Disabled By Domestic Violence, Hairdresser Doesn’t Give Up

In 2014, Jamecca Jones’ estranged husband shot her, then turned the gun on himself. He didn’t live, but she did—with a collapsed lung, a broken rib, major blood loss and the need for a wheelchair. And the Pearl, Miss. hairdresser has fought hard to heal, grow and continue making people feel beautiful.

“It’s like an everyday struggle, but I get over it,” Jamecca, a mother of three, told MSNewsNow. “You know, everything that I do, I do it myself. I can do everything that I did before.”

The May 2014 night that changed Jamecca’s life was in “slow motion,” she said in a Methodist Rehabilitation Center blog post. “When I fell to the ground, I couldn’t feel my legs. I started praying, ‘Lord, please don’t let me die like this.’ I was thinking about my kids, and I could hear them in the house hollering and crying.”

The bullet went through her side and out her back, grazing three vertebrae in her spine on the way and damaging nerves that control lower body movement. After a month-long hospital stay and extensive rehabilitation, she was able to get back to what she loves to do—hairdressing.

At first, Jamecca balanced on stacked pillows to be able to stand and style clients. She later got a special wheelchair that moves her to a standing position with the push of a button.

“I couldn’t be still, I had to do something,” Jamecca said. “And I’m grateful and thankful for the clients who still believed in me and what I can do. Life goes on whether I’m in a wheelchair or not. I’ve got kids who depend on me.”

She continues to work hard and build her business, Shades of Color, back up to what it was before her injury, serving as an inspiration to hairdressers everywhere. “I don’t easily give up on what I want to do,” Jamecca said. “I can’t say, ‘This is it,’ because I had one setback. That’s like slashing three tires because you had one flat. I’ll just do what I can do and God will do what I can’t.”