Hi girl, I’m Kimberly! I’m  the founder of the  Sitting Beauty Diaries, a disabled fashion and lifestyle blog that’s dedicated to disability advocacy and female empowerment.

Growing up, I was never one  to let my disability get in the way of me living my life. It’s funny for me to listen to the stories my mom  tells about my early childhood, especially when it came to me learning to do something for the first time or asserting my independence. The stories usually ended one of two ways: with their surprise of my perseverance and determination or laughter at how I managed to get myself in a situation that only a curious kid could. 

My life was my life, having this disability was all I knew and I was going to adapt. If only it was that easy, little did I know that was going to be one of the easiest times of my life disability-wise. There are days that I wish I could go back to that time and others that I’m grateful for the experiences my Cerebral Palsy has brought into my life. I was always into fashion and makeup steering conversations with strangers who wanted to ask about my wheelchair and what happened to me towards these topics instead, and seeing them realize that although I was sitting, maybe I wasn’t so different from everyone else as misconceptions about people with disabilities led them to believe. Fashion became a conversation starter, not my wheelchair.

In 2016, after an internship that introduced me to the world of serious blogging, I considered starting one of my own. I thought back to all the conversations I had in person and on social media with fellow women of the disabled community about the issues we faced from accessibility to struggles to with  product accessibility in the beauty and fashion industries as well as several others. I searched, I talked to friends, and I hit social media, but I couldn’t find a fashion blog that considered the struggles that women with disabilities faced when it came to finding cute clothing that was adaptable or ways to create stylish outfits that worked while sitting in a wheelchair. The idea for The Sitting Beauty Diaries was born.

In 2020, I revamped and relaunched the website, with a newfound focus on disability advocacy and empowering women to have fun with life and to do it finding and owning their sense of style.

The blogging world, as well as connecting with fellow female content creators with disabilities has shown me a whole new side to social media. Social media has made it possible to show that people with disabilities have a unique strength and while having a disability isn’t a detriment to living an amazing life, we are able to show what we are truly capable of, disability and all.