Imagine being a junior in high school, being extremely involved with extracurricular activities, having an extensive list of hopes and dreams for the future and then in the matter of ten seconds, something happens that completely changes everything.

While many people probably cannot relate to this situation, a tragic stage accident on Nov. 11, 1997 while rehearsing for a high school play caused inspirational speaker Tasha Schuh to become a C5 quadriplegic, meaning that each of her four limbs is impaired.

Although she can still use her arms and wrists, she cannot feel anything from her chest down, and she has completely lost the use of her fingers. She will be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Schuh fell backwards through a trapdoor onstage, crushing her skull and severing her spinal cord.

Schuh and her husband Doug visited UW-La Crosse on Thursday, Oct. 15 and gave a presentation entitled “Little is Huge,” in Schuh explained her experience living with quadriplegia and how she has remained positive and full of life despite the life-threatening accident.

“I have accomplished more in this wheelchair than I ever thought I could on two feet,” Schuh stated.

Although she had an accident during her junior year that caused her to miss a lot of high school, she still graduated on time with the rest of her class and attended college. She graduated from Winona State University with a major in communication studies and a minor in music. She even went back to school and obtained a degree in theology, maintaining a 4.0 GPA.

After nearly losing her life, Schuh was extremely depressed and felt like she had no purpose. But her stay at the Ronald McDonald house with many young cancer patients allowed her to see how fully those children lived their lives, and she quickly had a change of heart.

“Many of these patients didn’t even know if they would live to see the next day, but here I was thinking I had it the worst,” she said.

Schuh quickly realized that she did, in fact, have a purpose.

“All I needed was a little change of perspective about my purpose on this earth. Little is huge,” Schuh said.

Schuh’s mission is now to speak to anyone she can in order to let everyone know that they do have a purpose and that everyone is here for a reason.

“Before my accident, I was simply going through the motions of life and making some not so good choices. Now I cherish the little things in life, for they are what make life truly worth living. They give such meaning to everyday I live,” she said.

Schuh met her husband Doug on christianmingle.com after a friend convinced her to join. They dated for a year and a half and got married on Aug. 17, 2013. She stated that he is her biggest encourager, and she doesn’t know where she’d be without him.