After graduation, life pulled us apart.
My family moved for rehab. Surgeries. Recovery that wasn’t really recovery so much as adaptation.
I learned how to stand again. Then how to walk—first with braces, then without. Slowly. Imperfectly. But forward.
I also learned how many places in the world quietly shut people out.
That became my fuel.
I studied design. Fought my way through school. Built a career around spaces that didn’t exclude people the way I had been excluded.
Eventually, I built my own firm.
On paper, it looked like success.
In reality, it was something closer to survival turned into purpose.
Thirty years passed before I saw him again.
Not on purpose.
I spilled coffee in a small café near a job site, and a man came over with a mop, moving with a slight limp.
“Don’t move,” he said. “I’ve got it.”
