By Rick Bontkowski
One of the greatest gifts the amputee community has given me over the past several years has been perspective. Hosting the AMP’D UP211 Podcast has allowed me to meet hundreds of extraordinary people, each carrying a story that is uniquely their own. Most of those conversations happen in a familiar setting. A camera sits a few feet away. The microphones are clipped into place. Lights warm the room. I take a breath, smile across the table, and count everyone in.
“Three… two… one…”
Action.
The interviews are genuine, and I cherish every one of them, but there is an invisible weight that accompanies every conversation once the cameras begin recording. Guests naturally become more aware of themselves. They pause a little longer before answering. They search for the perfect words. They become careful. Even the funniest people become just a little more measured when they know every sentence will live forever on video.
I’ve often wondered who these people become once the microphones disappear. Who are they when nobody is asking questions? Who are they when they’re simply living their lives?
Those moments are much harder to find.
Two years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Katie Eddington and her mother, Samantha. Katie lost her leg in a lawn mower accident as a young child. What could have become the defining tragedy of her life instead became the beginning of an extraordinary journey. She has grown into one of the country’s brightest young para-athletes, chasing a dream of one day representing the United States on the Paralympic stage.
Samantha’s story evolved right alongside hers.
While Katie was learning to walk, run, compete, and dream again, Samantha was quietly discovering her own purpose. She became deeply involved with 50 Legs, the nonprofit founded by Steve Chamberland that has changed thousands of amputees’ lives by providing prosthetic care and support to people who otherwise would never receive it.
Even during our interview two years ago, something kept tugging at my attention. The story never felt like Katie’s story alone. It felt like a mother and daughter sharing the same journey from opposite sides of the road. That thought stayed with me long after we wrapped the interview. Then, earlier this summer, life gave me the opportunity to see them again.
Sarah and I had been planning a production trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Katie would be competing at the Hartford Nationals. Our documentary, I AM AMPUTEE, is beginning to take shape, and capturing Katie in her natural environment had become an important part of our proof-of-concept film. Our Co-producer, Brian, had driven up ahead of us to begin setting cameras and preparing for a very early morning.
By the time Sarah and I finished work on Friday, the sun was already beginning its slow descent behind Indianapolis. We loaded our bags, and enough road-trip snacks before pointing ourselves north. There is something strangely therapeutic about leaving town after a long work week.
Every mile seemed to strip away another layer of meetings, deadlines, emails, and responsibilities. The farther we drove, the lighter everything seemed to become. Somewhere north of Indianapolis, work slowly gave way to adventure. It stopped feeling like a production schedule. It started feeling like a summer getaway.
By the time we reached Grand Rapids, the city was asleep. We checked into the hotel, grateful for a few precious hours of rest before our alarms reminded us why we’d come. Morning arrived exactly the way you hope a Michigan summer morning will. Warm sunshine spilled across the parking lot. The air felt fresh, carrying just enough breeze to remind you that Lake Michigan wasn’t terribly far away. Sarah and I wandered downstairs in search of some form of hotel breakfast, still rubbing the sleep from our eyes as we waited for everyone else to arrive.
Then the elevator doors opened.
Katie and Samantha hadn’t changed nearly as much as I expected. Actually, that isn’t true. Katie had changed in all the right ways.
The shy young woman I had interviewed over a computer screen two years earlier had grown into herself. She carried a quiet confidence that doesn’t demand attention but somehow earns it anyway. Samantha remained exactly as I remembered her, warm, funny, quick with a joke, and completely incapable of allowing silence to last very long. Within moments everyone was laughing.
Apparently, Katie had ordered herself dinner online the night before, only to discover she had accidentally sent her sandwich to an address in another state. Samantha seized the opportunity with Olympic-level precision, turning one misplaced sandwich into breakfast entertainment while Katie defended herself with the exaggerated eyeroll that daughters have undoubtedly been perfecting for centuries.
Sarah and I laughed until our breakfast nearly went cold. There wasn’t a camera rolling. There wasn’t a microphone in sight. There wasn’t an interview taking place. It was simply a mother and daughter being themselves.
As we made our way to the track, I realized something. This was the first time I wasn’t meeting “Podcast Guest Katie.” I was meeting Katie.
The athletic complex buzzed with the sounds of summer. Starting blocks clicked against the track. Officials called athletes to their events. Families unfolded lawn chairs beneath pop-up tents while coaches paced with clipboards tucked beneath their arms. Everywhere you looked there was movement, anticipation, and hope.
Brian quietly worked through camera angles while Sarah and I drifted between conversations, capturing moments as they naturally unfolded. Nobody was performing. Nobody was trying to tell the perfect story.
Life was simply happening.
Throughout the day I found myself constantly shifting between two perspectives. Sometimes my attention settled on Katie.
What does life look like through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old balancing the ordinary insecurities of adolescence with the extraordinary pursuit of becoming a Paralympian? Does she still notice the occasional stare? Does she still question herself before stepping onto the starting line? Or has competition become the place where she feels most like herself?
Then, almost without realizing it, my thoughts would drift toward Samantha.
How do you parent a child whose dreams require such resilience? How do you encourage without pushing too hard? How do you protect without becoming overprotective? How do you dream as boldly as your child while still allowing them the freedom to discover who they’re becoming?
Standing there beneath a cloudless Michigan sky, I realized I had spent years thinking about amputee stories from only one point of view… Katie’s.
But every few minutes my eyes returned to Samantha. I watched her celebrate the victories. I watched her quietly absorb the disappointments. I watched her do what parents have done since the beginning of time, stand just close enough to catch their children if they fall, while standing just far enough away to let them fly.
In that moment, I realized something I had somehow overlooked despite living my own journey for nearly a decade.
Limb loss is never experienced by one person.
The prosthesis belongs to one person. The journey belongs to everyone. Parents lose certainty, spouses lose the future they once imagined, children grow up differently, friends learn new ways to love. Families reorganize themselves around a reality they never expected, and over time those shared experiences quietly weave themselves into something stronger than they ever anticipated.
I came to Grand Rapids believing I was filming a young amputee athlete chasing an extraordinary dream. I drove home realizing I had been watching a family. Not a family defined by tragedy. Not a family defined by prosthetics.
A family defined by love.
The events eventually ended. The cameras were packed away. Brian loaded the last of the equipment while Sarah and I prepared for the drive back to Indianapolis. As the miles disappeared beneath our tires once again, I found myself thinking less about podiums and personal bests than I was about breakfast conversations, laughter in hotel lobbies, and a misplaced sub sandwich that somehow became one of my favorite memories of the weekend.
Sometimes the most meaningful stories never happen in front of the camera. Sometimes they happen in the quiet spaces between them.
Perhaps that’s the greatest lesson Katie and Samantha unknowingly reminded me of that weekend. We often describe limb loss as an individual’s journey because only one person wears the prosthesis. But the truth is far more beautiful than that.
The amputee experience has always been a shared experience. It belongs to every parent who sat beside a hospital bed.
Every spouse who learned a new normal.
Every child who watched a parent recover.
Every friend who simply refused to leave.
The limb may be lost by one person. But hope, resilience, courage, and healing have always belonged to the family. And maybe that’s what makes this community so extraordinary.
We never walk alone.
