When Mallory Weggemann lost her ability to walk after a medical procedure, she was determined not to let it take her passion for swimming.
“I walked into a room and I didn’t walk out,” Weggemann — who delves into her life story in new book,Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance, out March 2 — tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “It’s one of those things wherein the moment I didn’t really know what was going on.”
Nina Robinson
Without warning, the Minnesota native, who had been a competitive swimmer since the age of 7, found herself without the use of her legs and unsure of what to do next.
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“That was part of the struggle I had,” she recalls. “It was like I couldn’t look and see people that looked like me, showing me what a path forward could look like. All I could find were medical journals, or research or things like that, but not stories of real-life people living.”
Three months after the incident, Weggemann’s sister urged her to attend a Paralympic swimming trials event at the University of Minnesota. Being near the water was rejuvenating, she says.
“We got to the pool that night, I just remember being at peace,” Weggemann explains. “There were certain things that were still the same, even if it’s something as silly as the way chlorine smells, it was something that was constant.”
Read more about Mallory Weggemann’s story in this week’s issue of PEOPLE.
Courtesy Mallory Weggemann
“I buried my head and in a lot of ways, every time I broke a record, it was my way of proving that if I can break a world record, [I] must not be that physically disabled,” she says. “Because I felt like I was fighting against the notion that people with disabilities are incapable of doing things.”
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To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, visitTeamUSA.org. Watch the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics this summer on NBC.
Johnny Dodd
source: people.com
