Sophia Garza is a sophomore at Lewis Palmer High School and this is her first year in District 38. Garza came from the school of the deaf and blind. She has been blind her whole life, but that doesn’t stop her from doing what she loves. 

“Music feels like an extension of my body. The piano feels like an extension. It’s something that I can express. It’s like I don’t have to fully say what I’m thinking, but it’s still out there. I really like the song ‘How it feels to be lost.’ I relate to that right now. Everyone goes through things. They’re lost and they want to be found. I used to attend the school for the deaf and blind. It was very stressful and I didn’t like it at all. I just learned how to grow, in the way of being more mature. It made me grow up way faster in the mental state, but for me it was still very hard because I was dealing with a lot of people that I couldn’t connect with, and I felt very alone. I was there for two years, and I isolated myself from everyone. But, I’m here now. I notice so many things by touch. If I touch a ceramic bowl, I notice that there’s little spungies. With something like that, I’m like ‘woah, texture.’ So, music is definitely a big thing in my world. It’s where you can put your heart and emotions out there and it carries people through. I put passion and raw emotion in my songs, and it shows how strong I have become. Even when I feel super weak and broken, just writing music, and singing it, and vocalizing it, makes me feel stronger because I’m carrying it out. People hear my songs, they hear my music, and they get something out of it. I think that a lot of people relate to my music. Music makes me feel normal, like blindness isn’t a big thing in my life, even though I know it is. I can post my music, me singing, and no one will really know much about me. I can keep that part hidden. But the part of me that wants to be shown very strongly is that emotional piece. I get the question often: ‘if you could, would you change your sight?’ I always say no because I already live with this and I don’t want to change what has been given to me. I see the world in a certain way; and even though I am blind, I can still be inspiring.”