Newspaper Article

"A Positive Attitude Breaks Barriers: Stacie Turner is Proof"

Article in the Broward Communty College Observer Newspaper
by Emily Moorhouse

In this unpredictable roller coaster ride of life, people run into both hardships and triumphs: one phone call, one accident, one diagnosis, one decision, can change everything. BC student Stacie Turner's roller coaster launched her into a professional singing career at age 19, planted her on a couch to wait for death at age 29, and, recently landed her, at the age of 33, at BC's Professional Development Day as a keynote speaker. Her story is one in which the fragility of a human life is met with amazing resilience.

After graduating from high school in 1991, Turner enrolled at BC to study music. Even though she never finished her degree, she credits what she learned from her music professors for giving her a career in singing. "I kicked butt with what they taught me," she says. After starring in musicals and leading "a world entertainer lifestyle, I thought the world revolved around me.... I was selfish," admits Turner. In 1997, she took a hiatus from her singing career to get married and take care of her newborn son. Soon after, upon getting divorced and attempting to reenter the music business, her health began declining.

At 29 years old, Stacie Turner was diagnosed with Lupus. An autoimmune illness which is often fatal when it gets into major organs, Lupus had spread to her kidneys. The disease was also damaging her joints and causing her tremendous pain. Doctors told Turner that her kidneys would fail and that she was not a candidate for a transplant. "No one was falling at my feet to make me better. I wasn't a performer anymore." Once hyper and restless, Stacie was now bound to a wheelchair, and she "had a lot of time to think."

For three years, bed-ridden Turner weltered in depression and angriness until slow self-discovery finally triggered a light bulb. She told herself "get your butt up and go back to college." Turner had realized that "a hand of God" was the only thing that would save her. "When you realize this, the world stops revolving around you," she explains. "Going from spoiled diva to wheel-chair, Lupus patient with failing kidneys, it wakes you up. If God does give me the opportunity [to live], I better be ready to accept it and be ready to do something worthwhile with it."

Newly rejuvenated and fed up with being unable to go to the places she wanted to go because of her wheelchair, Turner started contacting store owners to get wheelchair ramps in their stores. However, they were unreceptive. She describes, "They would look at my wheelchair and think I'm stupid - that pissed me off. A disabled body does not equal a disabled brain." So, Stacie proclaimed that if they weren't going to do anything, she was.

Last fall, Turner re-enrolled at BC and has since completed one year in paralegal studies with straight A's. "I can't settle for a B - I've got to know my stuff," she says. Though she does not know how far her health will let her go, she plans to attend law school and advocate on behalf of other wheelchair users who are unable to maneuver in ramp-less facilities. She also plans to help accomplished Polio survivor and good friend of hers, Bill Norkunas. Turner raves that Norkunas was the first person with a disability to carry the Olympic Torch, was a contributor to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and, although he does not have a law degree, was invited several times to teach about disability law at Harvard University.

Today, doctors say Turner is in complete remission and since spring semester 2006 she has been able to use a walker or a cane. She has even reconnected with her roots in music by becoming the choreographer for the BC Seahawk singers. In a performance in which her nine-year-old son came down from Orlando to watch, Turner was able to get up from her wheelchair to dance and sing with the group. She refers to this as her proudest moment because she proved to herself and the world that, despite her condition, she could perform on stage again.

On February 24th, 2006, Stacie Turner brought a positive spirit and an inspirational story about breaking through life's barriers to BC's Professional Development Day. Her mission was to make the "audience realize that their boyfriend being a jerk or needing a baby-sitter" are not barriers. Turner has also touched many lives through sharing her story with various classes at BC. In fact, while riding the bus one day, she saw a woman who had heard one of her recent speeches. A little girl was at her side. The woman told Turner that she was on her way to class with her daughter because "not having a baby-sitter is not a barrier."

By letting life's hardships hold he or she back, one might never know the triumphs that could be experienced. Whatever the barrier being faced, a disability, an illness, a job, children, a partner or spouse, Turner asserts "There is no barrier that can stop you unless you allow it to." As goes the clichéd, yet ever-true, quote of success public-speaker and author, Brian Tracy, "You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you."