She reads, listens to music, swims, rides horses, and sings in the choir. She’s a normal teenage girl, and the fact that she was born with spina bifida doesn’t change that. Spina bifida is a rare condition that affects the development of the spinal cord.

Payton Blakney is a freshman at Wenatchee High School living with and overcoming the challenges caused by this disorder. She has had to learn how to deal with stares, rude comments, and physical limitations but hasn’t let these difficulties stop her from participating in a wide range of activities throughout her life.

When it comes to navigating the crowded halls of WHS, she switches between the use of crutches and her wheelchair. Using her crutches can be tiring for her arms, but Blakney claims that “pushing my wheelchair isn’t that hard unless you’re going up a ramp and I usually have people help me.”

Although she has many friends at WHS, she has been bullied at school. “When I walk in the halls, people just like stare at me and kind of like laugh and call me special ed.”

However, she doesn’t let comments like that bother her and stays positive by spending time with “someone who I know cares and just talk to them.”

Blakney recognizes her mother, Brea Blakney, as one of her biggest supporters and says, “She just keeps me going. She helps me every day not to listen to anybody and just keep my head high, and block everyone out if I have to and focus on the people who care who don’t see me differently and see me as a normal person.”

Like many high schoolers, Blakney is interested in sports and doesn’t let her disability hold her back. A couple of years ago, she started learning how to swim, despite being, “extremely afraid of the water” at first. She also rode horses for seven years at the Spurs and Spokes Therapeutic riding program before it was canceled last year. Now, she’s looking forward to participating in wheelchair basketball when she is old enough.

While she enjoys sports, music is her main passion, “I definitely love music. I like to sing, I’m in choir and I’m learning how to play guitar. I listen to music literally 24/7.”

Blakney is looking forward to “graduating and getting a good job” in the future. She hopes to one day become a third- or fourth-grade teacher. Her eyes were opened to the possibility of teaching with a disability by Cruz Martinez, a teacher in her middle school who, “had brittle bones and he was in a wheelchair and he couldn’t really move any part of his body… Once I saw him I was like, ‘Hey I could be a teacher, it would work out just fine for me.’ ” Blakney said.

Blakney also has an interest in traveling. If she could go anywhere in the world she would go to, “Either Australia or the UK just because I like the accents there and they just seem like cool places.”

With dreams and aspirations like any other student, Blakney believes it’s important to “do what you want to do and stick with it… Just do you and don’t listen to anyone else.”