The Cody Unser First Step Foundation
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05/27/2026
Hey everyone… last month I launched my Substack and my first article “Wheelchair Barbie Gets a Mammogram” 🤘🏁💖
This is about disability, medical trauma, accessibility, aging, early detection, and why disabled women deserve to be seen.
If you’ve ever felt unseen by medicine, this one’s for you.
Disabled women age.
Disabled women screen.
Disabled women matter.
Check it out, share it, and help spread the word. Rock ON🤘🏁💖
Post-op check & these girls are healing beautifully!!! 💜🏁🤘
One thing this experience reminded me of: the patient-doctor relationship matters deeply, especially as a paralyzed woman navigating a healthcare system that often doesn’t know what to do with our bodies.
🤍 Communication is everything.
🤍 Honesty is everything.
🤍 Trust is everything.
I’m incredibly grateful for my amazing and talented surgeon and the way we worked together as a team throughout this process. That collaboration matters more than people realize.
Still recovering. Still swollen. Still tired.
But already feeling relief. More to come later…
Thank You ALL so much for your thoughts and support! I feel ALL the love and I am so grateful! Shoutout to my badass caregiver/sister holding down pit crew duties while I heal. 💜
Next up…Wheelchair Barbie’s new bra and swimsuit era…Comin’ In HOT! 💜🤘🏁 What’s new
01/07/2026
🏁 TO THE DISABILITY COMMUNITY OF NEW MEXICO—START YOUR ENGINES 🏁
Every movement needs a pit crew. Every race needs drivers willing to take the wheel. And every fight for justice ends with the same goal: that checkered flag where our rights, stories, and lived experiences are finally seen and heard.
We are a vast, powerful disability community—disabled people, caregivers, families, allies—and we are strongest when we line up on the same track. Our bodies, minds, and experiences may be different, but our destination is shared: dignity, access, independence, and equity.
I’m fired up to join members of the New Mexico Disability Coalition, caregivers, families, and fellow advocates this Saturday for the Pre-Legislative Forum, as we prepare for Disability Rights Awareness Day on February 11th at the New Mexico State Capitol.
🏁 This is where the pit crew comes together.
🏁 This is where your voice matters.
🏁 This is where we race toward real change.
Start 2026 by using your voice. Bring your story. Bring your lived experience. Bring your fire. Advocacy doesn’t require perfection—only participation. When we show up, we change policies, shift narratives, and remind lawmakers that disability rights are human rights.
✨ EVENT DETAILS
-Pre-Legislative Forum: Saturday, January 10, 2026: CNM WORKForce Training Center at 5600 Eagle Rock Ave NE, Albuquerque, NM 87113.
-Disability Rights Awareness Day: February 11, 2026: New Mexico State Capitol Building
Whether you’re a first-time advocate or a seasoned activist, there’s room for you on this track. We all need a pit crew—and New Mexico, this one is ours.
Let’s roll. Let’s race. Let’s cross that checkered flag together.
Check out the link below and See ya there!
💖🤘🏁
https://givebutter.com/Y2leKt
It’s PADI Adaptive Dive Week! 🌊🧜🏻♀️🤿
In a world full of NO…Scuba Diving told me YES.
Back in 2017, The Cody Unser First Step Foundation took a group of young adults with spina bifida & cerebral palsy to Key Largo, FL for their PADI Open Water Cerification. This journey first started in the most ordinary place — a Summer Camp in Indiana — where they took their very first breaths underwater.
That spark led to a trip to the Denver Aquarium, where confidence grew. And finally… to the open ocean, where everything shifted. They earned their PADI Open Water Certification, but what happened next was even bigger. That YES underwater turned into these young adults telling their parents:
“I want to go out of state for college.”
“I want to learn to drive.”
I know that feeling.
When I first became a scuba diver a year after becoming paralyzed, all the doubts & fears I carried about being paralyzed — all the noise of living in an ableist world — were silenced. Not erased, but replaced with something stronger: Freedom, Independence, Possibility.
Because underwater, there are No Limits.
“Changing Lives One Dive at a Time” became more than a motto for Cody’s Great Scuba Adventures.
It became a calling.
A heartbeat.
A mission.
What began as my YES became an invitation for Dive Professionals everywhere to step up and get trained in adaptive teaching — to expand who gets access to the ocean, who gets to feel weightless, who gets to experience possibility.
The PADI Adaptive Techniques Course was created for exactly this reason:
To make diving more accessible for disabled people worldwide.
To shift the culture.
To raise expectations.
To create YES where the world so often says NO.
And the tide is changing — finally, beautifully.
More instructors.
More divers.
More belief.
More YES.
I am SO here for it!
Happy PADI Adaptive Dive Week, let’s celebrate the world of Possibility together!
Here’s to every diver who has discovered their power One Breath, One Descent, One YES at a time. 🌊💙🤿
To learn more about PADI’s Adaptive Techniques Course, visit this link: https://store.padi.com/en-us/ns/courses/adaptive-techniques/p/adaptive-techniques/
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