AFTER FINDING HERSELF AT GERMANNA, LINDA OSORIO'S HELPING STAFFORD COUNTY COMMUTERS NAVIGATE THE ROAD TO WELLNESS

Former Germanna student Linda Osorio (above) recently opened Massage Matters Wellness Center in Garrisonville. She says believing in yourself and taking things one step at a time are the keys to success.
Linda Osorio says she didn't have much confidence when she came out of high school in Stafford County. She found herself, she says, as a student at Germanna Community College.

Now she's started her own business, Massage Matters Therapy & Wellness Center in Garrisonville, and is giving back to the college by sponsoring the Germanna soccer club.

She has a message for those who find themselves in a tough spot today: believe in yourself and never give up.

Osorio knows what it's like to feel that hope has almost slipped away.

She knows what it's like to be part of a stressed home environment because her mother struggled to support the family after her father left when she was 12.

"We had no electricity, no water at one point," she said. "I remember my sister and I were sitting in our bedroom one night with only candlelight. We were hungry and we talked about what we would want if we could have anything to eat. When my mom came home two hours later with two bags of KFC, it seemed like the best meal I ever had. We thought this was a miracle to be able to have something we really wanted." Good things, she said, happen when you really believe something can happen, "when you can taste it, feel it."

"Go at it moment by moment, step by step," Osorio said. "Martin Luther King once said, don't look at the whole staircase. Look at one step at a time. When you look at the whole staircase, you feel like you can't do it."