Brooke's Story

After a car accident left her badly injured, Brooke found a new appreciation for moving her body and exercising in a positive light.

She turned her passion towards social media to help inspire others to be kinder to their bodies and now has a community of thousands of women that follow her journey.

Read and watch her full story below.

Hi I’m Brooke, I’m 20 years old and I'm member of PureGym.

Growing up, I was always a really athletic kid and I feel like I was always really praised for that. So, as I got older and the more my body started to change I struggled to accept it.

I started to get this toxic mindset towards exercise and my body and saw exercise as something negative to change how I looked.

It wasn’t until I got into a really bad car accident where I came out of it badly injured and had to go through rehabilitation, that I found this whole new appreciation for moving my body and going to the gym.

I started using the gym as something that was a way for me to feel good and see what my body was capable of, rather than a way to change how my body looked.  

It was a big mindset shift, but it was the realisation that we're not going to feel good waking up every day, looking in the mirror and picking ourselves apart and then going to the gym to try and fix our bodies.

Instead, I think it’s important to re-frame it to be “OK, what do we get to do today?” and “What feels good for my body today?” instead. 

You’ve built such a positive and supportive community for women. Can you tell us why you chose to share your story with others online?

I've always loved creating videos and content and sharing my life to people anyway, so, I thought, “do you know what? I'm going to document my whole journey”.  

I thought not only would it help me stay accountable, but it would also hopefully help and inspire other people to go on this journey with me too.  

It's just really important for me to try and spread as much positivity and body confidence to my followers as I can, so it can help other people and hopefully that they don't have to go through what I did. 

Why is that so important to you?

I want to keep showing people that they are already good enough the way that they are and that they don't need to keep trying to change something because they feel this pressure to have to. 

As women, I feel like everybody probably has, at some point, said something nasty about themselves or put themselves down or struggled in some way – and I would like to try and break that.  

Ultimately, I want to make a difference and help people feel related too. I want to help people have a safe space to come on social media and feel like they've had a bit of a weight lifted off their shoulders. 

I now have an amazing community of women, and it’s so lovely to see when women all come together and support and uplift each other in a positive space. That’s what makes me feel so motivated and inspired to continue this journey.

My end goal is that I want people going through something similar to know that they're not alone and there is light at the end of the tunnel.