Auti Angel, the wheelchair dancer and choreographer best known for her role in the reality television show Push Girls, has died of invasive breast cancer. She was 52 years old.

She first announced her cancer diagnosis in an October 2021 social media video. Angel shared it was a difficult subject to talk about because she had lost her mother to breast cancer, but she remained positive that she would beat the disease.

Unfortunately, her cancer progressed rapidly. On Jan. 24, 2022, Angel shared another heartfelt video update. Her cancer was terminal and had spread to her lungs, brain, lymph nodes and other areas. She asked for prayers and a miracle, and said she wasn’t going down without a fight. “If by any chance that it’s God’s will that I go home, and transform into the next dimension, know that I am at peace. I am so at peace, and I have no fear,” she said.

Angel died the morning of March 23, 2022.

Through her dance, television appearances and social media posts, Angel helped change how America sees wheelchair users. As Tiffiny Carlson, a contributor to New Mobility, put it in a Facebook tribute:

“She changed the way I saw women with spinal cord injury at age 18. I first saw an image of her in a wheelchair ad in New Mobility back in ’97, looking so amazing in a white crop top, white pants and a half pony. … I loved it and her. She showed the world we could be fierce. RIP Auti. You did good.”

You can read more about Angel’s remarkable life in Jerry McGill’s March 2021 profile of the entertainer, published just seven months before her cancer diagnosis. In it, he described Angel’s draw on Push Girls:

“During the course of the reality show’s two-season run, Angel was all the things we’ve come to cherish in this medium — she was brash, outspoken, daring, charming, sexual, confrontational, vulnerable, pulsing with vitality and confidence. It was hard to look away whenever she was on the screen.”

Rest in peace, Auti Angel. You will be missed.