Circumstances don’t create our character — they reveal it.

This past spring, Oprah Winfrey produced a reality charity show, Oprah’s Big Give, where contestants were challenged to find and help people in need. Ten charitable people were chosen in a nationwide search to compete on the show. One of the contestants — Carlana Stone, currently of Glendale, Calif., but raised in Shreveport, La. — may be the first wheelchair user to appear on the cast of a reality show.

Stone made the cut because of her work with The Courage Community — a cause-related, online social network and activism website to help Americans who are underserved. According to the show’s executive producer, Ellen Rakieten, “Carlana really distinguished herself from the beginning with her infectious spirit, her charisma and her take-no-prisoners approach.” But after just three episodes of rising to Oprah’s challenges, Stone got the boot.

One teammate accused Stone, who will be 40 in October and has a T12-L1 incomplete spinal cord injury, of being pushy and difficult. Afterward, a judge, reminding Stone to involve her teammates said, “Look a bit behind you … you’re always going to be in the front, you’re that kind of character.”

And what a character she is. Between her squeals of excitement and delight, her whispered words of emphasis and her smoky, sexy voice and down home vocabulary peppered with “honey,” “sugar” and “sweetie pie,” we learn how this amazing powerhouse became the giver of love, support and kindness she is today.

The youngest of three sisters, Stone describes her family as being co-dependent, with her father — a Methodist minister turned VP of sales and marketing for Hallmark — as the central character. Typical for the South, she adds.

Stone embodies the best characteristics of her parents. “My dad is the life of any party. He is the first person people go to when they need a friend — he’s loyal, fun, very extroverted and boisterous.” She describes her stay-at-home mother as a saint and her best friend. “My mom is the epitome of unconditional love and acceptance. She is the embodiment of integrity, honesty and love in every sense of the word. But she’s very quiet about it. My father is a big ol’ love ball, my mom is much more peaceful and serene.”

Stone says she and her father are big dreamers, fiercely competitive, who love to debate each other. “My daddy always says, ‘Baby! Our relationship is volatile. But it’s deep!'” Stone’s desire to help others grew as she watched her father on weekends helping others through a group he created called “Cheerful Givers.”

Meeting Paralysis Face to Face
After she sustained her SCI at 17 in a car accident, Stone spent several years searching “cures” to regain mobility. “If I stayed in Shreveport, I was destined to become the sorority girl who goes to Louisiana State University ball games every weekend,” she says. “Instead, I’d heard that Craig Rehab in Denver was coming out with the FES [functional electrical stimulation] bicycle, so I moved to Colorado.” A month after arriving in Denver, Stone found out she wasn’t a candidate for FES and enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“I didn’t know a soul in Boulder. Nobody knew me as the student council president/cheerleader/gymnast that I was in high school,” she says. “I didn’t feel validated and I was so afraid of being labeled ‘the girl in the wheelchair.’ So instead, I presented myself to everyone as someone who was not defined by my physical circumstances.”

Stone believes it’s up to us to show people what we want them to see to change their perspective of us. “Everybody has something,” she says. “We can dispel the myths. We have a lot to teach people through the way we live.”

Stone also believes that if she allows others to help her, she’s enabling them to feel good about themselves. “If I can let my ego drop a little bit, I’m giving them an opportunity to empower themselves,” she says. “A lot of us, when we face life-altering experiences such as SCI, we try to be as independent and invincible as possible, which I’ve found can become a liability.”

Stone says her father, who wanted to “fix his baby girl,” searched the world for a quick fix for her SCI, which took her to Russia for stem cell surgery. “I got hip flexors back, and, honey, hip flexors make the biggest difference in your transfers and in a number of things. It made my life better. After Russia I moved to the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. I had another surgery, went back to school for a year, then went back to Russia to go through a hardcore physical therapy program.”

She stayed two years in Russia after falling in love but returned home during the 1991 Soviet Union coup d’état attempt. She eventually became what she calls, “Florida’s first wheelchair-wielding news reporter” for an ABC affiliate. By the mid-1990s, Stone was producing Leeza Gibbons’ talk show.

“The first time I met her, she was so confident and positive, everything else just fell away,” Gibbons remembers. “The production offices were an obstacle course with narrow halls and cables everywhere, and I wondered, ‘How is she going to do this?’ But she just did it. Carlana’s chair is like a handbag on her shoulder, it’s just another accessory she’s wearing.”

Stone met her husband, John Lawson, while a “groupie” to his band, Rumplebees, and asked him out on their first date. They were married in 2004.

She didn’t want to roll down the aisle in her wheelchair. Instead, wearing a cranberry red suede dress and spike-heel boots, she was carried to her wedding altar “Nefertiti-style” by her two sisters and two best girlfriends while a zydeco band played “Whiskey Before Breakfast.” In the Mardi Gras-style processional, her father carried a peacock staff and two male friends fanned her with ostrich feathers.  “Actually, my sisters and girlfriends were struggling and tripping down the aisle,” she laughs. “My dad then picked me up and placed me on a stool where John and I sat. But I forgot to plan an exit, so when the time came, John picked me up in his arms, swung me around and just swayed back and forth. We were just grinning and laughing.”

Oprah’s Big Give
On Oprah’s Big Give, each contestant was given money with the challenge to “change the lives of complete strangers in the most creative and dramatic ways.” Filmed in different cities, contestants worked on their own or in teams, and all were given a car.

Stone believes everyone involved with the show allowed her to be on an equal playing field, and she is portrayed as such. But during one challenge, she had to visit a family who lived up a flight of stairs.  Unable to enlist the crew’s help, she searched the neighborhood for a one-level home, came upon an at-risk halfway house and talked two teenagers into carrying her up the stairs. They waited hours to carry her back down.

During the second episode in Denver, the contestants were told to give away the car they were driving. Stone headed to Craig Rehab, found a man who was about to leave the facility after an SCI. On camera, Stone showed the man how to transfer into her equipped vehicle, then handed him the keys. The next shot is the man beaming from behind the wheel. The lesson and exchange is swift and matter-of-fact, but for Stone, it was much more.

“When I was in the hospital after my accident, four people got together and bought me a brand-new car equipped with hand controls. It was my key to independence. When Oprah and the show gave me the opportunity to give back what had been given to me … it once again proved to me that giving is a circle.”
Stone’s mantra, learned from her mother, is: Circumstances don’t create our character — they reveal it.

“It’s in those moments that our strength and our will is realized,” she says. “You can choose to not be a victim and to use those circumstances or challenges to achieve a richer sense of self. Hey, opportunity slaps me in the face every day, I just have to recognize that.”

During her last challenge on Oprah’s Big Give, Stone’s team was not working together and she tried to encourage communication. Instead, the judges said her actions got in the way of her team’s progress and eliminated her.

“I’m a fixer,” says Stone. “And my parents taught me the importance of solid communication. I tried to get our team to communicate, but I couldn’t make that happen.”

A Community of Hope
It was with fixing people and situations in mind that Stone — ex-news reporter, author, TV producer, and pilot — started The Courage Community, which aims to set up local chapters throughout the country to meet the needs of underserved Americans. CC’s first mission is to serve Iraq War vets with post-traumatic stress disorder and physical disabilities.

The Courage Community will provide electronic networking for Iraqi veterans — civilians may join, too – with or without physical disabilities, but especially those who have PTSD. Stone hopes the organization will raise awareness by partnering with specific organizations and professionals to provide needed support. She also hopes to use her life experiences – especially as a recent producer for A&E’s Intervention — to guide those new to disability through difficult turning points and healing.

“There are well over 100,000 veterans who have PTSD,” says Stone. “Of those who’ve applied to the VA for mental health assistance, over two-thirds have yet to receive any treatment.” She says many do not apply for assistance due to the stigma of mental illness, and without help, many Iraq veterans turn to suicide [at a rate that is two to four times higher than civilians of the same age].

“If they go through the VA, their PTSD is on public record,” she explains. “We are not going to expose this person as having post-traumatic stress disorder, we’re going to tell their story in a different way and we’re going to get them help.”

She also notes that the overwhelmed VA hospital system has a doctor/patient ratio of one to 500, and what’s more, over 32,000 veterans have sustained life-altering injuries, including limb loss and SCI.

“Some of these veterans languish in the hospital,” she says. “It took one guy a year to get his disability pay because they had to prove he was an Iraq War vet even though he’d gone through the U.S. Army’s Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany and Walter Reed Hospital. While these guys are staying in the hospital with their physical injuries, they are making on average $15,000 a year.”

CC will interview and produce videos about veterans and post them to its website. Stone has tapped into her celebrity connections and will enlist help from the National Pain Foundation, addiction counselors, and therapies that deal with PTSD.

“And if there is someone with an SCI or other physical disability who wants to go sailing, we’re going to make that happen through donations and affiliations,” Stone says. “We’re going to get people involved in their community by signing on to help veterans who are coming back, facing the brutal aftermath of the war.” CC’s first local chapter is in Portland, Ore., sponsored by the Portland Trailblazers NBA team.

“The idea that I can use my own life experience and the wisdom gained from it to make someone else’s pain a little less hurtful or to take their pain away, is incredible to me,” says Stone. “I think we’re all called in this life to find our purpose. We don’t know how many people we can touch. I think we’re fortunate enough, some of us, to have been called to be living proof, to dispel the myth that just because we’re struck by tragedy that we’re forever victims. We’re only victims if we choose to be.”

Courage Community’s First Mission
Courage Community members will help vets with post-traumatic stress disorder by employing eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which has been an effective treatment for PTSD symptoms, including depression, anxiety, nighttime nightmares and daytime flashbacks of the traumatic event.

“You can’t get the trauma out of your head,” says Dr. Albert Zbick with Pain Management Solutions, Miami, Fla. “What makes it a trauma is a neuro-physiological process that causes the memory to occur physically.” Zbick explains that all events in our lives are stored and recorded three-dimensionally. “Memory records all bodily physical sensations, what you thought and what you felt while experiencing the event,” he says.

Then, any part of that “record” of the event that occurs in your life — a scent, sight, sound, feeling — can trigger PTSD symptoms. EMDR neutralizes the event and breaks the connection between past and present. Once neutralized, the memory is no longer traumatic, just another memory.

Resources
• The Courage Community Foundation, 877/9Meet-A-Hero; www.couragecommunity.org.
• Pain Medicine Solutions, 866/910-7246; www.painmedicinesolutions.com.
• EMDR Institute, 831/761-1040; www.emdr.com.