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​Woman Shares Brave Selfie Showing Her 'Pee Covered Pants'

​Woman Shares Brave Selfie Showing Her 'Pee Covered Pants'

She recently shared a photo exposing her own 'flaws' in the hope that it might inspire others to embrace theirs, and to live more freely

Jess Hardiman

Jess Hardiman

We're all guilty of being a little too proud or a bit too vain at times. Some of us become obsessed with the tiniest, silliest imperfection which doesn't actually have any consequence in the wider world.

But we could learn a thing or two from one brave Instagrammer, who recently shared a photo exposing her own 'flaws' in the hope that it might inspire others to live more freely.

Emma Carey, 25, has been on an incredible journey after surviving a freak skydiving accident back in 2013.

Emma Carey/Instagram

Emma - who hails from Queensland, Australia - was told she'd be spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair, but miraculously, she managed to find the strength to walk again.

However, she didn't walk away from the incident completely unscathed - revealing on Instagram she still suffers a side effect of her devastating spinal cord injury.

"I've seen this photo floating around the internet lately so thought I'd take a moment to chat about my pee covered pants," she wrote.

"This is what I look like every. single. day. Multiple times a day. I think because I can walk, people tend to think I have completely recovered from my spinal cord injury but the truth is I still have many lasting effects, one of them being that I am completely incontinent with both my bladder and bowels.

"At first I was so embarrassed by this and tried to keep it a secret.

"I didn't leave the house because I was so worried that people would find out. I wouldn't tell anyone why I had to be near a toilet at all times. I wouldn't let anyone see my catheters or pads. I would run away and hide every time I had an accident. It was exhausting trying to keep it a secret, so instead I just didn't let anyone close to me."

But after struggling for so long, Emma eventually found herself at a particularly liberating turning point.

Emma Carey/Instagram

She continued: "It wasn't long until I realised that if I was going to get upset and angry every time I peed myself, it would mean that I would be upset and angry every single day of my life. For the rest of my life.

"And that's when it hit me... I survived a bloody skydiving accident.

"I don't know how or why but I know that it certainly wasn't to live a depressing life. I owed myself way more than that.

"Now it's five years later and I don't think I have a single friend that hasn't seen me pee. I tell people about my incontinence generally within 10 minutes of meeting them. And now I'm posting a picture of my pee covered pants to over 100,000 people without a second thought.

Emma Carey/Instagram

Emma explained that she did so as a means of helping others to 'own' both their lives and their flaws, adding: "The point of this isn't for sympathy or for praise, it's to show you that it is completely and entirely possible to not give a single sh*t about the things that people expect you to care about.

"Just because we have grown up to believe that certain things are taboo or shouldn't be spoken about, doesn't mean that they are. Just because people think you should feel embarrassed about something, doesn't mean you need to. Just because people might judge you on a certain thing, doesn't mean you need to care. How you feel about certain situations is entirely up to you.

"If you own your life and all your 'flaws', they will never be able to own you. It's the most freeing thing in the world."

What an inspiration.

Featured Image Credit: Emma Carey/Instagram

Topics: Instagram, Inspirational, Feels, Community, Australia