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“Surround yourself with positive people. It’s easy to fall into a rut and let negative people feel sorry for you … Don’t wallow in that very long … You’ve got to keep your head healthy, your brain healthy, and your body healthy.” “The small victories, regardless if you have a spinal cord injury or not, are big victories … Everything might be going sideways right now, but if you can make any positive progress, even if it doesn’t look like positive progress, it’s progress.” "There are new things that you’re going to be able to do, and new ways that you can use your perspective, and perhaps a new found level of empathy, and perhaps a new angle on helping other people that can pull you through it." "It’s okay to be upset, angry, we’re going to go through… It’s a loss. I take it as if I lost something, but again what did I find? I found that there’s a better me underneath." “For me I’ve gotten the goals of, okay let’s not focus on the past, let’s focus on the here and now. I don’t even believe in the future … it’s about living in the moment, living in today, and living each day as if it’s your last.” “There’s light at the end of the tunnel, but not only that there’s actually cracks in the tunnel where the lights seeps through, and if we just look around us we’ll see the light during the challenging journey.” Marka is a trained peer mentor with the South Carolina Spinal Cord Injury Association. Submit a peer mentor request at https://bit.ly/mtw-peer-mentor-request and we'll help connect you!
“Getting around was so exhausting that I felt homebound when I wasn’t in school. I picked up playing the guitar, and it was just waiting for me to do that. It’s something that I should’ve done years and years ago.” “What I’m really eager for is getting into the outside sports again. I want to bike, I want to climb, I want to get a chair that I can go trail riding.” Earnestine Frazier & daughter Tonya - C3-5 Incomplete Quadriplegic since 2019 from Arkansas, USA11/21/2022
“I’m still of the belief that I may walk again… but my other goals are to be able to get my left hand to move a little bit more… get my back to do more things, so that I can sit up on my own… I know I won’t do it in a day, may not ever do it, but that’s not going to say that I’m going to stop trying.” - Earnestine “I think what helps a lot when it comes to the relationship between a caregiver and the injured is just being transparent and being honest and open with one another about what you’re going through, the feelings… the fears… the future and what you expect from one another.” - Tonya “You know, that’s something my wife and I always talk about. One day she asked me, ‘What is your biggest fear in life?’ I said, ‘Being able to walk’ … because now… I have to adjust, and at 36 years old I don’t think I want to do that.” Jenae “Jayybabii” Baines - T4/5 Incomplete Paraplegic from North Carolina, USA, 10 Years Post-Injury9/2/2022
“Whether they’re in a wheelchair or they have another disability… whatever it is that you want to do in this world, do it, because you never know who you are meant to inspire or motivate to get them to do what it is they want to do in this world.” “Don’t hold any question in… find somebody to talk to, because you don’t know this thing... Let me give you some resources, and if I don’t have any resources, I’ve got 75 other homies with me that got a resource to help you.” “What’s more important than walking to me is just family… me and my family have become very close. I’m not the same person I was a year ago, and you don’t have to be the same person you were a year ago either. You can change, everyone can change. If I did it, you can too.” “Maybe you can’t walk right now… but maybe there is a way that is completely unique to you, that can allow your unique message to come out more fully because you’re in a situation now. If you can find out what that is inside of you, and you can deliver that, it doesn’t matter what shape or condition your body is in. If you can do that, man you’re living a good life.” Check out Dustin’s independence coaching resources! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1ZjIBpmq7H_O4bYwihzzUw
https://www.dustinmeza.life/ “Little things are big things, so the smallest accomplishments you should celebrate, and they should be huge, because surviving a C4/5 spinal cord injury is a huge accomplishment in itself… but it really truly does get better… I never ever thought that I would be comfortable in my own skin again and I very much am.” “I got a new lease on life… I figured, you know what, I’m not going to waste the next 30 years… We all have that ‘why me’ moment. Don’t focus on it, because we’re not special. Why not us? …The sooner you absorb that, the more you can move on and start taking those forward movements.” ***Douglas is a certified peer mentor with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and Magee Rehab Hospital***
“One thing that I told myself in the very beginning was that I have an option…the list of things that I could do could go on and on, or the list of the things that I can’t do could go on and on, and it’s just which list are you going to focus your energy on, and which list are you going to write with your life?” ***Dustin is a certified peer mentor with United Spinal*** Check out his non-profit https://www.gounlimited.org/
Michael DuBiasio - T9/T1 Incomplete Paraplegic from Rhode Island, USA, 24 Years Post-Injury3/9/2022
“If you’re going to sit in a chair and give up, you will not advance. You have to get off your duff, figuratively obviously, and figure a way to move forward in life where you will succeed." “When people ask me now, ‘Do you wish that God would heal you?’... I tell them God did heal me. He healed my heart, and he allowed me to have my wreck to stop me and bring me out of the life that I was living before.” “For me, I want to continue to grow my foundation so that we can help even more people. I want to teach my kids how to ski and bike and give them a love of the outdoors. I want to continue to be outside and be active for myself… There’s just life, it’s just the same as what other people want, and walking is just not part of it." Check out the Kelly Brush Foundation for adaptive sports community and funding at https://kellybrushfoundation.org/.
“Avoid staying in the house at all costs. Whatever you can do to not be in the house, do that, do it as fast as possible… Even if you don’t like sports, adaptive sports is such a good way to get more independent being around people with your same injury.” *** Josh is a certified peer mentor with United Spinal. ***
“Since my injury, probably what surprises me the most is I’ve become a much more patient person, and I’ve become a more generous person as far as wanting to help people.” “Do not think this is going to be an overnight fix. It’s gonna be a long road. It’s gonna be hard, but it’s not impossible and you’re going to meet a lot of cool people along the way. Always know somebody’s rooting for you.” “We can find so much love in this world if we just look around… It’s about finding happiness with whatever we have. And If I can’t find happiness in the chair, I’m not going to find happiness when I walk again if that day ever comes.” “The strongest, most intelligent people that I’ve met are wheelchair users, and they have given me motivation just to be a better person in life. I would’ve never met those people if I wasn’t injured. I would’ve never had this outlook on life.” |
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