FITCHBURG, Mass. — In 1988, when Maria Milagros Vazquez was 11 years old, a fall from the fire escape of her five-story Bronx apartment building nearly took her life.

“Where we grew up, the park up the street wasn’t accessible to us because it was basically destroyed,” Vazquez explained. “The slide had been carved into, so as a kid if you went down the slide, the back of your legs would get cut up.”

In lieu of a park, Vazquez says one of her sisters came up with an idea to create a swing out of a sheet in the fire escape outside their mother’s apartment. 

“All day long, kids were up there playing on the swing, she said. “Eventually I asked my mom, ‘Can I go out?’ and she would say ‘No, it’s late.’ But I snuck out the window anyway. I didn’t know from all its use that it had come loose, and the bar it was attached to had broken.”

Vazquez said as she swung higher and higher, the sheet came undone and she plummeted over the fire escape.

“I remember holding onto the sheet, and I could see my best friend in the apartment, and I could hear the sound,” she said. “I just looked up, and the sheet came undone, and I woke up in the hospital.”

The prognosis was grim. As Vazquez fell, she smashed her head and obtained a brain injury. In the hospital, she was strapped into a backplate with her left leg suspended in place and one of her arms in a cast.

“At that time, I loved dancing,” she said. “When the doctor came in, he took the clipboard off my bed and says, ‘You are probably not going to walk again. You are definitely not going to be able to dance again, and you’re probably not going to be able to have kids.’ He put the clipboard back on the bed and left the room.” 

Unphased, Vazquez was determined to prove him wrong. She began leaving her hospital bed to attempt to walk. She says her progress eventually convinced the medical professionals to send her to physical therapy where she gradually learned to walk again.

A couple of years later, Vazquez moved to Fitchburg with her family and began high school. She would go on to attend Fitchburg State University where she studied sociology and began doing spoken word performances. She soon realized that her life experiences could be used to connect to others and help them heal. She entered Fitchburg State’s master’s program where she began taking counseling courses and soon decided to become a personal life coach.

“Storytelling became a part of everything I do,” Vazquez said. “I recognize that when we share these really hard and intimate pieces of ourselves, other people can relate. We are not only healing ourselves, but we are giving room for them to heal as well… Life coaching came from my own desire to help and realizing that I don’t want to sit there. I talk too much, I share too many stories.”

Vazquez, now 43, infuses inspirational stories like these into her work. She is a motivational speaker, personal life coach and author of a self-help book called “Super Sparkly Everything,” which came out in 2017. In 2018, she did a TED Talk at Natick High School. Today, in addition to her coaching and online courses, Vazquez is giving talks about leadership and race. 

She has also given diversity talks to employees at Walden Behavioral Care, Mount Wachusett Community College and NewVue Communities, a non-profit community development organization.

To learn more about Vazquez, visit her website at: https://www.mariamilagros.net/speaker.