This mom’s selfie with her ileostomy bag is going viral for an important reason

When 32-year-old Australian mother Krystal Miller was just 15, she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease after years of painful, debilitating symptoms.

“I barely finished [sophomore year] as I was so sick,” she told BuzzFeed News. “I was sleeping 22 hours a day and was very skinny. I would often have accidents where I wouldn’t make it to the toilet.”

But her diagnosis most certainly wasn’t the end of her struggles with her health. For years, she felt like she was “dying slowly” like she was “rotting from the inside out.” “Previous to having my surgery, I was about to lose my job, my relationships weren’t very good, and I couldn’t live like a normal 22-year-old,” she told BuzzFeed.

So she had a portion of her bowel removed at age 22, thus beginning her life with an ileostomy bag. Although the bag has given her “the opportunity to live [her] life,” living with an ileostomy bag can be a blow to your self-esteem, and that’s exactly why Krystal shared a beautiful picture of her in the bathtub to explain the difficulties of feeling sexy. . . and it’s been making its rounds of the Internet for an important reason.