It didn’t take long for Travis Sanders to get sick of sitting on the couch after his amputation.
“I was home about a week and a half, and then I thought: You know what, I’m going back to work,” he laughs. A hairstylist based in suburban Atlanta, Sanders returned to his shop on crutches, propped himself up on a stool, and went back to cutting hair three days a week. “I was still in a lot of pain,” he says. “But I knew the engagement with my community and my clients would be therapeutic for me.”
Sanders was hungry for normalcy after the unexpected loss of his left leg in June 2023. In a matter of days, he went from having numbness in his toes to pain in his calf to emergency surgery for removal of blood clots. When infection set in, above-the-knee amputation was the only option left. By the time he returned home, Sanders had spent nearly six weeks in the hospital.
“I was so tired of being cooped up,” he says. “I didn’t have a prosthetic yet, but I wasn’t going to wait for that. Since I work for myself, nobody could tell me not to come in.”
Nearly two years later, Sanders spends much of his time mentoring new amputees at Kennestone Hospital. He shares philosophical insights and fitness tips on his YouTube channel, Motivational Wisdom (@TravisMotivationalWisdom4u), and in his memoir, Life Lessons I Learned From Barbering. Sanders’s hairstyling business is as strong as ever; the couch and hospital bed are distant memories.
Here, in his own words, is how he got there.
FIRST STEPS
While I was in the hospital, I watched tons of YouTube videos of amputees doing things I wanted to do: playing golf, lifting weights, working out, living life. I was programming my mind to know that this wasn’t the end. By the time I got my prosthesis and started physical therapy, I was already in the mindset to get it done.
WHAT I DID RIGHT
My prosthetist asked if I’d be interested in working as a peer advocate, and it has been absolutely amazing. I didn’t get to talk to a peer advocate, so I’m grateful for the chance to help people see that they’ve got a lot of life left. It’s therapeutic for me as well as for the people I see.
A BUMP IN THE ROAD
It’s easy to get stuck in victim mode or focus on things you can’t control. I don’t know why I got all these blood clots. The doctors don’t know. But I can’t focus on that, because that’s gonna get me stuck in a dark place. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had moments of being in dark places. But I’ve come back to being grateful that my story wasn’t as bad as it might have been.
KEYS TO SUCCESS
- It’s important to have a goal and be consistent. It doesn’t matter where you are starting from, you need to set a goal and gradually move forward, one step at a time. Small, incremental gains can be rewarding.
- Some people are strong enough to move forward, but they don’t because their mindset is not there. My prosthetist and physical therapist have worked with people who could do the work physically, but held themselves back mentally and emotionally. If you create a stronger mental state, that allows you to move forward physically.
- I had to be strong so other people could handle what happened to me. Especially my younger brother. I told him, “I will not allow this to define who I am. I will work through this.”
FINDING A NEW NORMAL
When I first came back to work, I didn’t have my prosthesis, and my clients were all very concerned about taking care of me. But after about 30 days, it was no big deal. I was cutting their hair, we were having conversations, and everything was like it was before.
THE TAKEAWAY
The mental part of this is really huge. It’s even more important than the physical part.
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