Noy’s Journey: Finding Strength and Hope from Her Wheelchair

Noy Tsabari from Rehovot is 24 years old now, but her life changed forever when she was just 12. Before that, she was like any other girl, youngest sister in a regular family. Her parents divorced when she was eight, which made her very angry for a long time. She remembers being an unhappy child, yet she was confident and had many friends.

Everything changed at a friend’s birthday party at a swimming pool, where no parents were watching. Noy jumped into the pool with a header dive but hit the bottom hard, breaking a vertebra in her neck. Suddenly, she couldn’t move or feel any part of her body.

Although she didn’t lose consciousness, she started drowning because she couldn’t move. For several minutes, she was underwater, sure she was going to die. It was in that moment she realized she was paralyzed.

A friend noticed and helped bring her to the surface. Her mother arrived, and Noy was rushed to the hospital, where she was sedated and placed on a ventilator. Surgery was done to replace the broken vertebra.

Her parents asked the doctor when she would walk again, but the doctor gave a hard truth: they should be thankful if she could breathe on her own. Noy had a breathing tube for two weeks and stayed in intensive care for two months. Slowly, feeling began to return to her hands. Though she had severe pain, the doctors said it was a good sign. But even a light touch was unbearable, if someone blew air on her skin, she would cry.

After a long year in pediatric rehabilitation at Tel Hashomer hospital, Noy came home. At first, she refused to sit in a wheelchair. Slowly she realized she needed to use it to get outside, but it was very hard. At that time, her way of coping was through anger. She was sure she would never go back to school.

Four years later, Noy made a big decision: she stopped being angry. She never gave up on her dream to walk again but understood it wouldn’t happen anytime soon.

“Everyone faces hard times, including me,” she says, “but the important thing is to get up and believe that many good things will come.”

The turning point came when she met another woman in a wheelchair, a true champion. This woman told her something simple but powerful: since people already look at us on the street, why not give them something beautiful to see?

From that moment, Noy found her smile again. She says, “I’m just a regular girl who uses a wheelchair. Not a champion or a queen. People might say I’m inspiring because they aren’t used to seeing this, but to me, it’s a normal life one that rolls forward.”

She shares her experiences to show others a different way to look at life from a wheelchair.

Her main message is clear and full of hope: “You can grow from changes you didn’t choose. I didn’t choose this, but I chose to make the best of it. The wisdom in life is to never fall. Everyone has challenges, but the key is to rise and understand that good things will come too. There will also be hard times, and you can get through them, it’s all about how you choose to respond.”