Four days after giving birth to her youngest daughter, Lori Hand Jankowski was living in the fullness of new motherhood. Surrounded by her husband, her four children, and the life they had built together.
Then, without warning, her heart tore open.
What followed was a fight for survival that few people could imagine. Multiple open-heart surgeries. Months in a medically induced coma. And the moment she woke up to learn she would never walk again.
Paralyzed from the waist down, Lori was suddenly faced with rebuilding her life... not only as a woman, but as a mother, a partner, and a person trying to make sense of everything she had lost - and everything she still had.
In this deeply honest conversation, Lori shares how she navigated motherhood from a wheelchair, the quiet grief and unexpected beauty that lived side by side in her healing, and how the trauma that nearly took her life would eventually reshape her future in ways she never saw coming.
This is a story about survival, letting go, and choosing to stay.
It's about learning that even when your heart tears open, life can still hold joy on the other side.
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