Diagnosed at 5 months of age, Alyssa has set out to raise awareness about life with SMA Type I through writing. By getting personal and being open about her trials and triumphs, she wants the world to know that SMA can put up a good fight, but we can always fight back exceedingly harder. Aside from writing, Alyssa is the community director for an adaptive fashion brand and has founded her own nonprofit called Working On Walking. In her free time, she enjoys discovering new coffee shops within a 50-mile radius of her hometown in Rhode Island.I had a friend in college who was very much a free spirit. He always went with the flow, never sweated the hard stuff, and was the kind of person who was always up for an adventure. To kill time and unwind together, we used to hop in…
Can I be totally real with you for a second? Putting yourself out there into the world is no easy task. Being honest, sharing your truth, and inviting cyberspace into your own little, unique world is an incredibly vulnerable feeling. What will people think? Are you sharing too…
I think I can speak for the majority of the disability community when I say that we all crave a little more empathy and understanding from others. While I don’t expect a stranger on the street to fall in love with me at first sight, I do expect…
Last week, I wrote about the harsh reality that sometimes is SMA. I retold the story of my attempt to drive through the mountains of New Hampshire and how after breaking down at a gas station, I realized my body had other plans. I explored the…
Crying at a random gas station in rural New Hampshire was on my long list of things I thought I’d never do. Yet, there I was, two hours away from home, coming undone and growing angrier than ever at a disease that was beyond my control. I’ve been…
Between back-to-school commercials, first-day-of-school posts, and college-move-in-day pictures, this time of year always has me reminiscing about my days as a student. Although I am no longer shopping for notebooks and binders and figuring out if any of my friends are in my classes, the memories of these…
For a good chunk of last year, I dreaded when people asked how I was doing. To an extent, I understood their logic. They were genuinely curious about my well-being, and showing their concern showed that they cared. But the truth was that I wasn’t doing all…
Over the past weekend, pictures from the annual candle lighting for SMA that took place on Aug. 11 inundated my social media feeds. As most of our community knows, this lighting represents the lives lost too soon to this debilitating disease and those who are still living in spite…
It seems like just yesterday I was living in a perpetual state of chaos. My life was going a million and one miles per hour, and there was no stoplight in sight. Most days, I was struggling to make ends meet, always trying to juggle healing my body,…
The past four weeks have taught me some hard lessons, which came as no surprise. I’m the type of person who constantly searches for meaning and purpose during every peak and valley of life — especially the valleys. Finding valuable takeaways from every difficult situation in my life…
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