‘You have a choice on how you respond.’ Kelly Brush on thriving after a life-altering accident

Few people have turned adversity into opportunity as dramatically as Kelly Brush.Brush was on the Middlebury College ski team when she was paralyzed in a ski racing accident in 2006. Twenty years later, Brush is a leader of a national movement to empower people with spinal cord injuries.“I'm so glad that I'm able to do that and support … thousands of other people that I don't even know and their families and create things that just feel a little bit better,” Brush told me.I asked Brush what enabled her to stay positive following her accident.“Whenever something happens in life, you have a choice on how you respond,” she replied. “Even when there's things that are really hard or really sad, you feel that, and then you make the choice to move you forward in a good direction.”Brush has mixed feelings about people calling her an inspiration. If “an understanding of who I am and what I've done creates inspiration, that's great. But not the inspiration that comes just because I exist and I'm in a wheelchair.”Brush is concerned about how people with disabilities are especially vulnerable to delays or cutbacks in health care. She has personal experience of this: she recently had to undergo major back surgery and had to seek care in an emergency room when her primary care provider couldn’t see her for several weeks.“People with disabilities have greater health care needs,” she said. “When the health care system isn't set up well, we are then paying more for those greater needs. I see it time and again with complications that come from spinal cord injuries.”Brush, who recently turned 40, is the founder and spokesperson for the Kelly Brush Foundation, which grants about $1 million per year to people with spinal cord injuries to purchase adaptive sports equipment and maintain an active lifestyle. Its best known fundraiser is the annual Kelly Brush Ride, which draws nearly 1,000 bike riders and will take place this year on Sept. 12 in Middlebury. There are also Kelly Brush Rides in Park City, Utah, and the Bay Area.Brush is especially proud of the community that she and her foundation have helped build. “When I got hurt, I didn't know anybody else with a spinal cord injury,” she said. Now her foundation connects people with spinal cord injuries with one another. “There's something really different about being able to build community with people who are doing things similarly to you, as well as just the ability to feel seen and be seen by other people who are living a similar life to you outside of adaptive sports.”Brush lives in Charlotte with her two young daughters. She worked for 10 years as a pediatric nurse practitioner, but is taking a break from that to lead her foundation and look after her children.I asked Brush what she hopes people take away from her story.“To be excited about the fact that I've been able to live such a full life and continue to have all the same highs and lows that so many people have and I do it from my wheelchair,” she replied.“I definitely have some more struggles than others. But my life is awesome and really fun. I hope people can see that and see the beauty in life, no matter what comes up and what happens, and find and follow that.”