Please stop what you are doing right now. What is coming will not need to shout to be heard. Nor will it resort to sentimentality. Do not ask me what lies behind these lines that may burn. Challenge their high flames. I clarify, it will not be a self-help or self-pity plot. It might take a place in an essential corner of your memory, as its protagonist understood that life is not a straight path. You have to face it by removing the stones in the way to pave your destiny…
“Women have many obstacles against them in life,” affirms Yenigladys Suárez, with her heart fluttering in her chest. “I personally felt the brake and discrimination through a youth coach. He hurt me,” she points out and breathes deeply as if capable of storing in her lungs the sad episodes of that time. “That is behind me now. There are more people who lend me a hand,” she continues, dressing her confession in a silent perfume that slips through, free of fears and full of sincerity.
The three-time Parapan American champion, in Lima 2019 and Santiago de Chile 2023 in the 10-meter air pistol SH1, and participant in the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, tilts her head. She rubs the bridge of her nose with her index finger and thumb. She raises a finger and, like a pilgrim of faith in herself, she draws words that are nails for the coffin of misunderstanding.
“Having a disability is not a brake for me. Sometimes I have dealt with people who lack sensitivity. I try to make them understand that they need to improve in that regard. I am an athlete, also a housewife. I don’t want to be in a wheelchair, but I will not just give up and die because of that. I know my rights,” she asserts with the strength of someone who has tattooed in her spirit never to give up.
“Women with disabilities cannot allow the world to fall on them. It is complicated. Sometimes you don’t know how you will face life. You need family support. It’s not good to be overprotected because that doesn’t let you grow. If you are alive, it is because God willed it. There is always hope…”
Occasionally, existence overwhelms you, sweeps you away. You are in darkness like the night; is that what we call "agonizing"?
“At 15, when I was practicing athletics, I had an accident during weight training. As a child, I thought I was going to recover. Later, I saw that the situation was different. I faced it with strength because of my mother. If I had given up to die, I don’t know where we would have ended up. The worst was at night. I asked myself why it happened to me, what had I done wrong. It was hard.
“I thought about committing suicide,” she says as if she were mercilessly whipping herself, recalling that beyond skin, viscera, and bones, we are imperfect souls. “I didn’t want to be living in a wheelchair. To attempt to take your own life, you have to be brave and at the same time very cowardly for not facing the situation. No one should have to go through something like that.
“It’s terrible to live through it. You need the help of people close to you. They are the ones who give you strength. My mother, my brother, and the specialists at Julito Díaz hospital were decisive,” she adds as if recalling the notes of an old and chilling melody.
Yenigladys pauses. She moves in the wheelchair with a naturalness that seems like a fantastic dancing figure. She ventures into the kitchen and returns a few minutes later with full cups of coffee, whose aroma whispers to us that there is still much poetry and strength in the chapters of her story.
“Sports are my world,” she states, maintaining her gaze, while her lively, mischievous, and invincible eyes speak. “When I had the accident, I said I wasn’t going to return. I intended to come back running on my two legs. I was in that process for five years. Watching the London 2012 Paralympic Games helped me. I told my mother, ‘I want to return, but not to athletics!’ In a wheelchair, the only thing I could do was throwing events, and I never liked that.
“I tried table tennis. I couldn’t because there was no coach. Then fate made sport shooting choose me. Now it’s my way of living, my livelihood. As a child, I saw myself with medals. I have achieved it,” she expresses, and the beats of her smile fill the room.
Coffee has a delicious effect. We talk about the complexities of the sports world, the obstacles, acceptance. Even about certain challenges that can weigh like a heavy cross.
“The wheelchair makes you strong. If you manage to move forward despite a disability that wasn't your fault or that you hadn't anticipated, nothing can stop you. I don’t see any limits,” he reveals with a gesture that seems to invoke the god of overcoming. “It’s you who sets new challenges for yourself. Nobody can deny you the desire to achieve something better. There will be disappointments. You can't throw in the towel. To become stronger, you have to reinvent yourself…”
Sometimes the extraordinary is not found at the peaks, but in the frank and loving. Then the voice of the sacred takes the floor.
“My greatest inspiration is my mom (Eloísa Echeverría, a glory of Cuban athletics, now deceased, and a multi-medalist in five Central American and Caribbean Games and four Pan American Games). What I am and what I have achieved is thanks to her; I can’t say otherwise,” she expresses, and a glassy look along with a posthumous silence coin the most brilliant response.
What advice would you give to young athletes with disabilities who want to follow in your footsteps? I ask, handing him the empty mug and encouraging him to continue.
“Focusing on training with discipline and consistency is what brings results. It won’t be a path covered with flowers; it will be rocky. But if you don’t give up on your goal, you will achieve it. You have to stay strong and let no one stop you.”
We enter "hostile territory." Sometimes, when we touch on certain topics, we become "war correspondents." Bullets to the chest are to be welcomed.
"For some time now, there have been changes in the perception towards athletes with disabilities. There is no differentiation between us and able-bodied athletes. We enjoy the same rights. High-performance centers have not yet created all the conditions for access. The officials strive to make the situation less difficult. There is support.
"In journalism, the coverage is not the same. People don't know us equally. Only the fundamentals, those who are constantly talked about — she emphasizes, the corners of her lips curling — are known. Greater dissemination is urgent. If you have no knowledge, you cannot become sensitized, and I don't just mean the athletes, but ordinary people with disabilities. The media are the ones with that capability. I can give my voice, but it is small. We need real awareness. To be clear, I don't mean we should put on a face of ‘oh, poor things!’ — she adds, burying her face in her hands —. No, no. We are social beings just the same. We don't want pity. Just a better life in general.
"From a wheelchair, I have achieved personal fulfillment. I managed to become an athlete. Not in athletics; yes, in shooting. I became an engineer. I am still not a mother. Step by step, I reached my goals. I achieved things that others without physical restrictions have not been able to achieve.
"I tell women that nothing can stop us. Our days are complicated and even tough, yet we must fight with hope and a smile — she expands, her eyes sparkling like challenging stars —. There should be no fear. We have to battle for our dreams even if they seem impossible."
Some conversations end in revelation. Without dramatics, they make you face the path of life differently. Sometimes, with renewed faith in the soul. Yenigladys Suárez is a dark gem, a powerful lightning bolt. Her story, with tears of inspiration in the eyes of the heart, touches us with that beauty called overcoming.
