This is Kind World. I'm Erica Lance.

Lauren Watson remembers being 19 years old.

Now 34, she can still recall that energetic tomboy, skateboarding and playing bass in an all-boy band.

And she remembers one day when her best friend came over with his learner's permit.

He wanted to practice driving.

So the two set out on winding roads in the Australian

Bush near where Lauren lived. They came to a turn and Lauren's friend

accelerated instead of breaking.

We just lost control of the car.

We were on a dirt road and the car hit a tree.

I had a lap seat belt.

And because of the seat belt, I didn't have enough support to

hold me back into the seat so my torso actually went all the way down and all the

way back up again and that's what broke my back. The break paralyzed

Lauren from the chest down. She was flown to Sydney by helicopter and spent eight

months in the hospital.

When she came out, her world had changed.

You have to learn how to live again.

I will go places and I'd be the only person in a wheelchair and people would either sort of ignore you or sometimes they talk down to you they don't mean to they don't really know how to respond.

You can feel just so separate. Lauren says it was like she had lost her identity,

like she was a different person. Over time she

gained some patchy sensation and movement in her legs but she was tired of

...