The Princess and the Prosthetic: Embracing a perfectly imperfect fairytale

LOS ANGELES - "I am a below the knee and left leg amputee. I like writing, horseback, riding, reading books, video games, animating a little bit of like everything."

Callie Cline is 15, going into 10th grade. She is driven and ambitious. She was born with a limb difference and a chronic heart condition. 

The family had to make an important decision. They had to decide to either put Callie through countless surgeries, where she would spend most of her childhood in and out of a wheelchair, without a guarantee that things would improve. 

Or, doctors said they could amputate her leg when she was about 2 years old. All she would know was what life was like with a prosthetic.

"We wanted to give her a shot at a normal childhood. It would be different. But she still could run. She still could play, she still could ride horses, she could swim, she wouldn't spend her whole childhood in a hospital, and so for us, that made the decision a little bit easier," said Jaime Cline, Callie's mother.

Callie was 18 months old when her leg was amputated. She was fitted with her first prosthetic 6 months later.

Her mother has been very open in sharing what her experience has been like as a parent to a child with a disability.

"This was not in any of the parenting guidebooks I read while I was pregnant with Callie. There is that shock and that grief, anger, frustration - all of those feelings," said Jaime.

Now together, this mother and daughter team are advocating and educating others.

It’s important that kids see themselves in books, movies and toys. Since, in her case, she was born this way, this is all she has known, and she is comfortable with who she is.

"The best way I can describe it is when people stare at me at school, I'll sometimes think it's my outfit. That's how used to it I am. I'm just like 'my outfit's ugly, my makeup is wrong, my hair!' My friends are like ‘you have a prosthetic.’ So that's how I explain it to people," said Callie.

"I think, as a parent before you have a child, you expect to be the teacher in the relationship - and really she's been our teacher to a certain degree. But I think it's she's my reason, she's my motivation. We've always taken the approach of whatever she wants to try or whatever she wants to do, we'll figure out how to do it," said Jaime.

For Callie everything is a challenge – never something she can’t do.

"There have been times where teachers are like, 'I don't think you could do this.' I'm like, ‘can I try?’ And I'll do it. I will sometimes fail, but I'm trying to do it. I would say, we don't fully know the limit to everything. We're going to be able to figure out how to get people to maybe walk again. We'll figure out how to make better feet for people that are affordable, so they can walk, or feet that are easy to run in. We don't know what we can do. But we can. We can try," said Callie.

You can follow Callie on her blog or Instagram.