'Awareness is OK, but we need acceptance,' Rachel Barcellona said
"I was basically promised that I would never graduate any school really or have any friends," she told CNN affiliate WFLA. "Pretty much everything bad was going to happen to me because I have autism."Later this month, Barcellona, 22, will make history as the first contestant with autism to take the stage of the Miss Florida pageant.
She is a singer, an advocate for people with disabilities, a junior at the University of South Florida and a role model to kids in her work at the Glazer Children's Museum in Tampa. "I want people to know that autism does not hold me back," she told WFTS."It's actually an opportunity for me to achieve my dreams.
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