“At the end of the day, you are different, but it’s OK,” says Erika Bogan.
“Embrace it!” echoes Shannon Chisholm.
Both women have been active advocates for people with disabilities since their injuries. Erika was injured in a car accident as a result of domestic violence in 2002, sustaining an incomplete spinal cord injury between her T11 and T12 vertebrae. Shannon suffered a T10 spinal cord injury as a result of a motorbike accident in 2011, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down.Patients undergo a rehabilitation process of physical, emotional, and spiritual recovery after a traumatic injury. It is more than just re-learning basic skills and re-adjusting to your life, but also to finding acceptance within yourself. That is the “new normal.”
“Finding your ‘new normal’, accepting it, and becoming comfortable in your own skin,” to Erika, is the biggest challenge in the journey of recovery.
Erika admits that the hardest part of the healing process was the lack of emotional preparation she had to face the world outside of the rehabilitation center. However, over the years, rehabilitation programs have been improving in their efforts to help patients reintegrate themselves into society and to help them regain independence and confidence in themselves. The rehabilitation that Shannon received, who was injured 14 years after Erika, provided a much more concentrated program of care which also involved her family in the recovery process.
Besides their leadership efforts in advocating for disability, the two women also share another experience in common – their participation in the non-profit Ms. Wheelchair America. Aimed at celebrating the strength of women with disabilities, this pageant has helped both women in re-discovering themselves. It has also offered them a bond of sisterhood for support and to let them know that they are not in it alone. And that knowledge showed them that despite the challenges they face, “they aren’t so scary when we conquer them together.”
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