By Katherine Magnoli
During my year as Ms. Wheelchair Florida 2017, I faced a lot of trials and tribulations both personally and professionally. First off, it was rare for me to find anyone in South Florida, who did not think it was my birthday when they saw me wheel into a room with my crown and sash. Secondly, I had a lack of rapport with my state coordinator for my entire year. Third and last reason I dealt with a broken foot due to an accident and a broken heart that came no more than a month later. Thus, I had pretty much labeled this year as a roller-coaster and have done my best since its ending to see the good in what I accomplished. Then all of a sudden today, over two years later, I received an email that solidified that fact for me.
The email was written by a woman who works in the ACCESS Department of Miami Dade College’s Kendall Campus. She is also the mother of a girl who did a documentary highlighting several important events of my year as Ms. Wheelchair Florida.
The documentary included several interviews where I spoke about the importance of advocacy and even showcased my meeting the before-mentioned heartbreaker at an indoor adventurous activity I took part in during my year. ( I will keep both his name and the name of the activity private since he is still a friend of mine).
Anyway, back to the story at hand; the email written by this wonderful woman, invited me to speak at her campus during this coming October’s Disability Awareness Month Activity. I immediately said yes and was overwhelmed with a sense of accomplishment. In addition, I realized that sometimes you can stare at a situation for so long and only see the bad that came out of it and never realize the tremendous impact you may have had on people. This usually happens while you are drowning in your own self pity. With that said, take a good look at a situation and after learning the valuable lesson of the bad just throw the pain away. Because you never know what wonderful opportunity is waiting for you all because you took a chance to walk through that door.
