If I would have just gotten out of the car, I wouldn't have been in this position.
My mom put me into dance and I just never left.
I started competing when I was five and that's when I really fell in love with it.
I always thought of becoming a professional dancer and moving to Los Angeles and
being in music videos and going on tour.
And that was always my goal.
Me, my best friend, and her boyfriend were about to go to a basketball game,
but it ended up being too late, so we ended up going to a party instead.
I ended up drinking, playing beer pong, and having a good time,
and it ended up being pretty late.
My friend asked, does anyone need a ride?
And that's when I was like, I do!
The driver was the one that was drinking and there was two of us --
three of us in the back.
We were driving in Skyline Forest in Monterey.
All of a sudden we hit the side of a curb, and
we went down an embankment and hit a tree head-on.
After we hit, um...
Two of the guys ended up waking up screaming.
And the driver ended up waking up and crawling out of the car.
Um...
And I guess I...
I didn't wake up.
When I got to the hospital my dad was the first one to see me.
The first thing that I told him was, Dad I'm gonna be okay, I just, I just can't feel anything.
It's the third day, and look, I'm sitting up.
Um, thank you for all your support.
It really helped me along.
Two weeks after the accident, the doctor finally came in.
All he said was, so do you have any questions?
And I said, well yeah, why can't I feel my legs?
And he was like, well, you have a spinal chord injury,
and you're never gonna be able to walk again.
And I was like...
Okay, but I don't just walk, I'm a dancer.
And he just looked at me and shook his head, and he goes, I'm sorry, but
that's not possible anymore.
I honestly thought that, well, I'll break a bone, I'll heal,
and I'll go back to my normal life.
I never knew that you could break something and it could change everything.
My dad and I were talking, I was crying to him and just saying like,
why me, why was I the only one injured like this?
And my dad said, he goes, as a father, I don't know what to say.
And what he told me was, maybe something good can come out of this.
I never blamed the driver.
Ever.
And still to this day, I don't blame him for my injuries.
I always took on the responsibility myself, knowing that I got in the car,
knowing that he was drinking.
I worked out for five years straight, trying to walk again.
And I learned that it's not really up to me mentally, It's up to my body.
And so I realized that either I spend my entire life trying to walk again, or
I understand what happened to me and deal with it and create something, something different,
but also something I still would love to do.
The first two years of my injury, I met some amazing girls via social media.
All the girls that I met online were all other wheelchair users.
I had this bright idea to create a dance showcase in my home town.
I started this and reached out to them because i didn't know anyone else in a chair and
I wanted friends and I didn't want to feel alone.
And then a few years later, I brought...
Well, I made the best decision I could, and I brought the team down to Los Angeles.
So now we're based out of Los Angeles.
If I would look back and tell myself one thing when I was laying in that hospital bed
getting the news that I would never walk again, it would be,
hold on tight,
because you're gonna go faster than you ever thought.
I truly do believe that there is a reason for everything in life,
and there's a reason why I was the only one that was paralyzed,
and there's a reason why I started this dance team.
I just have to keep reminding myself that, you know, good things happen to good people
and bad things happen to good people, but it's how you live after
that really makes or breaks you.
That whole process of learning how to just become independent as an individual,
it took a really long time, but now it's like second nature.
My name is Chelsie Hill, I'm twenty five years old,
and I am beautiful.