Sarah Schachterle - HERLIFE Magazine

think about my daughter and how it
would affect her,” she says. “I want to
live as long as I can…I don’t want to
leave Reagan.” Sarah admits she was
angry at first, trying to figure out how
she was going to rearrange her life.
With her life on fast-forward most of the
time, she realized it was time to slow
down, but finding that balance wasn’t
so easy. At first, she quit everything but
quickly realized that wasn’t living.
“I decided that I needed to fight
this, I needed to change my attitude,”
she says. “It’s mind over matter; no
matter what life sends your way,
there’s a way to overcome.” Sarah rose
to the challenge just as she has with
everything in her life, and surmounted
her fears even through her near death
experience due to her heart condition.
She admits that if she was to choreograph
a dance for her life and give it a
name she would call it a ‘roller coaster
ride.’ “It is the first thing that comes to
mind when I think about my life,” she
says. “I have actually even had dreams
about roller coasters. One night when
I was really sick I woke up and heard a
voice say hold on, ‘here we go’ ...and I
pictured a roller coaster.”
She agrees that she doesn’t look
through life with rose-colored glasses or
live in denial, but has made a conscious
decision that her illness isn’t going to
rule her road. With a positive attitude
comes a higher altitude, and she’s
concluded, instead of it making her
bitter, she’s letting it make her a better
person.
“I know this sounds cliché, but I’ve
learned to stop and smell the roses. I
don’t remember a lot of my life because
I ran though it so fast. Every event;
birthdays, my graduation…I ran through
them like they were a Broadway show. I
ran through life so fast I never enjoyed
the moment I was in, but always looking
beyond to the next and ready to move
onto the next thing. But not anymore. I
stay in the moment, enjoy the moment
for what it is. Every day is a day I’m
thankful for and try to become more
than I was the day before. Instead of
saying to myself ‘why me,’ I say to
myself ‘why not me?’”
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