Finding Freedom

Growing up mostly in Naples, Schroeder moved to Georgia for her senior year of high school and was a dual-enrollment student at Georgia Gwinnett College.

She was on fall break from Florida State during her first year of college in 2020 when her life changed. A competitive swimmer from the age of 8 all the way through high school, Schroeder enjoyed confidence in the water and knew how to move in it.

But while boating with friends off the coast that November, Schroeder dove off the vessel and struck a sandbar just 3 feet below the surface.

“A sandbar is just a random pile of sand in the middle of the ocean, and you can’t really see it, which is the unfortunate part,” Schroeder says. “And I broke my neck.”

The injury to the cervical vertebrae known as C5 resulted in paralysis from the chest down. After weeks in Florida’s Lee Memorial Hospital, Schroeder was moved to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta for therapy and rehabilitation. She stayed there from December 2020 until March 2021, when she transitioned from an in-patient setting to the center’s day program.

During a SCUBA class one day, Dietrich saw Schroeder swimming the butterfly and approached her about joining the Shepherd Sharks.

“It’s allowed her to rediscover something she already had a passion for,” Dietrich says.

She’s not only passionate about swimming, she’s good.

In fall 2023, she competed in the Fred Lamback Georgia Para-Swimming Open, logging first-place finishes in all three of her events — the 50- and 100-meter backstroke and the 100-meter freestyle.

That December, she took first in all three events again in the U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships in Orlando, Fla., and set American records in both the 50- and 100-meter backstroke.

“It’s very freeing,” Schroeder says of being in the water. “I can move wherever I want and go wherever I want. I don’t have to worry about needing my chair or needing someone to help me get somewhere.”

Though her times were off in her early events in this past May’s Bill Keating Jr. Memorial Cincinnati Para-Swimming Open, Dietrich says Schroeder summoned the will on the meet’s second day, in her final event, to post a solid time.

“After three bad races a lot of people probably would’ve hung up their goggles and been like, ‘It’s not my weekend, it’s not going to happen’ but she doesn’t do that,” Dietrich says. “She really takes every opportunity as an opportunity to do well, regardless of what else has happened that week. She didn’t give up and she got a good result.”

Schroeder says she’s looking forward to competing again in the U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships in Orlando, and making a run for the U.S. Paralympic Team when the games return to the U.S. in 2028.

Acknowledging that making the team is, in part, based on a selection process, Dietrich says, “she’s wholly, 100-percent capable of doing what she needs to do to qualify.”

When not in the pool, Schroeder is working toward her psychology degree, a path she’s pursuing after discovering she might be able to support others who’ve experienced a spinal cord injury.

“I’m completely paralyzed from the chest down, and my hands are paralyzed,” she says. “I was asking my inpatient psychologist what kind of jobs I would be able to do, and she mentioned I was good at being positive and talking to the other patients, so I should look into psychology. That’s when I decided I wanted to counsel patients going through spinal cord injury.”

That positivity is apparent not just to her psychologist, but everyone Schroeder meets, says Heather Jones, who was Schroeder’s physical therapist and is now her roommate.

Since moving into Jones and her husband’s Atlanta home, Schroeder’s become more independent and can easily work out and swim at Shepherd, where Jones works, and regularly join the couple on outings, like camping trips and baseball games. Jones’ husband Austin, a photographer, also helps Schroeder document her journey on social media. Her popular Instagram and TikTok channels offer inspiration to tens of thousands of followers.

“Everyone who knows Eden loves Eden to death,” Jones says. “She makes life fun. I saw so much potential in her life and for her future. If there’s any way I can support her on this journey to get there, I want to be a part of that.”

That journey took Schroeder briefly back to Georgia Gwinnett College, before she enrolled in Georgia State University’s online Bachelor of Arts in Psychology program in the summer of 2023.

The online format means she never has to negotiate transportation to the Atlanta Campus, and can complete her work from home or from the Shepherd Center, where she spends much of her time volunteering when not in the center’s café studying.

“I looked into schools in Georgia I’d be able to do online, because of transportation issues, and Georgia State offers a fully online program for psychology, which is what I knew I wanted to major in,” Schroeder says.

A member of the center’s Keeping Adolescents and Young Adults Connected (KAYAC) program, Schroeder volunteers as a mentor to young people with spinal cord injuries, often visiting patients who’ve recently arrived at the center.

Having experienced such an injury herself, Schroeder connects with patients differently than the center’s staff therapists, none of whom are in a wheelchair, Schroeder says.

“When I get assigned to a patient I go up to the room and talk to them about my life and my injury and where I’m at now,” she says. “I think it’s good for someone so young who gets paralyzed to see another person who got paralyzed so young and kept living life and went back to college and is on the swim team and still living.”

Jones agrees. As a physical therapist who’s worked for seven years at Shepherd with patients who’ve experienced traumatic illness or injury, she can see in Schroeder the drive to work, to improve and to make the most of her abilities. She says the spark innate to Schroeder will shine through to her future patients, showing them the possibilities still available.

Schroeder is planning to finish her bachelor’s this spring and to enter grad school, ultimately in pursuit of a Doctor of Psychology. Her goal is to return to the Shepherd Center to work with patients just like herself.

“I think she’s going to be great at it,” Jones says. “Her having been through a spinal cord injury and having been through the trauma of a life-changing event, she’s going to build relationships with patients so much faster. If someone like Eden rolls in, they’re going to be like, ‘Oh, you get it.’”