Personal Narrative: Best Buddies

My freshman year in high school, I decided to join Best Buddies. Best Buddies is a program where a high school student is paired with another student, who has an intellectual and developmental disability, in a one-to-one friendship. During my first year, I learned Best Buddies is not simply a club but a family. My second year of being a part of Best Buddies I began truly noticing a change in myself. Sophomore year I was paired with a girl one year younger than me named Carrie. She and I have become best friends and have now been buddies for the past three years. As I interacted with Carrie these past years, I began to realize disabilities do not hold people back, but that we hold ourselves back. Despite Carrie’s misfortune, she wears a smile