Sophia Malthus on living her best life in a wheelchair
The second season of reality show This is Wheel Life follows the recent law school graduate’s life as she navigates all the experiences of a person in their 20s.
Sophia Malthus, who became a quadriplegic after falling from a horse at 19 years old, has finally managed to move into her own home after three years of designing and building the place to be wheelchair friendly.
It’s a place that accommodates her needs and allows her to live a fulfilling life – certainly a far stretch from what she was offered when she was 19 after three months in the spinal injury unit – a rest home bed.
“It’s just inappropriate. I was 82 percent impaired and I was 19 years old, and I was three months into my injury and they want to put me into an environment where people go to die.”
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Instead, Malthus managed to go into a rehab centre via the Laura Fergusson Trust at Auckland’s Greenlane until ACC sorted out her own accommodation at her parent’s property.
“But that [Laura Fergusson Trust centre] was shut a few years ago and since then the options for young people have been scarce and most of them are going to rest homes and that makes me so angry. So I become a board member of the Laura Fergusson Trust and now we are working to rebuild the housing opportunity that Laura Fergusson used to supply.”
The recent law school graduate’s life is being documented in the reality show This is Wheel Life, which is now airing the second season on RNZ and The TAHI.
Malthus, in her 20s, says she’s very independent considering most people with her injury.
During her studies, she decided to use as little adaptive tech as possible to be able to go to her future workplace without having to bring in her own tech.
“I just typed with my pinky knuckles and it was a slow degree, but I still did it in the four years along with my friends so I’m quite proud that I did that,” Malthus told Sunday Morning.
“I’ve actually scored a really good job considering I’m a quadriplegic so I don’t have hand function and when I applied for this job, my manager told me I could do this job because it’s 80 percent talking.”
In one of the episodes, Indy tries to convince Sophia to go to a festival - but there's plenty of reasons why she can't.
Kaelin Wade
One of the topics which she researched in class, and is also covered in the series, is the world of "devotees" - people with a sexual fetish towards people with disabilities.
It’s not something Malthus says she ever experienced but she wanted to learn about it because “as soon as I became disabled, everyone told me I should be scared of ‘devotees’.
“I don’t think that’s empowering, being told you have to be scared of something without understanding it is not good.”
During her research, she says she found that their main source of content came from stealing photos of people on social media and sharing them on fetish websites.
Malthus says it was hard to find people who would speak publicly.
“Liam [who appears in the series] was very generous in showing us his face. He wanted to show us his face because then his story and appearance would mean more since he’s not hiding his identity. I really respected that and I loved that we had that insight into ‘devotees’, but the emphasis is that it’s a spectrum, there’s nice ‘devotees’ and then there’s really sadistic ‘devotees’ [who] are dangerous.”
Sophia Malthus says she stays in a positive mindset and goes with the flow.
The TAHI / RNZ
However, Malthus doesn’t dwell on the negatives because she doesn’t want it to be a habit that reduces her quality of life.
“It’s a hard thing to go through and I’ve witnessed a lot of people really struggle so I’m very grateful that I am the way I am.”
In fact, she says she feels more confident since her injury.
“I think that is maybe to do with the fact that my biggest challenges are so visible. As soon as you see me, you understand or you know that I’m going through something hard and so it’s kind of like my biggest imperfection is just advertised and everything else they’re going to find out about me is going to be great.”
It’s also taught her to accept the spontaneous reality of life.
“I just always kind of say that I don’t really like to set goals and expectations of how my life will turn out because I’ve experienced, so drastically, that it doesn’t matter what you plan, life has other plans,” Malthus says.
“I’m kind of quite cruisy and the world will take me wherever it wants to go and I know that I’m confident in dealing with whatever situation is thrown my way.”
This is Wheel Life Series 2 was made by Boxed Media for RNZ. Watch episode one now on the TAHI YouTube channel and on rnz.co.nz/video.
