Welcome to The Adapted Life
The Adapted Life is about learning how to move forward when life no longer looks the way you expected it to. Adaptation can come with disability, chronic illness, aging, caregiving, injury, changing abilities, or simply a season of life that requires you to approach things differently. Whatever brings you here, the goal is the same: finding practical ways to make life work for you instead of forcing yourself to fit into a version of life that no longer does.
About the Creator
I’m Artrell, though most people know me as Trell. The Adapted Life grew from my own experience of becoming disabled as an adult and having to learn, often through trial and error, how to navigate a life that was changing around me.
My needs shifted over time, from leg braces to a walker and eventually to using a wheelchair full-time. Along the way, I realized how much information I simply didn’t know because disability had not been part of my life before. I learned about accessibility, adaptations, equipment, systems, and everyday workarounds largely by living them.
But The Adapted Life isn’t my first step into writing or disability advocacy. Years ago, I wrote about living with multiple sclerosis for Modern Day MS, sharing personal experiences with treatment, mobility, and everyday life. Today, my advocacy work includes involvement with Wisconsin’s Council on Physical Disabilities and broader conversations around accessibility, employment, financial independence, and the systems that affect disabled people.
I also bring a professional background in accounting, which has shaped the way I look at disability from another angle: access is not only about ramps and doorways. It can also mean access to employment, financial security, transportation, information, healthcare, and the resources people need to build a life that works for them.
That mix of lived experience, professional experience, advocacy, and writing is what shapes The Adapted Life. I wanted to create the kind of space I would have appreciated when I was first trying to figure things out: practical without being clinical, honest without being hopeless, and focused on living well rather than chasing some idea of getting back to “normal.”
I don’t believe adaptation is only a disability issue. It is a life skill. At some point, nearly all of us will have to adjust to a body, circumstance, role, environment, or reality we did not choose. The Adapted Life is about meeting those changes with information, creativity, and confidence—and recognizing that doing things differently does not mean doing life less.
