Turia Pitt, 24, working in mining engineering in Australia, was invited to run a marathon race in 2011. She had earlier planned to skip it as she thought the thousand pound entrance fee was ridiculous. But when the organizers waived the fees she opted in.
But partway through the race she along with three other competitors became trapped by a bushfire in a narrow, rocky gorge. Her injuries were so bad that not only did she suffer 64% burns but four fingers from her left hand and her right thumb had to be amputated. She now says that most likely all four of them would have died in the gorge itself had it not been for a risky and heroic rescue undertaken by a helicopter crew.
After undergoing countless surgeries and spending six months in the hospital fighting for her life, Turia Pitt now calls herself as the “luckiest girl in the world”.
Not only has Pitt made a breathtaking recovery, in the past six months alone she rode her bike from Sydney to Uluru, swam a 20 kilometer race in Western Australia and walked the Great Wall of China.
About her being the cover girl for The Australian Women’s Weekly she says, “I feel very humbled. For me it sends the message that confidence equals beauty. There are lot of women out there who are so beautiful but don’t have the confidence, and that’s what gets you over the line.”
“We all have that inner strength, but rarely do we get the chance to see how incredible we truly are,” Pitt said in a separate interview. “I’ve had to claw my way back into life — learn to walk, to talk. All the things I had taken for granted before became seemingly impossible tasks.”
Beauty comes in many vessels and Turia Pitt’s astounding cover picture illustrates this. It indicates that when we get in touch with our inner strength it shows up as beauty.
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Credits:This has been written by Raj Shah and edited by Ketna Shah. Compiled from various sources on the Internet.