ESTERO, Fla. — It took a moment for Tahja Ilerant to process what was actually happening. "Yo... this is actually happening..." But when it finally settled in, they realized they got this! Graduation!
Tahja and her classmates are the first students to graduate from the Florida Gulf Coast University's Rise Program. FGCU says this is the first academy for adults with intellectual disabilities in Southwest Florida.
"I was diagnosed with a learning disability at the age of 12," Tahja says. Before the big graduation day, this Immokalee High School graduate shared her story with Fox 4's Shari Armstrong.
She had lost her father to gun violence and her mother, not long after, to kidney failure. "The only person that actually believed in me was my mom." This was a tremendous loss for her. During this time she was also bullied about her disability, with the thought of ending her own life.
"I was just tired of the pain and everyone telling me that I would never add up to be anything because I have a disability."
With support from her teachers, Tahja was able to turn her pain into a desire to advocate for people like her. "People with disabilities just want to be treated like anybody else."
That mindset drove her to apply to college and get a job as a Resident Assistant overseeing freshmen students. This was a responsibility that was redefining her life because, as she adds, "Because people with disabilities don't have a leadership role." This is a notion Tahja hopes to change.
"That's the person I am. I'm going to find a way to get y way." And that's how she found her way here, in front of her proud Grandma who helped raise her and continue her vision of becoming a public speaker.
If Tahja and her Grandma could say one thing to her mom today it would be, "We did it… we did it… we made it… even though it was hard…t here were many times where I wanted to give up and just call it quits… we made it… we pushed through… I never allowed anything to stop me…we did it.”
