because we have an amazing guest today, which is living proof that diagnosis is not your destiny. After a catastrophic accident, life left her with shattered bones, multiple breaks, and doctors telling her that she would most likely never walk again. She chose to believe in something different. So this story is about mind over matter, bathing yourself in the power of refusing to accept the can't. As we do in the fashion of resilience files, we are going to go ahead and read the essay of our guest today. And this is Sindra Stokes' story. It was early afternoon on a Sunday in the year 2000. My husband and I were off to an early dinner. We decided to drive via a two-way highway to our location. There were many twists and turns on this highway. I was driving. When I came around one of the corners, I saw a car coming head on towards us. Out of instinct, I tried to swerve away from the oncoming car, which placed me directly in his path. The car T-boned me and threw the car off the road. I remember telling my husband, my arm was shattered and my hip was broken. And after that, I saw what I had heard many times. The light, as a person is dying. I blacked out and woke up in the trauma ICU ER with doctors leaning over me, cutting my clothes away, and checking the extent of my injuries I sustained. I heard the doctor tell my husband to call our children and to come to the ER in an effort for them to say goodbye. I was in critical condition, then I blacked out again. When I woke up, I was in a trauma ICU hospital bed with all kinds of medical equipment hooked up to me. My husband told me what had happened. Apparently, the fire department had to use jaws of life to remove me from the car, shattered my left arm, broke my neck, back, hip, and pelvis when the car crashed me. When the doctor came to my room to go over my injuries a few days later and what the next steps were, I was told, due to the extent of my injuries, I most likely won't walk again. Being an athlete and very active person, I refused to believe this was going to be my life. After several surgeries, plates, and pins, I was finally sent home to recover. I had already told myself I had a long road ahead of me, but I was not going to live the remainder of my life in a wheelchair. I had my husband lift me into our pool each day so I could float with zero gravity to keep my blood flowing and not allow a trophy to set in. It was frustrating. I was the one who cared for everyone. Now my husband had to bathe me, dress me, cook for me, and be by my side for six months until I was able to care for myself. After six months, I was able to get away from the wheelchair and walk with crutches. Three months later, I was able to walk on my own. I'm a firm believer that mind over matter really matters and really works. I would not allow myself to think that one minute I'll never walk again. I willed myself to walk, worked so hard to make it happen that I seceded. I'm alive and I'm thriving. And can I say y'all, I'm looking at Sindra Stope right now, and she does not look a day over 40. Like she looks good and wow. Um Sindra, before we get started, we always check in and ask people after their essay has been read, how are you doing? How are you feeling?

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Well, quite honestly, just having you read it to me, I'm I'm on the verge of tears. Um that was the most challenging life situation I've had, and I'm in my 70s and we go through a lot, you know, and and that was a life changer. Um little bit uh teery right now, just thinking about what my kids and my husband had to do for me after years of doing for them, and literally not able to do anything. I mean, I couldn't do anything. So that was number one issue I had to face being the caregiver, and then ending up having to be cared for.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Yeah. Wow, thank you, Sandra. I'm so happy you're here with us today. Can you take us back to that Sunday afternoon in 2000? You and your husband, y'all were on your way to breakfast, and in a moment, your entire life shifts. What do you remember about those moments right before the crash? Well, we were actually on our way to an early dinner.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

So I was two weeks out from a bodybuilding competition. I competed in my 20s, in my 30s, and in my 40s until I got hit by the the drunk driver. Still have my arms today.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Looking good, girl. Looking good.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Still live in the gym. I, as I told you, got my certifications as a personal trainer, but didn't get them to train people. I got them to learn how to work around my injuries and get myself back on my feet. Ultimately led me to people uh thinking I was an unbelievable bionic woman, and they wanted me to train them. If I could train a broken person to be fit and strong, they they wanted me to train them. So I had quite a quite a good journey just being a personal trainer. But that day we were headed to an early alt-protein dinner two weeks out from my bodybuilding competition, where I was in my car uh depletion period.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

And talking about who my competition was gonna be, and it's right around the corner, and I had a great workout that day and came around a corner, and here comes a car right at me. So, in a second, your instincts say, Move, get out of the way. I was driving, my husband was shotgun. I turned to put myself right in in the face of the car coming at me. Wow. So all I remember is I told him I loved him. I I knew I was dying. I was sure I was dying. I saw the light, I was blacking out. I said, I love you. I said, I think my arm is shattered and I think my hip is broken. I could feel the pain of the bones uh sticking out of my body, you know, and and how much it hurt. But I passed out at that point and woke up in in uh emergency room with doctors all over me cutting off my Levi's. And I remember thinking this is silly, and I can't remember the brand of the Levi's right now was 26 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

You're ruining my pants. I just got these. Here I am dying. And it's like, wait, what? You're cutting my Levi's off. And they gave us and later I kept saying, Where's my Levi's? Where's my Levi's? They put them in a bag and sent them home with me shredded. But the point, the point is, my husband said the doctor said, Call your your boys in. Uh, I don't think she's gonna make it. She's she's really uh suffering here, she's in bad shape.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

So how did that land on your body and your ears when you heard that?

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Well, it was pretty scary, and I recall my two sons uh saying, fight, mom, fight. You're a fighter, you've always been a fighter, you're not leaving us, you need to fight. And that's when I blacked out and woke up two days later and trauma ICU in a hospital bed. So wow.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

That gives me chills. Uh I mean, you've always been a fighter. For you to even two weeks prior to get ready for a big bodybuilding competition. You've known discipline your whole life. And you know, it's that interesting shift that you said you made it from being the caregiver and taking care of your whole family. And I think hearing your children that you birthed and that you cared for tell you that I'm sure it woke up something inside of you. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

You think about who you'd leave behind. And more importantly, who's going to take care of them? I'm the caregiver. Oh my God, if my husband has to cook dinner or clean the house from the road. You know, you just I've always had the fight in me. Um, I was the very first female to take wood shop and auto shop in high school back in the early.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

You better go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

I mean, they said you're gonna get hurt. We can't allow you to take these classes. And my dad, thank God, said if she's gonna get hurt, the guys in the classroom will get hurt too. They're all they have the same parts.

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

So I was the very first uh ever to take auto shop and and wood shop. And I just wasn't your typical gal. I was a tomboy. And uh, you know, our lives parallel parallel quite a bit. You and I. I read your your website and your page, and you're an athlete. And you know, an athlete is an individual that it's hard to explain uh the pain you'll take and what you'll do to succeed, you know, and and to be better.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah, I agree. I uh unfortunately, I was in an accident where I got hit by a drunk driver as well. He's in prison. Yeah, but uh, I don't know if you knew about it, but I'm gonna talk about it more on the podcast. I haven't really went into an episode on it, but I got hit by a trunk driver and I've had fracture, broken bones in my face, teeth, and foot fracture, and arm, hip, the whole thing, you know, surgeries and being told too like it could be a possibility of not being able to walk. And, you know, like there were there's a will, there's a way. And at the time I had a six-month-old, and my son was the one that pushed me through, and he wouldn't take the bottle. And I was breastfeeding, and I was just like, I I pushed myself to even go to the extent of not taking medication sometimes just to breastfeed him. So, but I applaud you. I think, you know, you were going through so many things at that moment, and I'm so happy that your family was there to show up for you. I want to ask you, you know, from going to a person as a bodybuilder and, you know, having such an active fitness lifestyle to being told that you'll never walk again. That's life-altering for anyone, especially, especially you. What went through your mind when the doctor said that? And and what made you immediately say that that's not gonna be my future?

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Well, because I was an athlete and because I've seen athletes get injured and come back unbelievable. I mean, you hear about the football players, you hear about, you know, uh Lindsay Vaughn just shattered her tibia trying to go for the the Olympic gold, and she doesn't regret any bit of it. She said if I didn't try, I wouldn't know, you know. Yeah. But but having someone, first of all, tell you you're probably never gonna walk again, I think is insane. No doctor should put that mindset in anybody's mind. Yeah. Because I've always believed there's mind over matter. I've done things there's no way I should be able to do, but I tell myself I can, and I do it, you know, and and so I just feel like um there was an 18-year-old that had a similar experience, um, hit by a drunk driver. She tried to commit suicide, she was in the same situation you and I were both in. Uh, you're looking at surgery, looking at recovery, you're looking at the the different person you're gonna be after and wondering if if it's worth it all. And she tried to commit suicide, and the doctor asked me, would I go and sit with her and talk to her and show her what I was able to do with the same situation? And I said, absolutely. So this teenager who was now 26 years old, or a mother with three children bonded, she said that saved her life. Me coming in and saying, I was you, I couldn't walk, I was in pain, I I wasn't sure I was gonna make it or wanted to make it if that was gonna be my lifestyle. And and I said, sweetie, uh, you're gonna get this, you're gonna do this, we're gonna do it together. You are too young. I was in my 40s, she's 18. And I said, Boy, if this old lady can pull through, you certainly can pull through. And she did. And to this day, we stay in touch. And and uh, she's a beautiful woman that tried to commit suicide. She goes, No way, there's no way I'm living in a wheelchair. No way I'm gonna let everybody take care of me. It's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Wow. So um Cinder, that's so beautiful. So uh thankful you empathized and shared your story with her. I think that's so important. And this podcast is gonna reach so many people around the world that's gonna also need to hear that. If that's you today that is contemplating suicide because you've been dealt an unfair situation, just know that you can and will bounce back. And this is not the end of your story. This is the plot twist to your story to show you how tough and strong you really are, to show you how capable you really are, and that this will pass and that this is the the wheelchair is temporary and the wheelchair is long term that you might have an even better life than you've ever imagined in that wheelchair, and it's a new reality, but it's not the end of your story.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

That's right. And I I'm a firm believer everything happens for a reason. What is the reason? Why did I have to go through that pain? Why did I get hit by the drunk driver? I mean, there's reasons for everything. So maybe my reason was to save an 18-year-old from committing suicide. Or I brought about change in handicap situations. I found when I was six months in a wheelchair, just going shopping, I couldn't get through the racks of clothes. There was no room to migrate through through things. And then there was a gal that pulled into the I they gave me a temporary um handicap uh, you know, thing so I could park close. There was a gal that flew into the handicap uh space, jumped out of her car, ran into the store, and my husband was livid. He goes, There's nothing handicap about you. What are you doing here? And she goes, I'm just going in to get some shampoo from the beauty shop. I'll be just five minutes. And he says, You gotta be kidding me. My wife is paralyzed. She needs the space. I need the room to get her wheelchair out, and you're running in to get here, you know, shampoo. And I I think it changed her life too when she saw what she did was not was not right. I mean, you can't you can't do stuff like that. And so they started to impose really heavy fines on people uh parking and handicapped. So I tried to avenge these things while I was incapacitated to make it easier on those that would deal with it later on.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

So I feel that that helped. Yeah, that's important to advocate for others, especially in circumstances like that. I think that that's crazy. And you're so right. I think like I realized a lot of limitations once the accident happened for myself. And I it you see things from a different perspective. But then I think like even now, I'm not sure about you, but I do believe that there is still some invisible disabilities that exist. And I mean, it wasn't in that woman's situation, but sometimes there's people that have to park handicapped that may not, you can't see their physical injury. You don't know because they're wearing a pants leg if they got a prosthetic leg or not. But in her situation, she got a life-shakening response because I do hate when people abuse those type of situations. Like, what are you doing? There's real people that have real like real issues and problems that no one would ever know about. And people are very selfish in this world, unfortunately, and they are thinking, oh, it's just five minutes. That five minutes might take someone else 15 minutes to get out of the car, and you can't give the decency of having that space. I I appreciate that you advocated. I want to just like talk about your road to recovery because in that moment you're recovering, right? You endured multiple surgeries, plates, pins. You came home with a completely different life that you've never imagined or lived before. What was the hardest part of suddenly needing help for everything, navigating through the, you know, store and looking at racks of clothes or getting groceries? What was the hardest part of your journey?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

The hardest part was having to be cared for and not the one that cared for my family. And I think as women, we're we're caregivers anyways. We don't we don't I do now. I've taught my husband how to cook, I've taught my husband how to do my hair. I'm gonna make sure he knows how to, you know, how to step up and and uh help out. But um the hardest part was, you know, the pain. The pain is insufferable. Um half my body was crashed and it was was just the car was in me. They had to pull the car out of me. I had shattered my bones, my bones were sticking out, you know, out of my flesh. And and uh the concentration was on my arm and my hip because the bones were were broken and poking through my skin. Little did they know my neck was broken, my back was broken, you know, me was shattered. I mean, they go for what they can see first and foremost until they put you through the x-ray and put you through the MRIs, and then they find out, you know, there's other other trauma that took place. However, I will say, and I've been an advocate for this too, and I'm sure you are too. The doctor said the fact that I was two weeks out of a bodybuilding competition saved my life. That my my muscular skeletal strength would have killed any normal person had I not had that, what I went through. I should not have walked. Well, I didn't walk away, but I mean I should have been instantly killed. But he said the the depth of your training and your your muscles surrounding your bones and and your heart and your neck and your back, yes, they're broken, but they should have it should have killed you. This accident absolutely should have killed you. So at that point, I I've just been huge on on diet, on working out, on, you know, on here I am in my 70s. I'm a senior Olympian. I just competed in March of last year, made it to the nationals. I'm competing in the nationals and this year, and I'm just always putting a goal out there. I'm always striving to be better, stronger, nicer, kinder, anything, you know, to reinvent myself into a person that I think people would want to to be, that would look up to and and uh you know, make a better world for all of us. Yeah. But I'll tell you that gym when I train people want me to train them. Yeah, it's a funny, funny thing they'll say, oh, you know, that's hard, or my back hurts, or my and I'll say, Come with me. We're gonna sit down just for a minute, because they don't know my story. And I'll give them a short synopsis of what I went through, and I'll say, So here's how I operate. You want this, I will train you. You want to give me excuses, you're not my person. I I have no business working with you because I've overcome everything to be here today, and you're complaining that your back hurts, you know, or you're you're tired, you're sore. You know, it's like it's called work out, you know. Uh there's a reason for it. You work. But uh I've been an inspiration to my grandkids. I have five grandchildren.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

I have oh wow, congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Uh I've got them in the gym, I've got them working out, competing, and setting goals every year. And so it was it, it was worth it. I mean, it was tough, but I mean, I'm here to inspire and empower others.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Yeah, I love that. Wow, you're fascinating. Um just like your mindset and mentality, and you're right. Like I think at the beginning, what you said is like because your body was conditioned and you've been training, your body was able to unfortunately. But fortunately, take that type of impact and survive. And you're right, most people, it would not have. They unfortunately we would have been attending their funeral. But for you, it was a new lease on life, and uh, you came back to life with a whole new chapter, a whole new title to the book that you didn't expect, you know? Um, I wanted to to move into something because you did say something in your essay that I think is so deeply unfair. And I understand your experience here. The person who crashed uh who caused the crash faced no real circumstances or consequences. And how did you process that injustice?

SPEAKER_01 22:37

And did anger ever show up in this healing journey because of them? I mean, it gets even worse than that. So he's an illegal alien. He stole the vehicle that hit me. He walked away from it, as most drunks do, because they're incapacitated, so they don't tense up, and so they're usually able to walk away. He went back to Mexico. Uh, we traced the car's license plate to a to a gal who had had it stolen two days previously, and she's just besides herself because it had almost killed somebody. Um this whole thing today with ice and with the you know the situation going on. I'm on the fence with it. Um I don't have a problem with aliens coming over here whatsoever. My parent, my grandparents are from Italy. I'm I'm an immigrant family, you know, uh from an immigrant family. They came here the right way. They came here the legal way, they did what they needed to do to become U.S. citizens. I think the problems we're having today is people are just dumping into our country, and and yes, there are thugs and there are bad people, there's good people too, but I want them to do it the right way. I want them to pay taxes like we do. I want them to get insurance like we have to get. I want them to be accountable for doing things like what happened to me, uh not run back to Mexico and say, oh well, you know, whatever. And then my my uh insurance, my car insurance said my health insurance should take care of it. My health insurance said my car insurance. We had to hire uh an attorney to fight for my life. Aren't neither one were gonna pay for anything because they pointed the fingers at each other. $80,000 later, and we're talking 26 years ago, I guess it'd be like a quarter of a million dollars today insurance to go 50-50 and help me with with my bills and my recovery and and everything. I a car, my car was demolished. I had nothing. Uh, and that's pathetic too. But uh the car insurance said it was a health issue because I was I was so sick and needed so much help that they're not going to cover me. And the and the health insurance company said, it's a car accident. Your car insurance needs to cover you. So I learned you take out uninsured motorist insurance big time. So to this day, I carry a million dollars of uninsured car insurance. Had I had that, I would have been fine. It would have been covered, you know, all my expenses and everything. And now they say you can't drive without, you know, having insurance. And we know better than that, there's people driving all over without insurance, illegally, whatever, can't afford it. So I I also advocate that you cover yourself with uninsured motorists after what happened to me because I got screwed every way you can think of. I mean, I'm fighting for my life, and now I'm I'm told no one's gonna cover my medical and and help me get better.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

So I'm so sorry. I'm definitely facing some challenges myself, and it's I don't want to get into that whole book, but I can relate with you, and I definitely recommend uninsured motorists. I also recommend that people look into every state I think now has to carry uh um like it's another insurance when a person faces like something tragically like this, and it's not their fault of their is no fault of theirs. Um something with no fault, but it's still really sad. And um I would love to say that you are 70 years old, as you said. You described yourself and you're alive and thriving, and you look beautiful. What does thriving look like for you today? Like what are you most traveling?

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Getting out of bed every morning and praise the Lord, I'm still here. Yes, you know, I look around and and I see senior citizens my age or even younger um struggling with their health and with diabetes and with hypertension and you know, uh all kinds of health issues starting at 55 to 90. And I look at myself and and I say, I'm so blessed. I mean, I have I don't take any medication, none whatsoever. Wow. I don't need any help every time I I uh make an appointment to go have a physical or or see a doctor, they go, Do you need help coming in? Do you are you able to care for yourself? Are you and I'm like, well, yeah, I I'm fine. I don't have anything, any problems with that. But that makes me understand there's so many that do have those problems, you know, and and if I see seniors, I've got seniors coming to my gym that are recovering from knee replacement or hip replacement, the doctor said you've got to get in the gym, you've got to do weight bearing, you've got to. I will make an effort to walk up to them and praise them for their effort and tell them it is not an easy road, but it like you said, temporary. The situation is temporary, you can do it, you know, and and you'll be better off for doing it. So I just feel like my path has been probably similar to yours, where you're more passionate now about being strong and healthy and persevering and not taking no for an answer. And you know, tell me I can't do something. Oh, watch out. Watch out.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

That those fighting is lit up.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yes, those are fighting words, and and uh, you know, it's like I just I'm happy to be here. I'm really happy to be here and to enjoy my grandchildren and my children and life in general, because the other the other side of that is I'm six feet under and I've got my family mourning me and and hating the person that hit me and hating life because I was taken, you know, and we're all on borrowed time, we don't know what when when our last day is, none of us do, but I think like with you and I coming so close to death, right? We appreciate it that much more because we saw what the other side could have been, you know. People don't appreciate what they have, they don't appreciate getting up each day. And I think we need more of that. We need people saying, Oh, another day, let's go get it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Yeah, absolutely. I I yeah, I completely agree with you. And if someone is listening right now who's facing a diagnosis, a setback, a moment where everything feels impossible, maybe they were hit by a car, too, or maybe they had the craziest health scare of their life. What do you want them to know? How do they get through that journey?

SPEAKER_01 30:06

There is light at the end of the tunnel before you consider taking your life, before you think life is over, there's so many uh vehicles to help you today. There's so many outlets to call, even peers, your peers. You may have peers that went through the same thing but didn't discuss it with you. I mean, when you have a severe accident, you know, out of the woodwork, about your friends that suffered this, that, and the other, or whose family member uh, you know, went through a similar circumstance. I mean, we we have the help, I think, today that we never had 30 years ago, 40 years ago to encourage and empower you to get through the the hard part to make it worth the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

I love that. And one thing I think that um I had a problem with, and and I think there's probably somebody listening on today that also probably had those histories, but you can say from a different perspective, because I didn't have a husband at the time, girl, and I not don't have one now, maybe in the future. But when you do, when the caregiver, as we wrap up, becomes the one to be cared for, it is a really hard place to be in because I didn't personally want to be in that place. When I was in the trauma ICU of the hospital I was in, I I cried about people helping me, but I was in so much pain. Sometimes I would be afraid to ask for help because I felt like I was I was a nuisance to someone. I was like making them do something and I couldn't do it for myself because I've always been that person that's done everything for everyone. And to ask for that help felt hard restrictive. If someone is in this situation right now and they need to be cared for, how do you say, like, just let go and allow yourself to heal and to be cared for? What would what can you pour into that person today?

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Well, I think um for you and I alike, because we've been there, done that, it's powerful for us to say, you know, ask for help. I've offered help so many times to people, and I've said, it's not beneath you to ask me to come help you. You're going through a surgery. You just found out you have a cancer diagnosis, you know. Um, I'm currently dealing with a friend that just found out he's in stage three of kidney failure. So his next step is being on dialysis for the rest of his life. And um, I I offered it if it's a match, I offered him one of my kidneys. I have two. I don't know if it's a match, but I love that person that much. And he's afraid to tell his significant other because he doesn't want them worrying about the final stages that he's gonna go through. And I sit and tell him, you need that support structure, you need that person on your team fighting for you. It's not fair to them not to know what you're dealing with. And then I feel blessed that that they trust me enough to share these really dark, you know, things they're going through. Because if they if you don't have someone, you know, the other the other thought is suicide. The other thought is I'm done. I'm gonna die anyways. I'm in stage three, renal failure. I'm the next stage is hooked up to a machine in death. And you have to make these people understand they're worthy, they they count. It doesn't matter what they're going through. Someone is gonna go through something ten times worse if they take their life. How can you be so selfish to take your life and leave the loved ones behind wondering what they didn't do to help you through? And that's what I always say. Don't even go there. That's so selfish. Because I have to sit here and say, what did I do wrong that I wasn't good enough to help you through this tough, tough period, you know?

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Well, you all heard Sindra. Don't be selfish. We want to help. There's someone that wants to help. And if you feel like you don't have the reliance and support, go to the doctor's office, advocate for yourself, get a social worker. There's also other resources out there available. You can have a caregiver that comes to your home and checks on you. Your insurance should cover that. And, you know, if you can't afford insurance, apply for the state aid. And if you can't apply for that, we'll put some resources below as well on this episode. Sindra, I know you're doing a lot of remarkable things these days. How can we follow up with you? How can we support the work that you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 34:45

No, I'm just I make myself available with the great work you're doing and bringing these things to fruition that people really have a hard time talking about. If you run across anyone in a similar situation, I'm here. I will tell my story, I will tell my path to recovery over and over a million times. If it changes one person's mindset on they can get through, they can make it.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

And to everyone listening, if you're breathing, there is still hope. Your story isn't over. Allow Sindra's story, my story, your own personal story be a testament to that. If you're still breathing, you have purpose. You're here. This is the Resilience Files Podcast Unlocked. We are so happy that you tuned in and listened to that episode today. Follow up with Sindra if you would like. Check out her work, listen to the next episode, uh, share it with a friend or someone in need that you know is going through a tough time. We're not alone. We're better together and we can get through this.