Peer & Family Support Program Spotlight: Ammie Morgan
Anyone with a spinal cord injury knows the challenges related to learning to live in a new way. For Ammie Morgan, her injury also required her to learn to love herself and others for the first time.
“I grew up in foster care, surrounded by drugs and physical abuse. My mom had no life for herself. I grew up thinking you were supposed to have a man run your life,” says Morgan. “I never saw love or affection. I didn’t know what that looked like.”
With no father figure to say what she deserved, Morgan assumed she needed a man to tell her what to do and say, even how to dress and do her hair. When she started working, she noticed coworkers whose relationships looked different, loving and supportive.
“They didn’t come to work having to cover a black eye or other trauma, and I started putting the pieces of the puzzle together,” says Morgan. “I began to speak for myself in my relationship. It didn’t go well.”
In April 2010, after Morgan broke up with her boyfriend, he sat outside her work for over seven hours and then shot her twice when she came out, once in the hand and once in the back that went out her chest. At 19 years old, Morgan sustained a T4 incomplete injury, and her boyfriend was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
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“I had no immediate family to help, so I moved in with my best friend, who lives with cerebral palsy and also uses a wheelchair,” says Morgan. “I didn’t know how to take a bath or use the bathroom for myself, so I had a team of friends helping until I realized that wasn’t fair to them.”
It was the push she needed to learn self-care. She got a job, learned to drive and moved into her own apartment.
“God didn’t keep me here for others to take care of me,” says Morgan. “I broke free from a man and the only life I knew. I needed to learn how to live, but I also needed to learn how to love myself and others. I wanted to grow into someone better than I was before the injury and help others do the same.”
Five years ago, Morgan became a Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation Peer & Family Support Program mentor. She also worked with the University of Alabama Hospital in Birmingham to help establish a program that enables newly injured individuals to learn from others living with an injury.
“It is difficult to learn things like how to put on a shirt or not fall out of bed from an able-bodied person. I want to be an example for others. I want others to see someone who has made it over the hill and know they can too,” says Morgan.
To date, Morgan estimates that she has spoken with over 75 people through volunteering several days a week at the hospital and through Zoom calls with her Reeve Foundation peers. Her go-to advice is three key things.
“First, time heals all. You don’t need to rush it. It is ok to take a minute out of an hour. Let time do its thing,” says Morgan. “Number two, be patient with yourself and others. What is done is done; accept where you are. Third, keep your faith, whatever that might look like for you. Know in the end you will be ok. God has your back.”
She continues, “It makes me proud to see others be successful. It is a constant reminder to me to be good to myself and that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not just helping others; I’m helping heal myself too.”
The Peer & Family Support Program provides mentoring to people with paralysis and their family members/caregivers. Connect with a mentor here.