Inspirational Stories
Mavrik Von Haug
“When you have some tragedy that changes your life completely you have a choice: to victimize yourself or move forward and make the best out of it.”
Mavrick winning Strong Man Competition of America second time (June 2022) despite of the tragic accident with 21 facial fractures and multiple surgeries.
Ali McKerlich
I was paralyzed and operated a power wheelchair with my head. Whenever i shared that I wanted to walk again, people looked at me as if I was disillusioned. I believe in a God who can move mountains and believed He had the power to move mine. I never gave up on my hope.
In December 2010 I was hospitalized. Paralyzed from my neck down, I could move only my head and one finger. My prognosis was grim; a yet-to-be-diagnosed autoimmune disease threatened to take my life. Over the next seven months I would undergo radical treatments and arduous therapies that medical staff, led by top neurologists, hoped would stop the disease from entering my internal organs and preserve my life—as a quadriplegic.
Geoff Lance
Being an athlete all of my life, I try to look at my spinal cord injury as a long tennis match. Meaning in a tennis match you go through periods of success and failure. With a spinal cord injury I go through periods of positive and negative emotions but I just continue to work through my negative days in hopes that the positive days will follow and in a larger amount.
Julienne Dallara
Julienne Dallara is an actor/singer/dancer who woke up paralyzed in 1996 from Transverse Myelitis. At the time her daughter was 3 years old and her son was 7 months, so being in a wheelchair was a challenge. Divorce followed, and she supported her family by selling accessible vehicles.