Deportation would mean leaving behind her mother and three siblings.

"Right now I am facing one of the hardest moments of my life," Carvalho told Newshub.

"A system that discriminates can take everything. It can take your job, your health, separate you from your family, and it can destroy your joy to live but I've learned that there is one thing the system can't take away: my hope. Because that's a power within."

When Juliana first lost the feeling in her legs, she remained optimistic.

"I always believed I'd be okay. I needed to believe it, and that hope would only die when I did. It's what kept me alive," Carvalho says.

But her will to live shifted when the mother of a young girl using a wheelchair reached out to her. To walk again wasn't important to her anymore.

"To be a voice for people with disabilities and represent us became my mission," says Carvalho.

As an advocate for people living with disabilities, she published her autobiography In my chair or Yours? in 2010 in Brazil - gaining national recognition for her story. Now, she is launching the book in New Zealand.

She admits, through her struggle to remain in New Zealand it been hard not to give up.

"Not because of my condition itself but the way society usually treats those with disabilities," says Carvalho.

She was working at Drake Medox until September when her visa was denied and had to quit.