After surviving an accident where you should’ve died and had the husband you loved leave you, most people would be ready to give up. Not Frida Kahlo. All this happened to her, yet she still went on to make beautiful and empowering self-portraits when people told her she couldn’t. A hero needs to be emotionally strong and influential, and that is the definition of Frida.

While riding a wooden trolley home one day, the trolley crashed and many lives were lost. Frida ended up being impaled in her pelvis, fractured her ribs and a collarbone, broke both legs, and displaced three vertebrae. During this time, her husband left her for another woman. Frida had every reason to be depressed. However, she was emotionally strong and fought through it. She even had a special easel made so she could paint while she was recovering. Even when bedridden, alone, and in pain, Frida found something to do with herself that could make a difference.

Therefore, Frida was influential on many people through her hardships. She didn’t give up and kept striving to be something more, to be someone that people remember after she’s gone. She was inspirational because when people told her painting was impossible she did it anyway. When people told her she was a terrible painter and would never be accepted into a gallery, she did it anyway.

Today, Frida’s self-portraits inspire many aspiring young artists. Many people have told me and many other people my age that being an artist isn’t a valid career choice, and that I will never succeed. Frida shows us that we can be artists and that we can succeed when people say we can’t.  She has her own museum in Mexico where some of her paintings are kept. Others are kept in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Musee National d’Art Moderne in Paris, and in several private and public collections in Mexico and the United States.

It takes a hero to survive total destruction. Frida went through unimaginable pain throughout her life and came out making art that even a person who hadn’t been injured could see as beautiful. She didn’t have to save lives or risk her own to be a hero, she just had to stay strong. She was fed up with crying over the pain and her unfaithful husband. She decided to stop being negative and faced the sun. What came out of it was worth the pain.

There have been two great accidents in my life, She once said. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.