I've been disabled my entire life.
But disability wasn't like a big part of my life.
I wasn't raised to think of myself as being disabled.
I wasn't raised to think of whatever limitations I was going to have out there.
It wasn't until I graduated college that I realized, wait a minute, I have
to adjust my thinking of the world around me and myself.
A lot of us cannot subscribe to the hustle culture that has become our
society. And it's not because we're lazy, it's because we're disabled.
And that's something that I repeat very often - disabled, not lazy.
My name is
Tiara Simmons.
I'm 39 years old.
I make roughly $26,000 a year.
And I live in Long Beach, California.
I am a law clerk, just turned attorney at a solo practitioner family law firm,
and I just launched my own virtual law firm.
I was raised as a ward of the court, which means I was not raised by my
biological family.
My parents struggled with drug addiction and for our best
interests we were removed from the home, but luckily not split up.
I was raised by a legal guardian and her sisters.
I used prosthetics from K-12.
It was 20 pound prosthetic legs and crutches, and I couldn't carry anything.
I couldn't hold anything.
I couldn't walk up stairs.
They broke often.
They were painful.
I found that for me, it became easier to just
use my wheelchair.
It opened up the world for me.
I can actually get out and not worry about the two inches of snow that just fell
or the autumn rains.
You know, where I can't get a cab or I'm getting drenched because umbrellas don't work
for me. Raincoats don't work for me.
I thought California was my best option.
So I've been disabled all my life.
I wasn't born disabled but I became disabled before I turned one year
old. From what I was told, I had a blood infection and it caused
gangrene, blood clotting, and they had to emergency amputate my
legs below the knee, both of them, and a couple of my fingers on my right hand.
I was clueless about this settlement until right before senior
year in high school.
When I found out about the settlement money, I don't remember being
super excited, like, "Oh, I have a lot of money.
I'm rich now." It was just more so "Oh, okay," only because
I wasn't raised to put so much emphasis and value on money the way
that I do now as an adult who has none.
I was able to buy a house by the time I was 17 years old.
I was able to travel whenever I wanted to.
I had a beautiful apartment, 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom in one of the quote unquote
"luxury buildings" with a gym, in the heart of downtown Long Beach.
Rent I could just pay.
Sometimes I would pay 2 months in advance just to make sure that I didn't have to worry about anything.
You know how when the recession hit, people woke up and they're like, "My savings is gone!" And they didn't
know what to do with themselves.
That's kind of how I felt when I found out the settlement money was gone.
I woke up that morning knowing that I could pay my bills, knowing
that I would have no problem paying rent.
And by the end of that particular day, I just went into internal panic mode
because I didn't work.
My husband and I, for the most part, we split the bills.
Most of my money goes towards the rent.
His money goes towards all of the other bills.
But we have a joint account, so really it's just whoever's paycheck hits first
is who pays whatever bill needs to get paid.
I do have SNAP, but sometimes that runs out or sometimes the
case is on hold. So we have to make sure we budget for those
types of food emergencies.
I take public transportation and I spend maybe $25 to $30
per month on a tap card or a metro card, they call it, and then just have some
cash for the bus.
My husband takes Ubers to work.
There's no other option, especially because of his hours.
We were spending at one point about $250 to $300 per month just for
him to get to work.
We don't save a lot.
There's almost nothing to save.
We work.
We get our paychecks.
We save enough for the rent, if that's going to count as savings.
But just to have a savings, we don't really have that luxury.
I do not have student loan debt, but not because I paid it off.
It's because I received a total and permanent disability discharge of my student
loans.
That is only conditional and is conditioned on me being at or below the
poverty line for the inspection period.
If I go above a certain amount of money per year, as far as my income is
concerned, then they reinstate all of my student loans, all of them, with the
interest attached.
It's a rock and a hard place.
Like I can't afford to pay $400,000 in loans, but I also
can't afford to not make any money.
And as a law clerk, I already don't make a lot.
One day, I want to be able to buy a house.
Can't do that if I know that all like $400,000+ is going to
come back because then it'll be buy the house or pay the loan.
Living with a disability is very expensive, especially when you don't
have resources.
Because of wheelchair repairs,
I have to miss work, sometimes my husband might have to miss work, so we lose money.
Besides just spending money, we lose the opportunity to make money.
My ultimate, ultimate goal is to be a public defender for LA
County. It's not something that people hear and they're like, "You want to do what?" No,
I want to be a public defender.
I want to work with indigent clients.
I want to work for people who might be in situations, financial, like I am,
who have found themselves in some trouble, but they can't afford the downtown law
firm. It's just interesting because a lot of people, you know, when they found out that I
want to be a lawyer and then that I actually became a lawyer, they just started saying cha-ching,
cha-ching. Like, as if the money was going to roll in.
And I'm like, that's not how it works, you know, unless I go to big law.
But I don't want to work in big law.
I want to work for the everyday man or woman, person.
I'm not rolling in the dough right now, and I probably will never be rolling in the dough.
But I know that, you know, as long as I can survive, and as long as I'm doing what I think is my
mission in life, I'm okay.