Cosmo Profile

Just stated reading my Cosmopolitan magazine this month and imagine my delight in discovering that the “true story” section this month features a beautiful quadriplegic woman!

This section is for “shocking” true stories, so of course it played a little bit on that drama with the title, “Her Bachelorette Party Left Her Paralyzed.”

The article was good, though. It was interesting to me that she is less than a year post-injury and seems to have a very rational perspective on the whole thing. I suspect that part of that is simply the experience of being in the media.

Profiles like this need you to be one thing or another, they don’t allow for the natural variety of one’s emotions and experiences. What I mean is, for a magazine profile you can’t be both optimistic/cheerful/good attitude and frightened/worried/sad. Even though that’s how we are as people. Stories about people with disabilities always make them either a hero or a bitter recluse, but the truth is many shades of gray.

Rachelle, the woman featured here, describes herself as always having been resilient and optimistic and that shines through the story. Of course I’m sure she has tough times, and there will be more struggle along the way, but she seems to have adjusted to her new life beautifully.

“It’s not the life Chris and I had planned, but we’ve rescheduled our wedding for this summer, and we know we’ll be able to get through anything.”