disabilityempowher

All it takes is one blink, and your life may never look the same again. My name is Tamia Brown, also known as Miamoney. I’m a 25-year-old paraplegic music artist from Richmond, Virginia. Before I became paralyzed, I walked for 19 years. I didn’t live the fanciest life or have the best upbringing, but that never stopped my smile or my motivation. At 19 years old, I was driving home from another city when I fell asleep due to exhaustion. I woke up in a panic and jerked the steering wheel,...

When going to college, you embark on a journey to find yourself as a young adult. A few weeks before I was set to begin my journey as a college student at Hampton University, my identity shifted—I became a survivor of a senseless act of violence: a shooting. Instead of going to college with the rest of my peers, I was in the hospital watching college days pass me by. I was in a fugue state, unable to talk, eat, move, or even breathe without a machine. I was ready to throw the towel in until I...

It was December 30, 2007, when I sustained a spinal cord injury, and my world changed in the blink of an eye. The following year was a blur–my mother died unexpectedly, and I separated from my fiancé. At 23, I was living through compounding nightmares. These events would break anyone, but mine came all at once. To say I was depressed would be an understatement, though I didn’t realize it then. The world felt smaller, and rural Pennsylvania only magnified that feeling. Leaving the house meant...