365 Day Journal Challenge

Dec 27 - Place yourself in the shoes

Prompt:
> Place yourself in the shoes of someone who has a disability and write about something
> they THINK they cannot do but after trying and trying, they find they are able to.

As you may know after reading one of the entries-"the one that got away", I once dated a man for a year who was a paraplegic.  Before I met him, I was working as a nursing assistant at a rehab hospital and got involved with the Super Sports Saturday program (Lakeshore Rehab in Birmingham where the US Paralympic team trains).  Anyway, this program lets kids in wheelchairs come and they learn to play basketball and other sports each saturday in the gym.  Part of my training to work there to start with was getting in a wheelchair and taking a tour of the hospital, up and down sidewalks, through doors, etc.  Now, this is a rehab hospital so they had push bars not knobs on the doors and the sidewalks weren't too  steep.  But still, with all my muscles working, it was not easy and quite frustrating trying to get through a doorway without getting the front wheels caught.  I'd have to lean too far forward so that if I was really paralyzed, I'd have flipped myself out but my muscles compensated and I didn't.  Now, playing basketball was a whole different thing.  I was on the bb team one year in high school but I didn't realize the pressure your body receives when it pushes up and out with the ball.  Talking about flipping-its not hard to do.  There's a reason Basketball equipped wheelchairs sometimes have a roll wheel in back-its necessary.  Often, on Saturday, the kids or even adults in the gym playing would ask me to get in one of the spare chairs and play.  It was fun and I was honored to be given the chance to challenge myself in a different way just as they were honored to let someone in on how difficult (and fun at times) it can be to play a sport with real athletes who do things differently but who are highly competitive and serious about their sport.  I can put myself in their wheelchair and try things out but one thing I will not be able to do is really wear their shoes.  I do not know the embarassment of having to bring an extra pair of pants b/c the bathroom doors are too narrow at a restaurant or because the catheter got loose from the bag.  I cannot imagine being 17 and good looking and all the sudden people I don't know are having to wipe my rear end or feed me.  That is beyond my scope of knowledge.  I haven't known the words "can't" in a physical sense.  I am not climbing mt. everest b/c I don't have the interest to do so at this point in my life but I could.  I don't have the inclination to run a marathon but if I train, I believe I could. 

However, with Paralympics and other programs like Lakeshore, I honestly believe that most people can find a sport or activity that satisfies their need to compete or to join with others to acheive a common goal even if its a chess club or verbal debate program (if quadriplegic and sports really aren't an option) or teaching others with your words or writing about what you know and believe about life.  The rest of us have will hopefully find something they love in life and will take the time to figure it out and devote ourselves to that thing we love to do, knowing we can when we are ready.  The ultimate think we can do for others who have a disability is to truly try to understand that they may have quite a bit of time, early on when a disability occurs but fear and embarassment, doubt, despair, worry, and all those other emotions compete with a tendril of hope that says it will be okay, they will survive.  Maybe all of us can remember that we may not be able to step into their shoes but if we can find out where folks with similar disabilities can achieve what they want to acheive and point them to those people or facilities, others who can say they have been in their shoes will be available to lead them out of the despair and back to the world of can do, in whatever way they can still do. 

I've heard it said that one doesn't need to know everything but it sure helps to know where to look and how to find it out. 
In my job as a social worker, I can fix everyone and its my job to know when I can help and when I need to look elsewhere and connect these folks to others who have more experience and can help.  I can help motivate, I can share information, I can introduce folks to others who know how it feels and that is a can do that I feel comfortable with.  I cannot say I know how it feels b/c I sat in a wheelchair and went through a doorway, nearly flipping my able boddied self out of said chair.  I can't say I know how it feels to experience the freedom playing sports again after doubting I could even get myself out of the bed without help.  I can't say I know the fear that one may never have a love relationship or have children because I had a boyfriend for a year who was in a wheelchair (although I can say that his physical disabilities paled in comparison to his emotional ones-which were there before the accident and I can say he had a daughter and a wife before I dated him and he was just as abusive as an able bodied man to that wife). 

What I'm getting at here is that it's what is inside you that counts, your hopes and dreams, your sense of yourself, your ability to be humble when needed but still have self-respect, your ability to laugh when the unexpected happens and accept help on occasion even when you'd rather spend the next ten hours working on the doggone door until you figure out how to get through it without flipping.  With the exception of the last few words, don't we all have this inside us, don't we have that in common?  Can we see that what gets in the way for those who  are disabled is often physical barriers that frustrate them on a daily basis-heights of furnishings, widths of doors, ignorant people, etc.  What gets in the way of the rest of us (and those who are disabled) is fear, doubt, uncertainty, inability to laugh at our mistakes, unwillingness to accept help, even when this unwillingness causes strife in our home and/or job, and stubborn refusal to take a chance for fear of embarassment if we fail.  Perhaps the disabled could also try getting into the shoes of the able bodied for often we are just as disabled, just not as visibly so. 

Perhaps we should all take off our shoes and just wiggle our toes(or our fingers if the toes don't feel, or imagine our toes in the water or whatever we have to do to finish this exercise) in the same stream and then maybe, just maybe, we will  know we all have something in common.  Water, like light, creativity, spirit, love, washes over us whether or not we feel it. It is already there and waiting for us to know it is already there inside us. 


I'm not sure I answered the question but this is what came out in response to the question. 

B-






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