Why I'm Launching For-Impact ATL

Limping through the door of the familiar and sterile waiting room of the orthopedic surgery center, my stomach growled and my eyelids stuck together with that yellow goo slightly hardened throughout the night. For the third time I made this early morning journey. This time my mom took a seat in the waiting area instead of hovering beside me at the check-in counter. My 18th birthday. I was officially an adult, even if I still felt like a kid whose body kept breaking down.

My hands shook as I scribbled out my legal signature that still looked like it belonged to a child. Each line I initialed felt like a small declaration: Yes, I consent to being put under. Yes, I understand the risks. Yes, I am choosing to hope this will finally work.

Surgery three: I knew the rhythm, the antiseptic fog, the paper gown, the soft-voiced anesthesiologist asking me to count backward from ten. I knew how it felt to wake up groggy and stitched. I knew what it meant to limp through the hallways of high school, late to class, sweaty from trying to crutch faster than I could.

But I still didn't know if any of it would work. Three tendon tears in a row, this one coming six months after the last. I didn't know if I would ever run again, or even walk without fear. I mostly just wanted relief. To not be defined by pain or limitation. To not feel like my body had betrayed me.

I'm still waiting. Different ankle, same injuries. Eight surgeries total.

I didn't have words for it at the time, but now I do:

It was never just about injury. It was a symbol. A fracture in identity. Each twist and tear, each failed recovery, each well-meaning "you'll bounce back" became a slow unraveling.

I wasn't who I had been. I had to find who I was to become.

Through the first two surgeries, I maintained the possibility my life would go back to normal. That I would heal completely and just pick up where I left off. Recovering from number three was different. Something in me had finally accepted what my body had been trying to tell me for years: Aaron 1.0 was never coming back. That version of myself was gone.

I was lost, but curiosity sparked within me.

For the first time, I wasn't fighting to get back to who I used to be. I wasn't clinging to a version of myself that no longer fit. Instead, I had the opportunity to find a new me. Someone a bit different. Someone I hadn't met yet.

Where to begin, what to do? All I could do was search.

What I found was choir.

In choir, I found a new community.

I found people and a purpose, although I wasn't a good singer by any means. But that didn't matter. There was something liberating about being mediocre at something and still being welcomed. No one cared about my stats or whether I could outperform anyone else. They just cared that I showed up and added my voice to theirs.

I was always curious about performance, although a deep part of me was shy and scared. Standing in front of people, being seen, being heard, it terrified me. But something told me to go for it, and I did.

I even once tried out for a solo.

I didn't get it, but walking out of that audition room, I felt something I hadn't experienced in years: pride. Not because I'd succeeded, but because I'd tried. Because I'd pushed past the fear and put myself out there.

I found new friends, but more importantly, I found my first outlet to a new world. A world where vulnerability wasn't a weakness, where imperfection was part of the process, where showing up mattered more than showing off.

This was the heartbeat of everything I was becoming. The person who would one day be saved in someone's phone as "Wholesome Guy" was being born in that choir room. Not because I was perfect or always knew the right thing to say, but because I was learning that being wholesome meant being real. It meant creating space for others to be imperfect, to try and fail, to show up exactly as they were.

I didn't know it yet, but this was my first taste of what inclusion actually felt like. Not as a concept or a mission, but as a lived experience. The understanding that everyone has something valuable to offer, especially when they're not sure what that something is.

It wasn't the world I'd planned to discover. But it was exactly the world I needed. And more importantly, it was the world I would, for the rest of my life, help to create for others.

The thread is always the same. Create space. Show up. Value the attempt over the outcome. See the person, not just their performance.

My injuries had fractured more than bone and ligament. They had cracked open everything I thought I knew about strength, about value, about what it meant to matter. And in that breaking open, something new had grown: the understanding that our greatest contributions often come not from our talents, but from our willingness to show up for others exactly as they are.

When I was dating the woman who would become my wife, I learned she had put me in her phone as "Wholesome Guy." Initially she feared I was too nice, too wholesome and that would not work with her straightforward and uncensored personality. What she was seeing wasn't perfection or some unrealistic standard of goodness.

She was seeing someone who had learned through pain and failed auditions. Someone who found his voice in unexpected places, that had learned the hard way that the most powerful thing you can do is create room for others to be themselves. Someone who understood that being "wholesome" isn't about having all the answers but being the kind of person others feel safe being imperfect around.

Now as I launch For-Impact ATL, every story I hope to share, every collaboration or connection I hope to inspire, and every act of social impact I hope to uplift is rooted in the same principle I'd learned in that choir room: everyone has something valuable to contribute.

For-Impact ATL exists to create space. For nonprofits doing transformative work. For individuals discovering their capacity to make a difference. For communities learning that impact isn't reserved for those with the loudest voices or the most resources.

It exists because I know what it feels like to be underestimated. To be defined by limitation. To wonder if you have anything worthwhile to offer.

And I know the power of someone creating space for you anyway. Of someone believing in your capacity before you can see it yourself. Of someone valuing your attempt over your outcome.