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BY JENNY HOFF PHOTOS BY ROMINA OLSON

STYLED BY PARKE BALLANTINE WITH INSPIRATION FROM ESTILO MAKEUP BY ALICIA BELLER

SHOT ON LOCATION AT DISTRIBUTION HALL

Jaime Schanbaum has the kind of charming wit that can disarm even the most solemn conversationalist. She’s a person who notices all the absurdities of life and can’t keep the amusement at bay; a woman, who despite having confronted some of the most serious life situations just doesn’t take herself too seriously.

If attitude is everything, then Schanbaum—despite the loss of her legs and fingers—lacks absolutely nothing.

“I never felt like giving up those months that I was in the hospital,” says Schanbaum as she relaxes on her couch in her South Austin home, flanked by her cute and curious Great Pyrenees mix dog, Billie Jean (they both have birthdays this month), and her husband, Chris. “I was just looking ahead.”

Looking ahead was all Schanbaum could do after her whole world changed one innocuous Wednesday night in November 2008. A healthy and active 20-year-old college student at the University of Texas, studying for a career in pharmaceutical sales, Schanbaum was at a friend’s apartment doing laundry when she suddenly felt very fatigued. So fatigued she had to lay down on her friend’s couch to take a nap.

Schanbaum hadn’t really ever heard of meningitis or its heightened risk for college kids due to their close proximity to each other and lifestyles of high stress, questionable nutrition and lack of sleep. She didn’t know about a vaccine for it or the fact that bills had been introduced and killed in the Texas Legislature that would mandate it for incoming college students. Schanbaum just felt exhausted and thought she was coming down with the flu. But within 24 hours, her fatigue turned into vomiting and muscle weakness. She didn’t have a rash or stiff neck, some of the telltale signs of meningitis, but she did feel extreme sensitivity in her feet and hands.

“I couldn’t even walk; it was extremely painful and heavy,” recalls Schanbaum. “I stopped going to the kitchen fridge for water because the sink was closer. I was counting down the steps.”

Those were some of the last steps she would ever take on the legs she was born with.

Schanbaum’s story of resilience doesn’t start with that fateful day in 2008, when she arrived at the hospital with her sister, unable to walk, freezing cold and begging for injections of hot water in her veins just so she could warm up. It didn’t begin the day she was transferred to Houston for two months of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, where she sat in a tube of pure oxygen for one hour every day, trying to save what she could of her limbs. It didn’t even begin the day her dead body parts were finally removed and she would begin a new life on prosthetic legs.

Schanbaum’s story of resilience begins when she was 3 months old, the youngest of four children, freshly entering the world at the same moment her father was leaving it.

“It kind of makes sense the way my siblings and I came out the way we did,” says Schanbaum. “My starting point was a rough one, I guess. As many Disney movies as I could watch, I knew that’s not how life really was.”

Schanbaum grew up watching her mom, Patsy Schanbaum, raise her and her siblings alone, after Jamie’s father passed away from cancer just months after her birth. Left with four children under the age of 6, Patsy had to make the decision to either throw in the towel and bemoan her fate or pick up and move on, raising her kids with as much humor and fortitude as possible. She chose the latter—and unknowingly instilled in her young daughter a kind of strength and life philosophy she would one day desperately need in order to survive.

“It’s the journey that you’re on,” says Patsy. “If you fight it, then it can be heavy on your heart, spirit and soul. You have to accept that this is the life that you’ve been given.”

Schanbaum has more than accepted the life she has been given; she’s bulldozing her way forward, accomplishing every dream she has—some with modifications, others more ambitious than she may have ever considered before she got sick. “You always hear people say, ‘Make something out of your life, make a change,’” she says. “I’m like, ‘I feel good. I already did that.’ My goal is to make sure the whole country is protected against meningitis.”

Not long after Schanbaum left the hospital, she and her mom got to work convincing state legislators to pass legislation mandating the meningitis vaccine for college students in Texas. In the summer of 2009, Senate Bill 819, known as the Jamie Schanbaum Act, passed the Texas Legislature and was signed into law by Governor Rick Perry. Schanbaum became a spokesperson for GSK, a research and development company that produces vaccines, and she has given speeches around the country educating the public on the dangers of meningitis. Her family created a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the J.A.M.I.E. Group, which stands for Joint Advocacy of Meningococcal Information & Education. Their goal is to prevent meningitis from stealing any more lives—or limbs.

“I quickly went from ‘Why did this happen to me?’ to ‘Why does this keep happening to others?’” explains Schanbaum. “There is a way to prevent this from happening. My friend didn’t get sick, even though I was barfing all over her house. That’s because she was vaccinated.”

Schanbaum is now out to educate the whole country on not just the original meningitis vaccine, which protects against strains A, C, W and Y, but also the newest vaccine that was created in 2014, which protects against the B strain. The campaign Ask2BSure encourages parents and adolescents to ask their doctors about getting both vaccines so they are protected against all five strains of meningitis.

After two days in the hospital, Schanbaum was finally diagnosed with Meningococcal septicemia, the C strain, a rare and more deadly form of meningitis that infects the blood, rather than the brain and spinal cord. She was put into a medically induced coma as doctors tried to get her heart rate down. At one point, she was given only a 20% chance of survival. Three weeks later, when she was brought out of the coma, Schanbaum witnessed her legs and fingers turn from red to purple to black as her body struggled to protect her organs by sacrificing her extremities.

Three months after she first fell ill, Schanbaum decided to stop trying to save her limbs and go ahead with the needed amputations—both to avoid sepsis, another poisoning of the blood, and to move on with her life. She was ready to go back to college and begin again. Schanbaum considers that day in February her second birth.

“Watching my body decay before my eyes, I was just like, ‘Whatever, you guys, I’m thinking about exams,’” Schanbaum says with a wry smile. “It didn’t really set in until I left the hospital. I was a social stigma. I was in a wheelchair. I wasn’t thrilled with people staring at me all the time.”

Her mom recounts a time when a little boy asked Schanbaum what had happened to her. Schanbaum responded, with a deadpan face, “When they tell you don’t feed the bears, don’t feed the bears.” Patsy laughs at the memory, explaining that the child was a relative who enjoyed the tall tale. “Another time, a man at the airport asked us what war she had fought in,” she recounts. “I told him she was never in the military, but she did fight a war.”

While Schanbaum likes to lighten the mood when talking about her story, she’ll be the first to admit it was a long road to get where she is today. Her older brother, Nicholas, a lawyer based in Dallas who dropped everything 13 years ago when his sister got sick and stayed by her side in the hospital, says he and his family used a lot of tough love to keep her going through some of the more painful periods.

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“It’s one thing to overcome adversity, and it’s another thing to relearn to walk and constantly get skin grafts; it’s exhausting,” says Nicholas. “It’s not like running a marathon. In a marathon, you can take breaks. All of it can be draining. We would remind her, ‘You’re doing great, you’re going to keep doing great. So suck it up.’”

It took one year from when Schanbaum entered the hospital to when she could finally, with the help of her new legs, take a few steps on her own. Deciding to go ahead with the amputations and start her new life was one thing; learning to function with her new body was another. She credits her occupational therapist, Bob Whitford, with helping her believe she could accomplish the seemingly impossible.

“It took some convincing,” she laughs, recalling when Whitford first mentioned she should try bicycling again, an activity she had enjoyed before her sickness. “The first time he said it, I was 80 pounds, a fresh amputee and had barely any hair on my head. I was like, ‘Can this guy get out of my room?’”

But Whitford happens to be especially qualified as both an occupational therapist and a promoter of beating the odds. He was 4 ½ years old when he lost his right arm in a hayride accident while living in Springfield, Missouri. Today, he rides a motorcycle to and from work. He played tennis throughout high school. He ranked fifth in cycling in the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic games and won the bronze medal in Sydney in 2000. He considers his profession much more than a job, but a calling. His clients aren’t just patients, but family. They’re starting a new life, and they need a different kind of support system, someone who can help show them the way.

“I frequently say to my patients, ‘There is a time when you can, and there is a time when you cannot,’” says Whitford. “If you appreciate the times when you can, then you won’t have regrets in the time that you cannot.”

The first time he mentioned getting on a bike to Schanbaum he knew she wasn’t ready. But he was planting a seed. Painting a different picture for her future. Months into her therapy, he brought her an adapted tricycle and sat her on it, letting her experience the sensation of riding again. He calls that moment the germination of the seed, a chance to show her what could blossom. After several more months of hard work, exercise and practicing on a stationary bike, she was ready to bloom.

“We went out to the Veloway, and she was a natural,” recalls Whitford. “She loved riding a bicycle before her injury, so that was her liberation.”

Three years after entering the hospital and one year after getting on a bike again, Schanbaum was trying out for the USA Paralympics cycling team, winning a gold medal in her division in the road nationals in Augusta, Georgia, and competing in the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.

“You can choose your path,” says Whitford. “You can choose to take it on as a challenge or curl up and resign. She chose to take on the challenge of life.”

He’s proud of helping her get back on the road. But, he says, Schanbaum impacted his life as much as he has hers. He just sent his two daughters to the University of Texas. They first met Schanbaum 13 years ago, when they were little girls and their father was helping her regain her mobility.

“I said to them recently, ‘You know the reason you have to get a vaccine for meningitis before going to college is because of Schanbaum.’ Life comes full circle, doesn’t it?”

Schanbaum’s accomplishments would be impressive for someone with no adversity or disability, let alone for someone who nearly lost her life and did lose her legs and fingers at just 20 years old. Schanbaum is proud of her cycling achievements, her work with grassroots organizations and celebrities to spread awareness and get legislation passed, her ability to complete her education and now work a full-time job. But what she considers her greatest victory is a milestone that even with her optimistic spirit and cando attitude she sometimes doubted would ever happen.

“My biggest champion moment is getting married,” she says, smiling at her husband sitting next to her. “That could have all been taken away for sure. Thinking about being disabled and meeting people—I didn’t know what it would be like.”

Schanbaum’s love story is simple, yet shimmers with serendipity. After her illness she went on a few dates but never felt any spark. Online dating hadn’t really caught on yet, though she says posting pictures of herself with her disability “would have filtered out the losers really quickly.” While she enjoys traveling and speaking about meningitis publicly, in personal conversations she prefers to hear other people’s life stories rather than always rehashing her own.

It turned out the spark she finally felt was with someone she didn’t have to explain her life to, because he had already been in it for many years.

“Our best friends were siblings, and anytime I would go to my friend’s house he was there,” explains Schanbaum. “We knew each other in high school but didn’t really talk. One day, ten years ago, I went to meet up with my friend in Wimberly, and he was there. We were all hanging out and [Chris and I] started to look at each other differently than before.”

In 2017, after spending three years in a long-distance relationship when he was stationed with the Army in Hawaii, and dating for six years altogether, she and Chris got married in Wimberly where their love story began. They plan to start trying for children sometime in the near future.

“We’re almost in the exact place where we want to be to start having kids,” Schanbaum wrote in an e-mail correspondence. “The earliest we think we’ll start trying is by summer time next year. Eek! Ahh! Maybe another year after that.”

Schanbaum’s life nowadays is a blissfully ordinary one—a husband, a dog, a job in sales. Having had enough pharmaceuticals to last a lifetime, Schanbaum switched her major and received a degree in human development and family sciences instead. She’s passionate about connecting with people, educating them and being a part of their lives—perhaps even saving some of them the heartache that her own family members and families of those who didn’t survive meningitis have gone through. Of course, she faces everyday obstacles that most people never even consider: opening doors, putting on her legs every morning, asking her husband to put on her earrings. But she’s not complaining. Her life is full, her life has meaning and she doesn’t take a day of it for granted.

“If smiling eyes was a person, it would be Jamie,” Nicholas says, gushing about his little sister. “She’s a very bold and confident woman. Confident despite having every reason to tuck tail and run. That’s powerful.”

An estimated 1 in 10 people have the bacteria for meningitis in their throat and nose. A sudden illness can permit the bacteria to enter the bloodstream.

Data shows 800 to 1200 people in the U.S. contract meningitis each year.

Meningitis is most prevalent in infants and young adults.

For those who contract meningitis, an estimated 1 in 10 will die and 1 in 5 will live with disabilities, including loss of limbs, nerve damage and hearing loss.

For more information on the vaccines available, including the newer “Men B” vaccine, visit ask2bsure.com.

In graduate school, Allison Orr watched a man clean some windows. The BY CY WHITE former social worker was studying choreography at the time and had spent the whole day in the studio. The campus foreman, Manuel Godinez, faced her from outside and swept his tools across the window with ease and forethought. It was 1998, so there were no “satisfying” viral videos of perfect Let’s take a trip back to October 2020. The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsberg has window cleanings yet. There were no TikTok dance challenges to just passed, and there’s a loud uproar over the Senate’s push to fill her seat before interpret real life into something consumable in seconds. But pattern it’s even had a chance to cool. Women’s March branches all over the country recognition is universal. rally behind their shero, protesting the Supreme Court’s disregard for tradition, “I watched him and thought, ‘Well, that’s the most interesting precedent and Bader Ginsberg’s own wishes to wait to fill her seat until after the choreography I’ve seen in a long time,’” Orr recalls. “There’s a very presidential election. specific pattern to his window washing. It was very clear and precise. It Mady Morneault, Lauryn Ott and Anna Sweeney weren’t new to activism. was absolutely rehearsed. And it was very determined in terms of timing. But co-hosting the local Women’s March was their first and biggest endeavor by It was all that you want a dance to be.” far. The rally and the women organizing it gained valuable guidance from the She approached Godinez to introduce herself and explain a national chapter of Women’s March, but they mostly undertook the planning performance series she’d been working on. Collaborating with campus and execution of the event with little help from other local organizations. When employees, she choreographed routines to mimic their everyday the rally first got underway, everything went smoothly. Sun shining, Taylor activities. The foreman agreed to perform his solo. To this day, Orr Swift playing in the background. Attendees having fun. They were warned about remembers his dance and “generosity” as emblematic of her goals as a possible pushback from certain groups and trained on how to deescalate volatile choreographer. situations, but for all intents and purposes there was no cause for serious alarm.

“The gorgeousness of the movement, the perfection of that dance....It’s Then the Proud Boys showed up. For the uninitiated, the Proud Boys are a still what I’m doing,” says Orr. right-wing white supremicist group of men who galavant about town in full tactical gear with loaded weapons to intimidate and threaten those who stand against their archaic and, quite frankly, deplorable ideologies about who does and doesn’t deserve to be treated like a human being. Cresting over a hill leading down toward the Wooldridge Square Park pavilion, they strode in. Shouting derogatory slurs toward the women. Mocking their efforts. At several points physically and verbally assaulting those in attendance.

The astonishing part of the whole situation, however, wasn’t even what happened that day. Disgusting? Yes. Traumatizing? Most certainly. But perhaps most harrowing was the fact that not a single person from the media even approached the young women about what they’d experienced. (If a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s around to hear it…)

One year on, each woman has taken a divergent path to move past the events of last year. Ott is still apprehensive about being as proactive as she was. “I’m not running back to go marching again,” Ott reveals, a somewhat somber grin tugging at her lips. “I feel like we’ve been running a marathon in this pandemic. I’m exhausted.” Even in her understandable exhaustion, she’s found the ability to stay active.

“Work has picked up,” Ott says. “I’m leading a number of different initiatives at work for women-owned businesses. So that’s really exciting. I got to travel a little bit safely, which was really nice. Funny enough,” she says with a smile, “I went to Florida, which is the worst place for COVID. We had planned it after vaccinations; there wasn’t a Delta variant. I was telling people, ‘I went to the worst state for COVID, and then I returned [to] the worst state for women.’ So now [I’m] trying to wrap up the year and excited to get some rest.”

Sweeney has experienced a number of transitions since last October, including graduating from Texas State in December with her bachelor’s. “I have been working in vet med actually,” she says. There’s a note of surprise in her own voice, considering she’d started working in the social work field after she graduated. “I eventually made the decision to switch to working in vet med. I’ve also been volunteering with Pug Rescue of Austin, fostering pugs.” The point is punctuated with the delighted yips of two pugs she’s fostering at the moment. She’s even started a new job at a new animal hospital in Austin. In the midst of all of that, Sweeney still managed to participate in the Don’t Mess with Texas’ Abortions rally. She as well as dozens of other women donned the signature red cloaks from the somewhat prophetic television series The Handmaid’s Tale.

Morneault has also stayed incredibly active. She returned to part-time work and continued volunteering with Planned Parenthood. She, too, participated in the Don’t Mess with Texas’ Abortions rally. “Just trying to keep myself busy with my writing and my advocacy,” she says. “I’ve been spending a lot of my time doing photoshoots and writing for my Instagram, @madymorneault. I also recently redesigned and revamped my website for all of my projects that I’ve done this year as a way of raising awareness for endometriosis, with Modibody and health.com. It’s called missmisdiagnosis.com, and it’s been really fun to see that take off.”

After suffering for most of her adult life from endometriosis, Morneault had what she hopes to be her final surgery to remove the rest of the scarring. “I made the decision to travel to the Center for Endometriosis Care in Atlanta, Georgia, for the surgery,” she says brightly. “Recovering from that was a huge part of my life that I’ve been waiting on for a long time. It was extremely successful, and they gave me a rate of only 5% possible rate of recurrence, which is the best-case scenario you can get. It’s a huge blessing for sure.”

Ott recently celebrated her own astounding wellness feat: “I celebrated five years of being cancerfree in July.” The announcement is subdued, but her smile is genuine. “I got my official five-year stamp. So I’ve been downgraded to a low risk of occurrence.” Ott wears her emotions openly on her face. Just saying the words “five years cancer-free” has a profound effect on her each time they leave her mouth.

These women know firsthand what it means to live with trauma. The whole world is suffering from it collectively. There’s a pervasive feeling of unease that the next major catastrophe will be the one to ultimately bring humankind to its knees. But let’s bring things back down to earth. In September, the state of Texas passed 666 bills including Senate Bill 8, one of the most aggressive and direct challenges to Roe v. Wade in history. Gov. Abbott and his cabinet have sent a very clear message to the rest of the country, reinforcing a centuries-old practice of policing women’s bodies. “I’m sure we all read what he said about victims of rape,” Sweeney says, then pauses. Her face is a mask of barely concealed rage. “Disgusting,” she spits out. In an age where the entire country is actively—most times painfully— attempting to grapple with the more deplorable aspects of its history, the 666 bills passed in September was the proverbial middle finger to progress, accountability, equity and equality. (If you’re wary of the figure, according to the Texas Legislature Report on the State Capitol official website, yes, that is the actual number.)

It’s no wonder, then, that Ott has opted to temporarily step away from more hands-on activism. The fact that what they went through still affects them one year later speaks so viscerally to the seeming never-ending onslaught of tragedies plaguing the world. How does one stay sane?

“Therapy,” Ott says with a rueful chuckle. Her next words are more serious, “Limiting your news is helpful. You can scroll through Instagram and still see what’s happening. So I’m like, ‘Well, if I’m going to see it on my socials, I’m not going to go out of my way to watch CNN 24/7.’ It can take over and suffocate you. I’ve been reading a lot too,” she continues. “That helps me escape into a different world than this one. It’s been really helpful for me to give my brain and heart a break.”

“Therapy has been a huge part of my healing journey,” Morneault says. “Especially last year with the Women’s March and all the trauma that kind of ensued, I know I wouldn’t have been able to bring myself back into that advocacy space if I didn’t take care of myself first.”

She also believes in limiting her dependence on the news cycle. “During the pandemic when I was detached from everybody else, I used to have the news on constantly,” she recalls. “So for every time I check the news I try to have a moment of silence with myself. I love being out in nature, listening to the sounds of nature and just existing and plugging into that as opposed to what’s online and what’s in the news. I’m gonna feel the wind on my face, or the heat because it’s Texas, and reset.”

“I have been getting angry with what I’ve been seeing,” Sweeney admits. “With what’s been going on in Texas, I’m furious. And I think that’s okay. I think I have the right to be furious. Rights are literally being taken away, so I think everyone has the right to be furious. I was so disappointed with the response from the Supreme Court. I’m not surprised,” she says, “but I was hoping more preventative measures would’ve been taken before it got this far.”

The pause here is simmering with the sort of searing energy it takes to relieve feelings of blind rage. “At the same time, it kind of also drives me. I’m so ready for Nov. 8, 2022,” Sweeney says with conviction. “I’m going to go hard. I’m going to register everyone I know.”

Ott reflects on the grief each one of them felt last year. “This is why we were freaking out when [Bader Ginsberg] passed away,” she says emphatically. “We didn’t trust our system to protect us, and it didn’t. So there’s a lot of anger. When this passed we all texted each other and were like…” She lets Brigette Oakes out a heavy sigh, illustrating their collective grief. “I do feel that urge to do

something. Marches are so great because it’s such a source of community. Sometimes it’s just good to be angry around people who are angry about the same thing.”

“My personal favorite thing about protesting is that it turns anger into power,” Morneault says. “That thing of being angry around people who are angry about the same thing you are, when you have that collective force, that anger turns into power. It turns into a voice, and it turns into a message.”

Grief. Fury. Rage. These emotions are valid and at times are useful to help motivate action. “Now it’s about what can I do?” Sweeny says. “I can’t go bribe a state legislator. I can’t control Allison Orr what’s being done in law. But I can at least try to get [people] to bring more awareness to the situation.”

Whether marching or speaking their truths, they have never lost the spirit and brass ovaries to speak up and speak loud about what needs to be fixed. This includes turning a much-needed critical eye toward the organization that started them on this journey: Women’s March. Many have noted the oftentimes contrarian behaviors of the organization. The outrage over SB 8 is valid, but a large contingency can’t help but wonder where all this anger was when Black lives were being sacrificed to the gods of law enforcement. When the Black Lives Matter organization was in desperate need of support from like-minded organizations, where were they? When Women’s March held rallies for voting rights, the BLM presence was mysteriously absent. (Perhaps the invite got lost in the mail.) Similarly, where was this female fury after years of trans women being murdered?

“I can’t tell you what my relationship is with the Women’s March,” Ott says openly. “I know that’s not a happy answer. But I think it’s important that we hold people accountable. If you’re gonna claim that you are rallying around intersectional feminism, that means you help everyone. I struggle with that as far as my future participation.

“I am not interested in talking shit about anyone,” she continues. “At the same time I think it’s important to realize we sometimes don’t even have each other’s backs, and that’s something we really need to focus on. Especially white

women. This is a problem we have in the feminist community,” she says with a small chuckle of frustration. “We wanna support the shiny, popular things and not have those conversations with women of color and see what we can actually do, or step aside and create that platform for women of color. I think that’s what I’ve been struggling with. I did a march, and I’m proud of myself and I’m proud of us. We really pulled something together quickly and it was beautiful. But now it’s my turn to step aside and let someone else go. Whether that’s the next generation, whether that’s women of color, I’m happy to step aside and support.”

Morneault offers another perspective. “I think it’s really important to recognize there are so many things that you can do other than marching,” she says. “I know there were times in my life where I wasn’t physically able to march or go to a rally or to just show up in person somewhere. One of the silver lining of the pandemic is that it’s proven how much we can do virtually, and I think that’s something we shouldn’t take for granted moving forward. You can volunteer at a text bank, you can call and write your Senators. I make a huge effort to make sure that the activism of whatever I’m involved in is not performative.”

Sweeney sees a need to focus attention on more than just the visible “women” aspect of Women’s March. “It’s important to remember that not everyone identifies as a woman,” she insists. “People can still get pregnant who are not women. There’s nonbinary people, there’s transgender people, and it’s affecting all of these people as well. I think it’s important to emphasize the equality part and less the gender identities.“

She makes the point clear: “It’s not feminism if it’s not intersectional,” she says. “I think a lot of people forget that.” As this active face of feminism, Women’s March can’t be one-sided.

Through all of this, there’s one constant that’s held these women together: their friendship.

“I know that our little text group that we have, we haven’t stopped since before the march,” Morneault says. “I tell people, ‘You don’t get how much I love these women.’ I have not gone a single day without talking with them. Not a single day was missed.” The Zoom erupts with the kind of laughter heavy-laden with mutual adoration.

“We have multiple chat groups,” Ott says with enthusiasm. “We’re all on TikTok, so we’re always sending each other things. It’s family.” The self-proclaimed mom of the group radiates so much love when speaking about her sisters in spirit.

“Honestly, they’re my two closest friends,” Sweeney says. “I talk to them more than I talk to my roommate. They’re included in every big thing in my life. Any important decision I’m always like, ‘Guys, please help.’” More laughter. The mirth of true sisterhood.

Even through what seems like a never-ending cycle of catastrophes, we must remember we are never alone. There’s always someone in your corner who wants you to succeed. Mady Morneault, Lauryn Ott and Anna Sweeney have found sisters for life in one another, sharing a bond kept strong through a year of trials, triumphs, extreme pain and unimaginable joy. They were indeed “baptized by fire.” Like the most powerful sword, their experiences in the last year have forged a lifelong friendship that cannot be chipped or fractured. Despite the sound and the fury, they have each other.

Lauryn Ott

Mady Morneault

“These two have been dealt some of the shittiest hands I’ve seen, and they still wake up everyday and keep going. They’re just always ready to advocate for whoever’s being affected. It amazes me that they still march, that they send me pictures of them in Handmaids costumes. Or like Mady screaming into her megaphone at some small white man. I feel like my ovaries radiate power when I see pictures from them. It’s so empowering. These women are multiple years younger than me, and they’ll still kick my ass out of bed and wake me up if I don’t see things. You two are amazing women, and I hope you know that. I’m just proud of y’all.”

“I don’t think Lauryn gives herself enough credit for everything she does and how supportive she is of Anna and I. I think Lauryn and Anna are both the absolute epitome of survivors. We all are. If you’re a woman in Texas, you’re a survivor right now. I couldn’t think of two better examples of love and perseverance. Lauryn is always kicking ass in her career and alway has a new project. Not only that, she’s now five years cancer-free. I definitely cried when she sent me that text message. Same with Anna. She wakes up everyday and works her ass off just to make ends meet and just be a young person in this economy, post-grad in the pandemic. It’s hard, but everyday she does it regardless. I’m so proud of both of them.”

“Lauryn is more than like a mom. She’s such a kind friend. She’s one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. She’s helped me navigate being an adult. I really appreciate that she’ll give her knowledge because so many people will say, ‘I had to go through this on my own, so figure it out.’ But she always says, ‘This happened to me, and I don’t want you to make the same mistake.’ And surviving cancer at such a young age! Amazing. I’ve seen both of these women survive so much brutality and have had horrible things said to them. I’ve seen Mady give her middle finger to the people who were calling her names. Another thing about Mady that I admire is that she’s such a good advocate. If she thinks anyone is being wronged, she will go bananas. Especially after going through endometriosis and going through the health care system. It’s very inspirational for her to be that advocate for her friends and other people. I just think they’re both such amazing women.”

“Something that makes me feel powerful that I’ve seen through my life through all kinds of struggles is resilience. I do feel like I was born with a lot of resilience. I may have to temporarily pause, process and reset. But I always come out stronger no matter what it is. I feel like there’s nothing that’s ever fully gonna stop my drive or stop my soul from singing and screaming. I don’t know if it’s from being sick as a kid to being sick in my 20s to going through all kinds of struggles, I just have always been resilient. I’m grateful for that. Just women supporting me makes me feel really powerful. That is feminism, isn’t it? It’s not just about marches and protesting. It’s about paying attention to the women in your life and seeing their struggle and seeing when they need uplifting. Making sure they know that they’re powerful too.”

“The first thing I thought of also was the word ‘resilient.’ I’m 22. Growing up I never thought I’d make it this far. I was always a very depressed and anxious kid, and I could never picture myself as an adult and having a normal life. But, like, I’m living in Austin with a roommate, I have a job, I help raise pugs. I never thought I would be healthy enough or stable enough or a good enough person to make it this far to have friends as great as these two. I guess I’m proud of myself making it this far and surviving.”

“I find most of my power in my voice, whether that’s actively speaking or writing on my Instagram or my blog. I found that when my body is completely down for the count and I can’t do anything and I feel stuck and I feel trapped, like I can’t go anywhere or do anything I still have my voice, I still have my words. I still have my story. You can be the most confident person in the entire world. You can put on a front, be loud and proud. But at the end of the day, you still have those low moments, you still have those low selfesteem days or low body-image days. Feeling like [I’m] not doing enough a lot of the time is what I feel. But I found that the power that I have over my own story and my own voice is really what drives me to keep going more than anything else.”