2 years ago I was hit by a driver the police say was drunk. I needed 22 screws in my body and covered mirrors in my house so I couldn't see my scars.

• Tess Rowland was 22 when she was hit head-on by a driver who the police say was under the influence.
• This month she became the president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tess Rowland. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I was 22 years old, I was living my dream of being a broadcast journalist. On the morning of May 4, 2021, I was driving to work near my home in Florida. All of a sudden I saw headlights coming toward me on the highway. After that, I don't remember anything until I woke up in the hospital. But I still see those headlights in my nightmares.

I had been hit by a driver the police said was intoxicated. In that instant I went from being a healthy 22-year-old to needing five emergency surgeries. I had four plates and 22 screws put into my body. Seeing my scars was so jarring that for a while I covered mirrors in my house.

The physical recovery is ongoing — I expect I'll need a shoulder replacement soon — but the real challenge is recovering from the trauma of the crash. That's something I still deal with every day.

Note I say "crash," not "accident." As a journalist, I know that words matter, and what happened to me that day was not a mistake. It was a choice that someone made. That deliberate decision could have killed me. Instead, it reshaped my life.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving helped me navigate the aftermath

After the crash, I was contacted by a victim's advocate from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I later learned that the organization appoints advocates to all victims it learns about. I'm one of nearly 1 million victims of drunk driving who've benefited from that.

My advocate helped me through a very dark period of my life. They connected me with therapy and resources. The trauma that victims like me experience is almost unending — from the physical recovery to the mental and emotional exhaustion of navigating the criminal-justice system.

And it's not just victims — families are impacted too. I was out of work for five months after the crash. During that time, my mother upended her entire life to care for me. I can't even imagine where I would be without her.

Now I'm the youngest president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving

I saw the difference MADD made in my life and wanted to be more involved. I did fundraisers and organized a local DUI task force. Then, this February, I became the youngest-ever national president of MADD and the second president who isn't a mother.

Our organization was founded by a mom whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver. But we serve everyone. I want people to know that is not your mother's MADD. Our message is still the same: Deaths and injuries from DUIs are 100% preventable. At MADD, we want to end drunk driving for good.

But the way we're spreading our message is different. My work will focus on speaking to young people. Unfortunately, many drunk-driving crashes involve drivers in their 20s.

Through a campaign called Coalition 45, we're going to raise awareness about just how often people are killed by drunk drivers: one person every 45 minutes. Nearly 400,000 people, like me, are injured by drunk drivers and have their lives changed in an instant. And yet these crimes are entirely preventable.

I never in my wildest dreams imagined I'd be in this position at 24. The crash could have been tragic, but I took control of the narrative and rewrote the ending of my story. I will tell my story whenever I can, hoping that one day no one else will have to go through this experience.