The saying “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” advocates for optimism and a proactive approach when faced with challenges or bad luck.
Louisa Bridgman, recipient of the 2025 Courage to Come Back Award in the Medical category, strives not only to make lemonade for herself but also yearns to share it with others who have disabilities.
At an awards ceremony held at the Vancouver Convention Centre on May 7, 2025, in her winning speech, she announced for the first time her future goal of setting up a foundation that would be invaluable to the adaptive community, helping them and their families navigate difficult situations.
“I didn’t tell people that I wanted to start the foundation until the night of the award ceremony because I wanted to leave the room full of about 1,500 people at the ceremony with a thoughtful message: It may start with one person, but it takes a village to keep it going,” she said, adding that the foundation she has dreams of creating is still in the early phases of planning.
“I don’t even have a name for my foundation yet, but I know that that’s where I have to go,” she said with a spark of joy and fiery determination. “Winning this award is my final goodbye to my painful past. I want to rebuild myself, and moving forward, I want our community to feel supported.”
Bridgman’s journey to this point has been far from a smooth one.
“Apart from my medical condition, spastic cerebral palsy, that affects my mobility, I had to face and fight many difficulties in my life thus far, and all those challenges I went through have driven me to the path that I’m on now,” she said.
Having to battle verbal, physical and sexual abuses, Bridgman, who faced depression and eating disorders, said she attempted suicide 12 times.
“I was feeling isolated and depressed because I felt unwanted by my blood because of my disability,” she said.
At the age of 17, Bridgman entered a group home after leaving her own home, and when she turned 20, she moved into her very first apartment with the assistance of caregivers. After making this turnover in her life, she said she met with people who wanted her around. “I just kept building from there,” she said.
In building herself, Bridgman said, the first step was to ensure she could cope with physical pain and reduce her dependency on medications. She found support for this battle from a man Leo Sammarelli, she said. Sammarelli, who won the 2024 Courage to Come Back award for Physical Rehabilitation, was a national boxing champion before he was paralyzed in a 2017 shooting. He now trains Bridgman to improve her mobility within the facilities of West Coast Wheelchair Adapted Boxing, an organization he leads.
Bridgman said Sammarelli’s support has been invaluable.
“It’s reduced my pain by half. I’m no longer on narcotics, painkillers or drugs to maintain my function,” she said.
Boxing, surprisingly, became a powerful outlet for managing depression, anger, and frustration for Bridgman. Learning to punch and hit a bag offered an incredible release from difficult emotions.
“It’s so uplifting,” Bridgman said.
Sammarelli, describing Bridgman in three words, said she is persistent, inspirational and resilient.
“She has a warrior’s mentality, in and out of the ring,” he said, adding that makes her a deserving person for this award.
After enduring all the pain and finding ways to cope, she is passionate about helping the adaptive community navigate and overcome the formidable roadblocks she had to overcome, making it relatively less painful for them.
Currently, she said, she is focused on the research process of starting her non-profit foundation. She aims to help families with adults or children with disabilities find resources, and she wants to ensure that people who want to be independent are aware of the resources available to them.
“The foundation’s purpose would be to drive other people to keep trying to achieve their goals and to keep trying to be a voice for people that don’t have a voice,” Bridgman said.
To make this happen, she plans to involve strong individuals like her friend Samarelli and others with different disabilities. She is also interested in continuing to work with politicians with whom she has worked closely as part of the North Shore Advisory Committee for Disability Issues for six years of her life, and hold roundtable discussions to address issues related to disabilities.
Previously, Bridgman has been instrumental in identifying the barriers faced by people with disabilities, particularly those who use power chairs.
City of North Vancouver Coun. Tony Valente said Bridgman has done a fantastic job as an advocate and is deserving of the award.
“She highlighted a lot of the accessibility issues, and I flagged some of those to the city staff, and some of those letdowns were fixed,” she said. “We still have a lot more work to do, but generally, she did a great job of helping us with that…. I’m so happy for her to have this recognition, and I think it creates a great basis and a kind of a launching point for her to set up her foundation.”
Limited mobility and dependence on caregivers for many of her day-to-day tasks hasn’t deterred Bridgman in this fight.
“I’m not just fighting for myself, but I’m also fighting for the generation of disabled people … coming after me, and carrying on the legacy of those that came before me,” Bridgman said with a graceful but powerful smile.
Shobana Shanmugasamy is a student intern reporting for the North Shore News. She can be reached at [email protected].
