On a recent Thursday along the beautiful waters of Berkeley’s Aquatic Park, a group of cormorants sunbathed on the dock, buffleheads floated nearby, and Christina Leffmann embraced the freedom she thought she’d never have.
A decade ago, when Leffmann was 23, she suffered a stroke — her third — and her life fell apart. Today, she settles into her power-assisted tricycle, attaches the leash of her 14-year-old dog, Air, and starts to ride. Riding the paved pathway alongside the glistening waters, Leffmann is as free as the cormorants on a cycling ride that has become a weekly highlight.
It’s all made possible by BORP Adaptive Sports and Recreation, a 48-year-old program that provides access to athletics, fitness and outdoor recreation for people with disabilities.
“BORP is largely my self care,” says Leffmann, now 34. “This world was not made for people with disabilities in mind. It’s difficult enough to survive in this world, but to really figure out how to thrive, it makes me really feel alive.”
She remembers the day her life turned upside down: Sept. 15, 2013.
Freshly graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in psychology, the Oakland native was trying to find her way as a first-time professional in the real world. One day, her boyfriend invited her to come to a roller derby event. She had never been before.
“I joke that it was so good, it literally blew my mind,” she says.
When Leffmann returned home, she couldn’t stop vomiting. She had a terrible headache and soon felt completely disoriented.
“I went back into the bathroom to puke more, hit my head on the toilet and passed out,” she says.
When she woke up at Castro Valley’s Eden Medical Center, she found out she had suffered an aneurysm.
“Everything changed in an instant,” she says.
Leffmann discovered she had been born with an arteriovenous malformation (AVM). Usually, capillaries are buffers between arteries and veins, but she was born without that buffer.
“It was a breeding ground for an aneurysm,” she says. “(A blood vessel) ballooned because of the difference in pressure. And then it burst.”
Over the next year and a half, she suffered two more strokes, lost function in her right side, developed a neurogenic overactive bladder, a speech impediment, visual and hearing loss and “all sorts of problems,” she says.
Leffmann had been living with a family member and often stayed over with her boyfriend, but it wasn’t until they broke up that she realized how much her new disability impacted her life.
“I was with him for a year after my first stroke, and I didn’t realize a lot of my limitations, because he was always with me to help,” she says. “I was in denial. I didn’t know what to expect, because I never met anyone with a disability. It still caught me by surprise for years.”
After her third stroke on Valentine’s Day in 2015, Leffmann was transferred to Stanford’s medical center, where she met Gary Steinberg, a cerebrovascular neurosurgeon who had experience removing AVMs. Leffmann’s surgery was successful, but over the coming years, she struggled to accept the lasting impact of her disability.
“From 2015 to 2017 it was like, ‘what do we do with her?’” she says. “I couldn’t live where I was living before my third stroke, because it wasn’t wheelchair accessible.”
So she moved back to her family home, living with her mother in Oakland. Her housing was settled. What she didn’t have was freedom — not until she discovered BORP.
“The fourth (and final) time I was in in-patient rehab, someone did a presentation about BORP,” she says. “Now I do cycling, kayaking, outdoor adventures, camping, rock climbing, tai chi, yoga and open-gym. I’m just meeting a lot of people.”
One of those people is Daniel Gomes. Now 35, he became disabled when he was 29 and struggled to accept it.
“I didn’t know one person with a serious disability,” Gomes says. “I was in a shell — trying constantly to get better but nothing worked, so I would only get more depressed.”
Through BORP, Gomes found people who were going through similar experiences. Gomes met Leffmann last year. They were both outdoorsy people before their disabilities and never thought they’d be able to go camping again. But with their power-assist wheelchairs, they joined a BORP camping trip to Camp Arroyo and hit it off.
“It’s nice to meet someone who actually knows what you’re going through,” he says. “I felt so alone for so long. Five years is a long time to be completely depressed. BORP brought me out of it, something as simple as getting me out of the house.
“Life has changed a lot, but at least BORP is bringing me joy. And friends to show and tell me things I didn’t know.”
There are movie nights and peer support groups. There are camping trips and team sports— wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, goalball, power soccer and sled hockey — as well as fitness classes, pickleball and rock climbing. And the adaptive cycling center alongside Aquatic Park houses one of the world’s largest adaptive bike collections and a kayaking program.
“Before, I felt a lot of sympathy and people looked down at me,” Leffmann says. “This becomes a lot more valuable. You get empathy. People are like, ‘Yeah, I get it.’”
Rock-climbing helped her learn how to move in different directions and to understand that her right side doesn’t work the same as her left, so she needs to manually move her right side sometimes. And when Leffmann got her first power-assisted cycle in 2021, it was the first time she felt freedom.
BORP’s executive director Emily Seelenfreund says Leffmann’s experience is one of many.
“For a lot of people, BORP is the first time they’re able to exercise and find access to a community with people with disabilities,” she says.
The social aspect is often even more important than the physical.
“Back to that alone feeling — anytime I go to lunch or dinner with family or friends, the (restaurant staff) pulls out one chair for the wheelchair,” Gomes says. “With the BORP group, they are pulling out six. I don’t feel alone.”
Hanging with her new friends, Leffmann has felt inspired. She now lives alone. And she recently began applying to master’s degree programs to study social work.
Because she’s never had a doctor or counselor with a disability, she’s decided she wants to become one.
“I was previously putting the disability bias on myself,” she says. “But I really like the idea of: It’s not if you can do it, it’s how you can do it.”
THE SHARE THE SPIRIT SERIES
Share the Spirit is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operated by the East Bay Times, The Mercury News and Bay Area News Group that provides relief, hope and opportunities for East Bay residents by helping raise money for nonprofit programs in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.
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Donations will cover staff costs for Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program (BORP) Adaptive Sports and Recreation to offer 100 open hours at its cycling center over four months. Goal: $10,000
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