Angie Sandow
OCTOBER”S SPEAKER – Angie Sandow report by Fionna Ferguson
Born with a visible disability, Angie is an inspiratonal speaker. She believes that there is no such word as can’t although she pointed out that someone had told her that the one thing she couldn’t do was make love to him, but Angie believes that everyone is a superhero and has lived her life without rules. She did not want people feeling sorry for her and didn’t look at her life as one of hardships, and she isn’t afraid to laugh, and she certainly made us laugh
Born in Montreal she moved to Toronto in 1983 and worked in finance for several large corporaƟons like Pepsi and wrote a book with the Ɵtle Why can’t I? She became a motivational speaker.
Angie elaborated on the influences in her life whilst people often commented and asked her what was wrong with her and having to put up with several other major differences in her own body her parents and her sister, who was 14 1/2 years older than her, supported her and everything she wanted to do.
Music was a big help to her as was learning how to control her own emotions, especially after some of the surgeries that she had. One big surgery was at three years of age to enable her to straighten the arm that had been bent since birth. She had to learn to control her own emotions. I’m learning to play the guitar when it was difficult to play a recorder that supportive people in her life such as her recorder teacher, Mr. Duchane, gave her the inspiration to face her challenges. Other inspirations were Evel Knievel, Terry Fox, Stevie Collins, and the rock, musician in Kiss, Paul Stanley.
She learned to play the guitar and formed an AC/DC tribute band There was no stopping Angie. She met her husband and after 40 years together they finally got married. With his love of motorcycling she learned to drive a motorcycle. This helped her recover from another challenge when she had breast cancer. Not one to sit back when life was difficult she went to a motor show to look at purchasing a bike and when Harley Davidson would not talk to her, she bought a Honda which she still drives to this day.
Angie is facing new challenges like osteoporosis, carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, a trigger finger from Dupyens contracture and like the rest of us she’s becoming forgetful,
Her message to our group is, we should grow all together and have fun together and although we all have down days, Pick Yourself Up and why discourage when you can encourage? In response to Trevor’s queston, Angie then invited him to go for a cycle ride with her.
Angie you Rock. justridin.com