26

I had only had my license for a few weeks, and I felt on top of the world. We were packed into our old Yukon with snacks scattered between us, everyone talking over one another, laughing, and singing along to Neil Diamond. It was loud, ordinary, and good.

As we approached Jensen's Grove, a sharp pop cut through the music. The conversations stopped. Then my dad yelled my name at the top of his lungs.

"EMILLIO!"

We were traveling nearly 80 miles per hour when the Yukon left the road and began to roll.

Once.
Twice.
Three times.

When everything stopped, the vehicle was resting on the passenger side. The windshield was gone. My mom began yelling for us to get out because she was afraid it might catch fire.

My younger brother and mom escaped. My sister climbed out despite a devastating injury to her ankle and wrist.

Everyone made it out except my dad.

He was still inside, hanging from his seat belt and motionless.

Cars began pulling over. Strangers jumped the fence from Jensen's Grove and ran toward us. Sirens grew louder until emergency crews surrounded the vehicle and began working on my dad.

I sat in the weeds along the median with dirt between my fingers and blood across my arms and head. My siblings were crying. My mom was trying to hold everything together. Nothing around me felt real.

I looked at her and asked:

"Who died, Mom? Who died?"

She kept telling me no one had died, repeating, "Everything is going to be okay."

My dad was taken north to Idaho Falls with a broken neck. My sister was taken south to Pocatello and rushed into surgery. She would eventually endure more than 20 operations.

My mom and younger brother stayed with me in Blackfoot. In the space of a few minutes, our family had been scattered among different hospitals, each of us unsure whether the others would survive.

I was evaluated for several hours because of my head injuries and then discharged. On the drive to Pocatello, I repeatedly thanked my grandpa for picking us up, but I could not finish the sentence. I could not remember where he had picked us up from.

When we arrived, a doctor saw something concerning. I was readmitted and taken into surgery.

My mom had cracked ribs, cuts, and bruises. I had a fractured skull, stitches near my eye, a damaged elbow, and injuries across my face and arms. Somehow, my little brother escaped with only minor injuries.

All five of us had been inside the same vehicle. All five of us had lived, but I still did not understand how.

Later, my uncle showed me photographs of the Yukon. The roof had folded inward. The frame was twisted and crushed. Then my eyes found the driver's seat in one particular photo.

My seat.

Two pieces of metal had driven down through it. They had torn through the fabric, split the foam, and broken the frame. They entered the exact space where I had been sitting, still restrained by my seat belt.

They missed me by inches.

There wasn't room for my body.

By everything I could see, I should not have survived. But somehow, there had been space for me.

Surviving the crash did not mean I immediately knew how to live with what had happened. For years, guilt followed me like a shadow. It was quiet, constant, and always close behind. I replayed the crash, questioned what I could have done differently, and carried the weight of what my family had endured.

Self-doubt settled in beside it. I told people I was fine, even when I was not sure I believed it myself. What slowly changed me was not one perfect answer or dramatic breakthrough. It was people.

Family members, friends, neighbors, teachers, nurses, and mentors continued to show up. They listened. They invited me in. They noticed when I pulled away. They saw possibility in me when I struggled to see it for myself.

They created space for me until I began learning how to create it for myself and eventually, for others. Years later, I finally found language for what they had given me.

SPACE.

It began with people who saw me first.

These five moves help us become more intentional, connect more deeply, and build influence through how we show up.

The way you see someone becomes the ceiling they live under. See them higher than they see themselves and watch what happens.