Ryan Rae Harbuck, WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE A CHAIR: A Memoir

[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.

[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.

[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,

[0:18]their book, their life, and more in 30 minutes or less because who has time?

[0:22]I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir,

[0:28]bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature, wherever books are sold starting July 1st, and my children's book prints is charming.

[0:36]You can learn more about me at Zivi Owens.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors and that is what we're going to do.

[0:43]Also be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the Z cast podcast network.

[0:48]You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well.

[0:58]Ryan Ray Harbuck is the author of When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Chair, a memoir.

[1:03]A paralyzing car accident in her teens left Ryan with a new life to build.

[1:07]Barely looking back, she became a swim coach and a high school teacher.

[1:11]She traveled to India for experimental stem cell treatment and fought hard to make the Paralympic swim team.

[1:16]She even became a mom.

[1:17]With so many stories to tell and lessons to learn, Ryan did the only thing she could.

[1:21]She wrote a book.

[1:22]Welcome, Ryan.

[1:23]Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss when I grow up.

[1:27]I want to be a chair, a memoir.

[1:29]Thank you so much, Zivi.

[1:30]I am actually less nervous than I thought I would be, but I'm very like giddy feeling about being here.

[1:37]Yeah, I will say that I am a little sick this morning because moms also don't have time to be sick.

[1:44]So bear with that a little bit.

[1:47]I will bear with anything.

[1:48]No worries at all.

[1:49]I have a jackhammer outside my office.

[1:51]Everything's been delayed all day.

[1:53]You know, it's been one of those.

[1:55]One of those days, but I'm delighted to finally be talking to you.

[1:58]You know, your book, your story is so moving and the way you write about it.

[2:03]I mean, I have a daughter.

[2:05]Well, I have twins who are almost 16 and your story begins when you are paralyzed at age 16.

[2:11]And the way you wrote about it through the lens of a teen.

[2:16]Just a regular teen, like wanting to look cool and hang out with the cool guy on the floor and, you know, break the rules and all that.

[2:23]You immediately like disarm the reader and make us just so you take out any of the, not stigma, but just like any distance you might feel from somebody going through something else.

[2:36]You immediately like connect and you're like, let's do this together.

[2:41]I guess you come along on my journey.

[2:43]Let me like take you through it.

[2:44]Anyway, that was a long way to introduce you.

[2:47]I'll take it.

[2:48]I appreciate that.

[2:49]So can you share your story with listeners and then end up with how it became a book?

[2:57]Yeah.

[2:58]Well, so for all intents and purposes, my story begins when I was in a car accident at the age of 16.

[3:04]It was a very tragic event for obviously for me, for my family.

[3:09]And for our whole community because it was this very sort of like well publicized event where there was 16 ages coming back from a school dance.

[3:19]And nobody really knows what happens.

[3:21]There were no drugs or alcohol involved at the car ended up flying across a grass median on the highway and hitting another car.

[3:29]I was ejected out of the vehicle.

[3:31]And when I landed, I suffered a spinal cord injury.

[3:36]And so I am paralyzed from about my chest level down, both in feeling and in function moving.

[3:44]But beyond that, I had collapsed my lungs.

[3:47]And so I wasn't breathing.

[3:48]I had broken both my arms and my legs.

[3:50]I was bleeding out from a spot where I had severed an artery.

[3:54]So I didn't realize it clearly at the time.

[3:57]But they didn't think that I was going to make it to the hospital let alone anything beyond that.

[4:02]You know, and for whatever it's worth, my injuries weren't the worst of that night.

[4:08]Coming back from that dance, I was sitting next to my, my boyfriend at the time.

[4:13]And he was killed instantly on the impact of the accident.

[4:18]And we hit a car head on and the driver of that car was killed instantly.

[4:23]There were two kids in my car that suffered traumatic brain injuries, which if any of your listeners are familiar with that sort of an injury, I would take having a spinal cord injury any day rather than having my brain injured.

[4:38]That one thing that, you know, really is who you are.

[4:42]Obviously, I made it. I'm alive. I spent a lot of time in the hospital.

[4:47]I spent a month in the ICU unit and just sort of like getting my body to begin to heal.

[4:53]And it wasn't until about two months after the accident that I really started to understand what my new life would be because, you know, being paralyzed now now I was going to have to rely on using a wheelchair to get around.

[5:06]And luckily I live in Colorado, which has one of the best spinal cord injury rehab facilities in the nation. And so I was able to go there to do so rehab.

[5:16]Once I was well enough and that's when I kind of learned what this new change was going to be this new life for myself.

[5:23]I always tell people that I think that I was really fortunate to have this accident happen when I was so young.

[5:29]Because I was naive and, you know, still very carefree and my biggest concern was how am I going to get to the mall with my friends, not how am I going to spend the rest of my life in this wheelchair.

[5:43]Like that wasn't the biggest thing to me. It was it was I want to figure out how I can get my friends car or how can I wear my backpack so that I look cool.

[5:54]And that's really what my focus was and I think that being that naive kid but then also understanding that I now had a different kind of perspective on what life really is and that maybe my peers didn't really understand that.

[6:09]Things in combination really saved me and really helped me to develop who I am today and to really sort of challenge others.

[6:19]And, you know, I think that in all of the events of my life I've constantly been having these similar themes of how do I get through this experience and how do I reflect on it and what does that do for me and what doesn't not do for me.

[6:36]And all of those things in combination has really been able to teach me so much about myself and what I want and what I need, but also then to really understand those around me and the world around me.

[6:50]Well, oh my gosh, what a story. Can I go back to your accident for two seconds. I know in the book you said you didn't remember any of it like you don't remember anything that happened.

[7:01]Can you say like who was sitting where and what had happened that night before the accident like to remember all day.

[7:08]So I actually you're you're 100% correct. So when you suffer something really traumatic your brain is really, really amazing.

[7:16]And it has this ability to just kind of shut it off. And if it's something that's just going to be too much for you.

[7:22]Your brain can actually just like completely dull it out and you have no recollection. So I really truly don't have a memory from even the day before and tell about a week later.

[7:34]I do these almost like photographic snapshot images of things from that evening or even the day earlier. And then I have a couple of like blips of memories from being in the hospital initially, but I do have zero memory of the actual accident.

[7:51]And so everything that I know about it. I've pieced together from mostly the paramedic state troopers. Those those people that were actually at the scene that evening.

[8:02]Most of the kids that I was with don't have any memories either or they have very kind of like fleeting memories of the events.

[8:09]And because of all of that, I really don't have a huge emotional tie to it either. So it makes it just kind of like the story that I learned once and I keep telling over and over again.

[8:19]But as for the night, I do know that, you know, we did kind of weird typical teenagers in the 90s and we went and I think we played laser tag and then we went to dinner and then we went to the dance and then while we were at the dance.

[8:35]We met up with another group of friends who they were like, Hey, we're going to go midnight bowling. You guys should come with us. And so that's actually what we decided to do and that's where we were in route to go as the accident happened.

[8:49]And we were in a suburban SUV. If you know, it's kind of a big car. My friend that was driving the car that was her dad's car that she had borrowed for the night and we thought it was really excellent because all of us could fit in the car.

[9:02]No problems. We didn't have to rent a limousine or anything like that. And so it was really slick. We all had, you know, our appropriate seats.

[9:09]My boyfriend and I were in the very back of the suburban in I think they're like smaller seats. And so when the accident happened from what I was told, I flew through the side window, side back window of the suburban and the parents actually told me later on that I was so far away from the vehicle when they arrived that they didn't know where I was.

[9:32]They couldn't find me. They knew from piecing it together. They knew that there were three boys and three girls, but they did have trouble finding me at first, which is kind of like us.

[9:41]Yeah.

[9:42]And then you went to the hospital. How is your family at this time? I'm sorry to even go back. I'm just like, you know, no, no, no, I'm so glad to I'm glad to talk about all of this because it's, you know, it's some I talk about it so often that I

[10:00]miss pieces and so it's nice to kind of get drawn back to the things that

[10:05]may be super important that I don't necessarily see at the time. So for my

[10:09]family I family had started kind of falling apart even before my accident. So

[10:14]there was a lot of tension and a lot of miscommunication or lack of

[10:19]communication happening that I was aware of but not in a heightened sense. I

[10:25]was, you know, as a kid. And so I didn't know any better. So when my

[10:31]accident happened, I think it sort of escalated everything. I mean, you're a

[10:35]mom, you understand this? Holy, I'm sure that when you witness something

[10:41]tragic happened to somebody else, sometimes that's worse. You feel very

[10:46]at loss, very out of control. And so I have always said that I think my

[10:51]accident has been harder on my family that as per has been for me. Because

[10:57]when it's you, when it involves you, you have a little bit of say over it, you

[11:02]have a little bit of control. But when you're watching somebody else struggle

[11:05]or somebody else go through something, that is far more difficult to deal with.

[11:10]And so I think still to this day, my parents, I have a younger sister, they all

[11:16]have lost things because of my accident. And they have all struggled, I think,

[11:22]more than I have because of my accident. And I, you know, as a daughter and a

[11:27]sister, like, I don't know what to do with that. You know, I hold it and I support

[11:33]them, you know, but it's one of those things that it's sort of the way that

[11:36]nature works itself. So what happened? Take us through the trajectory of the

[11:44]story after the accident. Sure. So I tried my best after my accident, after I

[11:50]was released from the hospital, I really tried my best to be the most normal

[11:55]average kid I could possibly be and probably to a fault. And I spent many, many

[12:02]years trying to just really be this very typical, uninteresting, unnoticeable

[12:09]person. And looking back, I almost laugh about it because it was so silly that I

[12:14]worked so hard at this sort of thing. And then it wasn't until many, many years

[12:22]later that I sort of forced the realization that that's not me anymore. That's not my

[12:27]life. I need to embrace who I am and the challenges that I face and move myself

[12:33]forward. And so I had a fairly typical college experience. I actually studied

[12:38]biology in college. I think that I developed a real appreciation for like the human

[12:45]body and the way things work after my accident. And so that sort of led me to fall into that

[12:51]path. Although looking back, I was always writing. I was always writing journal type entries,

[12:57]blogs, things like that. And so I kind of could kick myself now that it took me so long to

[13:03]actually prove myself to be a writer. However, you know, your path leads you to wherever you're

[13:09]supposed to go eventually. From there, I actually, I swimming has always been a huge part of my

[13:15]life. I was a swimmer all growing up. Swimming, I will say again and again has saved me so many

[13:21]different times through my life. And after my accident, it became the one thing that I could

[13:28]still do that was a bridge to my life before. And I didn't need my wheelchair to do it. And so

[13:34]because of that, it continued to be a really big and impactful part of my life so much so that

[13:41]I began coaching swimming. And from that, it gave me a real connection to kids and teenagers.

[13:49]And I began hearing myself telling these stories that I had been through over and over again,

[13:54]these life lessons that I had learned, the mistakes I had made. And I really enjoyed that. And I

[14:00]really enjoyed the connection with younger kids and people that sort of needed to hear those

[14:06]stories. And so from coaching, that led me to teaching. And I taught high school biology for

[14:12]almost 10 years. During that time, I started to compete in swimming again. I had gone through

[14:19]a really nasty health scare probably in my like fifth year of teaching. Being a paraplegic and not

[14:28]being able to feel and move, I had developed a wound. And it had been growing from like the inside out.

[14:37]And by the time I was sick enough to recognize it, it was kind of too late. And so I spent

[14:45]eight months in bed for that to heal. And there were so many different things that were

[14:51]happening. The doctors didn't understand why it wasn't healing. And they just kept telling me I had

[14:55]to lay in bed. And at the time, I had bought a house up in the mountains by myself. And so I was

[15:00]living by myself in the mountains. And I had health care nurse coming in like every other day to

[15:07]check on me. But otherwise, I was laying in bed and I wasn't doing anything. I couldn't do

[15:12]anything. I had a quit teaching, I had a quit coaching. And that was if there was any point in my

[15:18]entire life that I felt through depression, it was during that time. And I write a chapter in my book

[15:24]about it. And I write it as I befriended a spider on the wall. And I talked to the spider because

[15:32]that's how dark it was. It was I had nothing at that point. I had sure I had friends and family,

[15:38]they would come and visit. And it was almost worse because they they come and they bring me,

[15:43]you know, cookies or whatever. And then they'd be on their way. And it was just so hard for me

[15:48]to understand that at that point, I wasn't living. My life was not moving forward. I was stuck.

[15:55]So once I finally was well enough and began to heal, I realized that what was saving me was every

[16:03]night I would go to bed. And I would dream about swimming. And I would just dream about being,

[16:09]you know, in that wait list pool and, you know, using my muscles and almost like in a meditative

[16:16]sort of sense. And so as soon as I was well enough, I wouldn't say I was medically cleared. But

[16:21]as soon as I felt like I could actually get out of bed, I started secretly going to the pool

[16:27]and swimming. And it wasn't long until I decided I made this, like promised to myself that I was

[16:34]going to start competing again. And I was going to see what happens when you put 100% of yourself

[16:41]into something. And I really like held onto that notion right away. And I wanted to almost be like

[16:48]this poster child for my my students and my swimmers, like look what you can accomplish if you put

[16:53]all of yourself into something. And so I began training at like 3 30 in the mornings because I had to

[17:00]get ready and go teach a full day and then coach after that. And so really if I was going to do

[17:05]this training, it had to be then. And I'd look back now and I have no idea how I actually managed to do

[17:11]that. I did that for two years solid. And I started going to different Paralympic competitions.

[17:16]Most of those are not easy to get to. They're not local. There's not a lot of them. And so I was

[17:21]having to do fundraising and just kind of like out of pocket funding for myself to just really

[17:27]follow the stream and this burning desire that I needed to see what I had inside of me. And so

[17:33]my ultimate goal was I wanted to make the Paralympic team that following year. And so I trained

[17:39]for two years solid to make it to the Paralympic trials. And I was actually very proud of myself.

[17:44]I was constantly making better times and improving. And I got put on a select team to swim for the

[17:51]U.S. at the Pan Am Games that year and all of these things. And everything felt like it was really

[17:56]coming together. And I felt like I was really doing the thing that I had set out to. And I went to

[18:03]the Paralympic trials in 2012. And I had just this wonderful, almost like this warm feeling of

[18:11]something really important is going to happen here. And and it wasn't even tied necessarily to

[18:18]swimming. But it was just this notion that there is something really important behind this event.

[18:24]And I swam really well. I made mostly best times. I was very proud of everything. And the

[18:31]meat was five days. They finished the need. And then they kind of just like shuffle all of the

[18:35]athletes into this like small conference room and read off the names of the Paralympic swimmers

[18:40]that will join the Paralympic team. And and my name wasn't on that list. And I remember looking

[18:48]at my, I had my best friend there with me. And I, and it was almost like, wait a minute. I had,

[18:55]I had planned from point A to Z. And I just finished Z. And what I never actually thought about

[19:03]what am I going to do after this, this list is put out there. Whether I make this, you were not

[19:09]like, what happens next? And I remember kind of piling into a small rental car and thinking like,

[19:15]okay, you can cry now. You can cry. It's all right. But yet I had just this overwhelming feeling of

[19:22]contentment because I knew that I had done everything in my power to make it. And there was nothing

[19:29]I was no regret involved. There was no I wish I would have done this. But beyond that, the very last

[19:35]night of the meet, I was about to swim my last finals race. And I had had this brief encounter

[19:43]with this coach. He was new to Paralympic swimming. And so we had kind of talked about how rules

[19:50]are different things are different. Let's exchange numbers. And I'll help you out. And you know,

[19:55]suddenly my mind was shifted.

[20:00]And something felt really important about that and this same coach ended up being on our flight on the way home.

[20:07]And we were actually, we were flying from Bismarck to Denver and he was taking Bismarck to Denver to go back to North Carolina.

[20:16]So, super bizarre anyways that he was on this flight.

[20:20]But I, you know, tried to talk to him a little bit before we got on the flight and then it was like,

[20:26]yeah, I don't know what I'm doing. We need to go home and I was talking to my friend about it.

[20:30]The whole way home, we kind of sat in silence and then we de-plained in Denver and we got off the plane and I went to use the bathroom and then I get a text for my friend and she said,

[20:40]where are you? Needless to say, I find her and she's standing there with this coach and she says, we're all going to go get a beer now.

[20:49]I was like, okay, however I knew that her mom was like circling the airport to come pick us up, but it's just like, okay, that's fine.

[20:56]And long story short after having this beer connecting with this coach, we started emailing texting and then that soon led to like Skype dates and within three months of meeting him, we were married.

[21:12]What?

[21:14]And that is, you know, one of the things thinking about writing my book as I was writing it back then and I thought I knew how it was going to end.

[21:26]I thought I knew what the last chapters were going to be and from that moment that I met him, everything changed from that piece and that's such like a beautiful notion.

[21:37]I feel like almost I feel like everybody needs to kind of sit down and even just outline the chapters of your own memoir because it really to be able to like internalize what you think is important and what you think that your life is and then watch it visibly change for you is super powerful.

[21:57]Oh my gosh, that was the most inspiring amazing story. Oh my gosh, Ryan, you're an incredible human being and I'm just honored to hear it straight from you, your life story and I want to know every detail.

[22:12]Yeah, back to the book and all that, you know, I had Mallory Wegman, do you know her? Yeah.

[22:18]Anyway, she's been on the podcast and my husband is actually making her story into a feature film right now.

[22:24]Awesome. So I'm well versed in Marilyn Victoriles actually and all of that. So sorry, you didn't make it that seems just cruel and unnecessary punishment, but obviously led to something great, but your spirit and being able to adapt and

[22:40]take in all of it and still sit here with like the sunshine is like beaming in through the window and you know your optimism and like your spirit, it's just amazing.

[22:49]I have, I just am an awe and impressed and just so honored to have even chatted this match with you.

[22:58]Oh, well, likewise, truly.

[23:01]Well, I hope that we can stay in touch. I want to like hear more and like hear I want you to like tell me everything ever has to ever happen to you and more.

[23:13]Next time we'll talk about being moms. Yeah, and you have kids. Oh my gosh, how many kids do you have two boys actually.

[23:23]is. Wow, amazing. Wow. Yes, we can come is right.

[23:28]Anyway, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your story and writing it and I want to hear all more about the process writing it.

[23:37]But anyway, thank you. Thank you for coming on. Yes, thank you. I really appreciate it and I'm so glad to connect you too.

[23:44]I hope it's going to be honored. Okay. All right. Take care. Bye.

[23:49]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books.

[23:53]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at moms don't have time to read books.

[23:58]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.

[24:05]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outroom music.

[24:13]Music.