Worth Living Ambassador Tylia Flores
Tylia Flores is a 23-year-old born with cerebral palsy. Although her condition has affected her mobility, it has never affected her will and determination to make a difference in the world. Through her many life challenges and obstacles, she discovered her passion for writing. Tylia’s goal in life is to share her stories with the world. In doing so, she hopes to help others with disabilities realize that they too have the potential to make their dreams come true.
How Writing Got Me Out of a Dark Place
I was 15 years old when my life changed forever. I was a freshman in high school and I didn’t know the direction I was going to go in life like any 15-year-old girl would be going through at that age.
The only difference with me is that I have other obstacles and challenges that make me unique. I was born with spastic cerebral palsy (CP) for short, but I had never allowed my disability to stop me from living an average life as a human being.
As a teenager, I was involved in many different sports like baseball and basketball and loved to travel the world as a kid, and I still do to this very day. I was always an overachiever in school always got straight A’s and B’s no matter what.
But once I got to high school, I had started having difficulty with my grades. I lost my childhood friend to a brain tumor. I was very lost and had a dark cloud over the head all the time and often blamed myself for my best friend’s cancer and it was hard for me to deal with.
I was lost in my battle with depression, but I didn’t go to counseling or anything like that. I just kept it silent as I was going through grief and pain and I didn’t say a thing about it to anyone. I faced it alone and every day I wondered where my life was going to in the next couple of years and how was I going to cope with everything going through at the time. In my freshman year, I barely passed any of my classes that year.
So, the summer comes along, and I was still struggling with depression. I was still lost in the clouds and then I went back to school. I started off on the wrong foot so my parents decided to home school me. I started to see that people that I thought were my friends weren’t. My boyfriend at the time dumped me on Valentine’s Day, so I found myself to be alone, and I couldn’t escape it. Until one day I was at the Branes and Noble store with my dad drinking a Starbucks coffee and I started to imagine myself signing books of my own. Then I went home and started to write the sentence of my book, James Ticking Time Bomb and got it published at age 16. I got my grades up and I was able to get out the dark place. I completed high school with a 3.7 GPA and now I’m in college. I advocate for cerebral palsy and mental illness since awareness needs to be brought to all things. I also thank writing for changing my life and giving me a purpose.
You can follow Tylia on her social media
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Stompingoncpwithtylia/
Twitter https://twitter.com/stompingoncp1
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stomping_on_cp_with_tylia/