| 6-min read |
WHAT'S YOUR STORY?
WHAT MAKES MY STORY UNIQUE IS NOT HOW I FOUND CHIROPRACTIC, BUT HOW I FOUND MYSELF THROUGH MY PURSUIT OF CHIROPRACTIC. - By Alexis Griffith -
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hile everyone’s chiropractic story is unique, I’ve always considered mine to be unusual and inspiring. I didn’t grow up influenced by the pursuit of higher education. It just wasn't a focus in my household. Quite honestly, art class was possibly the only thing keeping me in school. I didn’t take the SATs and never planned on going to college, against the persistent wishes of my high school advisors. I never envisioned myself achieving anything great in my life, partly from not believing I was capable and partly from not being passionate enough about anything. I was already working full time during high school and moved out as soon as I turned 18 into a dingy little apartment. After a summer of struggling to make ends meet, even while working 50+ hours a week, I decided I’d better at least consider community college. I signed up for the first program I saw, which was an associate’s degree in kinesiology. While still working full-time, I also attended classes that fall, but it was to no avail as I ended up failing all 12 | LIFEWEST.EDU/LIFELINES-MAGAZINE/
my classes and dropping out. That was the ultimate deciding factor that college just wasn’t for me, and I turned my efforts to becoming a tattoo artist, having most of the tattoos you see on me today done before the age of 19. Despite feeling content outwardly about my life decisions, there was still an underlying desire to do something more with my life. Luckily at the time I was working for StarbucksTM and found out that they pay for their employees’ college tuition, and that I could major in art. I attribute my going back to college, and thus also going to chiropractic college, solely to StarbucksTM (shoutout StarbucksTM!).
"I’ve learned that where there is passion, there is a way" I had worked my way through two years of art school when I had another epiphany. Here comes my long-awaited magical chiropractic story. I sustained a rotator cuff injury and ended up going to a chiropractor who was able to help get me completely out of pain in only a few visits. Up until that point, I’d always regarded chiropractic as pseudoscience and never gave it the time of day, but at that point I realized, “hey, there’s actually something to this!”
