The husband of a woman who was born with no limbs has finally answered the question that is always on everyone’s lips.
Briel Adams-Wheatley has amassed an impressive 5 million followers on TikTok and a further 1 million on Instagram, through sharing content showing everyday life as a person with no limbs.
Born in Brazil, the influencer was born with a severe form of Hanhart Syndrome, which has just 30 cases known worldwide, believed to stem from vascular disruption of the fetus.
As a young child, she was adopted by a family in Utah, where she was raised, but despite living with a disability Briel shares just how much she is still able to do.
One of Briel’s hobbies includes experimenting with different makeup looks, and she regularly takes to social media where she shows how she is able to flawlessly apply her products, and even put false eyelashes on. It’s an incredible skill.
Influencing career began in lockdown
Like many people, Briel found herself sitting around bored when lockdown left her unable to go out and about, so to pass the time, she decided to open her phone and film a ‘get ready with me’ style video.
The 26-year-old told People: “I was like, ‘Let’s film a makeup video.’ So I filmed one just from the chest up, and it did really well. But all the comments were like, ‘Why aren’t you using your hands? Why aren’t you using your hands?’”
Briel hadn’t initially planned to explain her circumstances to anyone, but when people kept asking the same question, she decided it was only right to show them her limb difference.
When she finally decided to show her full self on social media, her confidence began to grow, even with some of the negative comments she receives from trolls.
Briel credits a huge amount of her confidence to her adoptive mom, who always encouraged her to be as independent as possible from a young age, which led to her finding a love of dance from a young age, even auditioning for her school talent show.
“I realized I needed to show people at school that I wasn’t just the kid in the wheelchair,” she said. “Before that, I wasn’t getting invited to parties or asked to hang out. But once people saw what I could do, everything changed.”
By high school she had joined her school dance company team and she began choreographing her own routines as a form of self expression, much like doing makeup.
Briel’s transition and marriage to her husband
The 26-year-old hasn’t always been known as Briel, having come out as a transgender female in 2023, three years after meeting her husband Adam on Tinder.
She says Adam understood her from day one, even building her a custom desk at the perfect height and doing everything to help make everyday life that little bit easier for her.
Before they married, she expressed feelings about wanting to possibly transition and recently the loved up couple addressed their most asked question on social media.
Followers often ask Adam how he feels about Briel’s transition, which he has answered in an Instagram post, explaining how his wife told him long before coming out to everyone else.
“I started my transition a year after we got married, right?” Briel said to her husband in the clip, to which Adam responded: “I think so, but you told me way before everybody else.”
Briel then explained: “Yeah, I had also told him a little bit before we got married, too that I was having feelings about it, but I just wasn’t sure if it was something I was comfortable with, actually fully going into and just keeping suppressed. And if he was comfortable with it and everything.
“But Adam was the first person to know before everyone. And I waited a few months before I did it publicly as well. I already started a few things behind the scenes.”
Addressing how he feels about Briel’s transition, Adam said: “I really couldn’t care less about her transitioning. I mean, like, I’m very happy that she found who she is. And I’ve seen a big difference in her happiness and confidence and everything. But I mean, I fell in love with her and not what she was, just who she was.”
He went on to say the most difficult aspect was getting her pronouns right in private and in public before Briel had come out openly with her gender.
“It was hard going from like pronouns for more than one reason. One, because I knew before everybody else. So I had to use he/him in front of people, and I couldn’t remember who she had told yet or not,” he said.
“And so it was really confusing to use one thing at home and another [outside their home]. And then as soon as I got the pronouns under control, she changed her name and then started wearing wigs.
“It was just a lot of learning, learning, learning, learning, learning. But it was a good journey. She was patient with me.”
