True Grit, and then back to Atlanta

 Graduation was the goal for a year. Now the goal is college, and that means a different kind of work.


In July Jackson went to Rutgers University for their True Grit program, which exists for exactly this: young people with spinal cord injuries learning how to run their own lives again before they head off to school. Not therapy in the hospital sense. The ordinary things that stop being ordinary after an injury like his.


From there he headed back to Atlanta. Shepherd Center took him in as a patient in February 2025 when nobody could tell us what his life was going to look like. This time he went back on purpose, for their Beyond Therapy program, to keep building strength and independence.


The plan is college in 2027. He is working on being able to do it on his own.

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