When People Say ‘You Don’t Look Like You’re Blind’

More awareness must take place.

Bold Blind Beauty

Featured Article on The Mighty

“not every disability is visible”

Recently I became a contributor for The Mighty an online community of people who share their stories of serious health conditions, disability, disease and mental illness. The article below is my latest entry on the source of my sight loss and life after the “there’s no more we can do for you” conversation.

It was a little over 48 years ago when I put on my first pair of eyeglasses, and the feeling of seeing clearly for the first time was indescribable. The transition was like leaving a dark movie theater and stepping outdoors on a bright sunny day. My eyes needed time to adjust to everything suddenly appearing clear and focused.

For 36 years, I enjoyed perfect vision provided I wore corrective lenses. That all changed 11 years ago with two words: macular hole. It began when I removed one of my…

View original post 604 more words

Tap Tap Tap

Took a bit of a break there, from:

THE REDEFINING DISABILITY AWARENESS CHALLENGE

http://rosebfischer.com/2014/07/15/the-redefining-disability-awareness-challenge/

I found it a challenge to talk about disability on a weekly basis and needed to leave it for a while. This blog is not, strictly, a blog about disability and/or blindness.

I realize, as much as I want to forget about such challenges for a while, I can’t get away from disability. It is tangled up in me and with me wherever I go.

I write about it, in small ways or big ones, anyway.

So I will address a few stories in the news lately and use a specific example from the other day, in my life, to illustrate a point. Hmmm. Guess I should hurry up and think what that’s going to be right now.

😉

I guess this might answer number 40 in the list of RDAC questions, as I feel quite sure I want to find ways to become in volved in awareness and social issues: feminism or equal rights. Either way. This involves disability in a big way.

Q: Are you involved in any political or social activities related to having a disability? This could be anything from an advocacy group to an informal social gathering to participation in adaptive sports.

I try to deny it sometimes because the feeling is often uncomfortable, but I keep being dragged back to it.

I have an interview coming up on this blog with a guy who just graduated with a degree in Women’s Studies. I am very interested in hearing his story and viewpoint.

I have spoken with my friend Steph from

Bold Blind Beauty,

who has been working on a new image, one she feels represents her site and her mission:

The Unveiling of a Stylish Icon

I get involved when and where I can. Who knows what that might look like in the future.

There are others who are doing a lot more:

Stand By Me RP awareness page

This poet has recently been highlighting a story that made the news, over in Britain:

Paul Franks speaks to the mom of a blind schoolgirl who has been asked not to use her white cane in school due to health and safety

Maybe you’ve heard about it. This is the kind of thing that makes one want to speak up and stand up for what is right.

It’s hard to imagine, in 2015, that this would happen.

It’s the kind of thing my mother would have fought hard against, if it had been me being told I couldn’t have my cane at school, instead having to rely on others. This girl was told to be with supervision at all times. So much for the independence that is the whole point of school.

If this were true, white canes everywhere would be tripping people, left and right. There would be anarchy, injuries galore.

As long as she is taught how to use her white cane properly, this should be a non issue.

Okay, so there may have been one incident, when I slipped on a wet floor and sprained my ankle in the hallway at school, my own white cane going flying as I went down. This may have nearly empaled a staff member. I say “may have”.

But this could very easily happen with anything, with any child. There is no way a child should be told she can’t have her way of getting around school.

http://www.freerangekids.com/blind-girl-cant-use-her-cane-at-school-its-a-tripping-hazard/

This is the sort of thing that we must not accept from people. This is why awareness and consciousness of others is so important.

How dangerous is a white cane?

How dangerous is a wheelchair? That’s like saying a wheelchair is dangerous because it might run over someone’s toe. Ridiculous. Care is always needed, of course. No waving it around madly, but man…this story is everywhere.

What is a school mobility officer anyway? Differences from North America to Britain I guess, but she should be having mobility lessons of her own, with an instructor, to learn how to use her cane safely and correctly.

They said it was just temporary, while they discussed the matter with the family. What does that really mean anyway?

This story has made the news, in the papers from the UK where it happened, over to Canada and the US, all the way to New Zealand.

It makes an excellent headline, but it really is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.

Well, I’m so worked up, that perhaps I’ll save the other stories for next week. There will be one of those, and much sooner this time.

The schedule calls for next week to be a free post day anyway and there are only ten or so more of these RDAC questions left.

Travelling With the Speed of Sight

We’ve all heard of travel at the speed of light, but how fast is travel at the speed of sight?

I’ve been away from posting on Monday for

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge,

but I return, with a special edition of

THE CHALLENGE.

This one is bringing awareness through an interview I did the other day on something called Purpose Talk Radio and Blog Talk Internet Radio.

Meet the Blind

Travelling With the Speed of Sight.

It was my first Internet radio show interview. I think I will stick to writing and my blog, but just as I feel an invisible push to do that, Cindy Freeman does her online radio show and this month she has been focusing on the subject of blindness for the month of October.

I am more than just that title, but I know it is necessary to grab people’s attention in the first place.

We spoke about my blindness, my writing, blogging, and my love of travel.

She asked me what I feel my purpose to be. It’s writing. That’s all I know for sure. It’s writing. It’s always going to be.

October 15th was

White Cane Safety Day

in the US.

This is just when you’d want to meet the blind, but when I think of titles and what they say, as far as my Memoir Monday posts and disability awareness, I get a little stuck on titles like, “Meet the Blind”. I can’t help feel that I am more than “the blind”. But just how much more? What more?

So she met me and I got experience that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. I answered her questions to the best of my ability.

I needed a break from disability awareness, but then I realize I can’t get away from it, no matter how hard I try.

As for RDAC, I guess I got a little burnt out on the Q&A format, but I aim to complete all 50 or so questions by the end of 2015.

Patience With Public Perception

Last time, on the

Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge,http://rosebfischer.com/2014/07/15/the-redefining-disability-awareness-challenge/

I wrote about my diagnosis of kidney disease:

The D Word!

Here’s today’s question.

***

Q: How has public perception of disability changed in your lifetime?

A: Okay, so I will try my best to look at this question with an optimistic viewpoint, as much as possible – because although progression doesn’t happen as quickly as I’d like it to, it does happen.

I don’t know if so-called “public perception” has changed all that much really.

Yeah, the optimism is coming…just wait for it.

🙂

All I mean by that is that although conditions are hopefully improving, the question of what the public thinks, feels, or knows logically or through education are all different questions.

I was born in the 1980s and so not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things. In that time, in the US there was the introduction of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which came on the scene six years after I was born.

Here in Canada, we have:

**The Charter of Rights and Freedoms

and

**The Canadian Human Rights Act

http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/about/

Disability is such a broad and all-encompassing term. It isn’t easy to lobby for every single disability out there.

http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/about/history

There’s a little thing called equal opportunities, which is becoming more commonly known in workplaces, but I still sense a lot of ignorance and discrimination, whether meaning it or not, by employers toward anyone with a disability:

I want to know my obligations. – Canadian Human Rights Commission

Right there!

The fact that the word “obligation” is used feels ugly. I read that and I already feel like I’m an obligation or a burden, just something mandated by the government and forced upon every unsuspecting company.

If so, well what’s wrong with that then?

I should be happy with that, right? The government is taking the necessary steps toward inclusion.

Laws may be the first step, but in many ways, they aren’t the most important one that will make the world a more inclusive place for everyone.

I believe terms such as “obligation” keep things just as focused on the negatives and downsides as my own negative tone of which I promise to keep adjusting.

I may come off sounding demanding and I am, but I am willing to do my part.

I am the first to admit that I am not always a patient person, like with this issue, but I also need to work on speaking up for myself and hopefully I can make it better for someone with a disability, thirty or fifty years from now.

Accommodations must be made, but until our world opens their minds and hearts and sees less differences, I fear this will never lead to the inclusion I dream of.

So what will it take to change the public’s perceptions fully?

Here’s a blog post my friend Steph, fashion and lifestyle blogger for women who are visually impaired wrote about that:

Observing 25 Years of the ADA – Bold Blind Beauty

I think Steph says something very wise in this post. She basically says that discrimination is everywhere, from people who don’t live with disabilities, but disability does not discriminate.

Sure, it’s easy to live in fear and denial. Believe me, I am extremely familiar with these things in my own life.

Fear keeps the public from wanting to take too close a look. If society keeps people with disabilities kept separate in their own schools and clubs and then, even worse, hidden away at home, they won’t have to deal with the fact that we do exist and deserve to have all the same opportunities for work and life.

However, the denial that goes along with this won’t protect them when disability comes into their own lives.

Laws are important and all well and good, but perceptions are a little more difficult to control this way.

You’d have to really get out there, to ask people what their true feelings are on disability, to follow them through their daily lives to see how they might react to certain situations.

I perceive myself one way, but I can’t control how other people will perceive me.

I will still continue trying to make strides in this arena though because it matters.

I do believe things have improved, in the thirty years since I was born – don’t get me wrong.

See, I can be optimistic. It’s just a little more complicated than that.

Sure, I get angry. I grow frustrated that the public just doesn’t understand, but I am very willing to keep the dialogue going.

Anger can work for you. It has propelled some of us in positive ways.

We do progress, as a species, even if we backslide now and again.

I do not downplay or discount all I have mentioned above, all that has been put in place since I was born thirty-one years ago. I even like to think it was, partly thanks to my appearance on the scene, that these leaps forward were made.

🙂

Too presumptuous? Okay, perhaps.

But in and amongst the frustration and the fear, I do have hope. Most people in the public are curious and kind. They don’t purposefully go out of their way to put up roadblocks for those of us with disabilities. It’s just that we need more than pity or good intentions. We need awareness and action.

I will admit, I’m not the first person to know all about public policies and government initiatives, but I do know about what it’s really like to live with a disability, in a world where I am in the minority.

The public does want to move beyond the fear and the denial; or at least, that is what I tell myself.

We must focus on what we can do, disabled or not, instead of what we can’t.

***

What can I do to help this process along? I ask you, the public!

Public…are you there?

(Crickets.)

🙂

Hmmm. Awkward!

Well, in the meantime…check out:

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge on Facebook

And maybe fifty years from now we won’t need to have a Facebook page at all. Maybe disability won’t be such a big deal any longer. Or, maybe, awareness will always be a necessary and an important thing? What do you think?

Next week’s question is a variation on this weeks’:

How has your perception of disability changed in your lifetime?

Oh, how indeed.

Social Media

It’s Monday and time for another Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge.
Before I get to the answer to today’s question,

Redefining Disability on Facebook.

Rose is the brains behind this whole thing,

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge,

but I invite anyone who is interested in this subject to feel free to visit, not only her original post, but also the extended community I hope will grow on Facebook.
I read Rose’s questions and have been answering them, along with others, but I think a Facebook page could be a wonderful place to share posts and articles about disability.
I think RDAC and the Facebook page are a place to redefine what disability means to the people who live it, to bring awareness to the issues that surround it, and to express the challenges that come up when living with any sort of disability imaginable.
Hope to talk to you all there.
***
Q: What would you like the general public to know about your disabilities, disability in general, or any other relevant subject?
A: I have been seeing a lot of stories on the news lately.
There have been the multiple features about customers being denied entry into public buildings in Toronto, with their service animals.
Is it up to the police to do anything about this?
What is their duty to enforce the law that a guide dog or any other service animal is legally permitted in any public space?
I have had this happen to me in the past. I can feel these people’s outrage, to be denied the right to enter a cafe, to get something to eat, with their guide.
Then there was the story of a cafe which is run by all visually impaired workers.
The workers say, in the piece, they want to illustrate to the customers and the world that people with visual impairment are just as capable as anyone else.
People in the piece said they made excellent coffee.
I make coffee all the time. I can understand why they want to showcase this to the world. I think it’s great, but I didn’t like that there was a part of me which felt they could become a thing of entertainment. People sitting there and enjoying the show of blind people trying to serve their customers.
Are these stories becoming entertainment, like watching animals in the zoo?
I know, I know. This could all be in my own head and I don’t mean to be over-sensitive.
I just felt strange, as I watched all these stories on the news over the past few weeks.
In my gut, I understand, it’s important and it’s all a series of steps to educate and eventually enough awareness will make them see…
The stories and the feel-good articles are increasing, more and more lately.
On one hand I like that attention is bring awareness. I don’t wish for any “but” I might add to take away from that fact.
So I say however…
🙂
I feel an undercurrent, a squirming in my stomach as I sense the awareness heightening and the barriers being removed.
I want the public to know everything these media covered stories have been speaking about. I feel the urge to educate, to protest, and to advocate.
Then I feel the discomfort that I have to do this at all.
I think, I worry, that these stories are becoming our feel-good dose of the warm-and-fuzzies for us all, a mass media love-fest.
As someone with one of these disabilities, I realize a lot of this is my own issue, my own unresolved issues.
I want to show this discomfort in one more example:
I came across this article in the Huffington Post.
Is this real? Is it true? How authentic is this?
A woman is going blind and her husband struggles to help her and to go on loving her, the best way he knows how.
Awwww.
Is it right? Is it sweet?
Read for yourselves:

Here
and for the short film, on its own, go
Here.

The acting feels forced. The script feels odd, to me.
People read this stuff and think so many things. I simply have no control on how this sort of thing is seen when it’s put out there for the public’s viewing pleasure.
It makes you feel good to read a headline like that. Publications like the Huffington Post come across stories like this and it’s an immediate jackpot. They know their readers will eat that stuff up with a spoon.
I can certainly understand the way she has of feeling like more of a patient or a child, the sense of feeling like a burden rather than an equal.
I know the sentiment. I just don’t know about its delivery.
I want to have frank and open discussions when I can, which isn’t always possible. It’s more likely that people will see articles and short films on YouTube, coming to their own conclusions, which may or may not help.
Here is the only place I can speak what I feel and know to be true.
Please think about these things when you read or watch them. These situations are rarely simple. They involve feelings and emotions. They are reasons to get worked up, to feel concern, and to register emotions that are often disguised from view.
I want to keep speaking and keep writing because that’s how I can be heard.
***
What are your thoughts on these stories? Do you read articles like this often? How do they make you feel?
Next week:
If you could cure the disabilities that affect your life, would you?
I get asked this question more than most and have all my life.
Stay tuned for the answer, which has evolved some as I’ve gotten older.
And please feel free to like the Facebook page I linked to at the beginning of this post.

My Free Five

It’s been a while, two weeks in fact, since my last post for

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge.

As a refresher, my previous post for the challenge, on Memoir Monday two weeks back:

Indefinable, Undefinable? Definitely

This week I am given free rein to speak on whatever just so happens to be on my mind.

🙂

***

#1 Emily’s Oz

On Facebook I came across a post about a commercial that would be aired during the Academy Awards. I watched the Canadian broadcast and saw no sign of what they were talking about all evening, but that is where the internet is so wonderful.

🙂

I am including both commercials: with descriptive and without,

(Emily’s Oz, without descriptive).

I recommend watching both short commercials, paying attention to compare the difference between what it’s like to watch, with and without the descriptive track.

It reminds me of those commercials: one has a woman arriving home with a bag of groceries and being frightened by something and the other is a woman panting and yelling and being told to push.

These are to advertise the need for descriptive services for television and films.

In the former, is she being frightened by a mouse or by a child?

In the latter, is she helping to move furniture or is she having a baby?

🙂

Just this weekend I tried to watch an important documentary on a brutal attack on a woman in India. I found I was unable to watch for a lot of the hour because there were only subtitles, which caused me to miss out on more than half of what was being said.

Of course, the example I give here is much more lighthearted, but I just wish something like descriptive for watching any programming wasn’t still so hard to come by.

Anyway, I thought that Emily was pretty cute and figured today was a good time to share her and the project built around her.

For a behind the scenes for the making of…check out:

The Making of Emily’s Oz

#2 TED Talk On Why Disability Does Not Equal Inspiration

I immediately heard the term this Australian comedian used, “Disability Porn” and I was drawn in, but not for what it might seem like.

🙂

All icky jokes aside, she makes some excellent points in her talk, of which I highly recommend.

Disability Porn – Definition: The objectification of one group of people (living with a disability) for the benefit of another group of people

She believes that having a disability does not make someone exceptional, but questioning what we’ve been taught to believe about disability does.

I couldn’t agree with this more.

I have grown very uncomfortable of late with the idea of being seen as overly inspiring by others.

I know. I know. This probably makes me come off as a bit self deprecating and the rest. I don’t mean to seem like I am being bashful or unwilling to accept praise when given it. I have been called inspirational before.

I just wish, sometimes, it was not all because people are so amazed I can function at any sustainable level. Yes, I can brush my own teeth, hair, dress myself, and cook a meal. Shock of shocks.

Just because someone can’t themselves imagine how they would do these things if they could not see, does not mean I should be praised for something I am saying I have no problem doing. If I say it I mean it.

Stella says in her talk that someone wanted to present her with an achievement award as a teenager, but her parents turned it down because, in their eyes, their daughter hadn’t done all that much to deserve special attention and praise.

This could be seen as mean-spirited or unfair, but I “admire” her parents for taking a stand, when they showed others that they didn’t really think of their daughter having done anything all that spectacular.

Others might not have taken such a stance, but I applaud them for not singling her out. We hear the word inspiring and that automatically must be a positive thing, right?

I may be called ungrateful or a jerk for seeming to push away a well-meaning compliment, but just think about what Stella and myself are proposing.

It isn’t our job as people, who just so happen to be living lives others can hardly fathom, to be here solely to inspire.

I myself have been guilty of it: of saying I must be grateful when looking at someone who has it worse off than me because it could always be worse.

How do you or I think that makes that other person feel to hear that? Oh, so they think we’re inspirational or they are just glad they aren’t us.

This speaker, unfortunately, has passed away now, but this awesome and cut-to-thecore TED talk made me think and it was just the sort of radical idea I guess I had been looking for myself, although I just couldn’t vocalize it in the way she did.

RIP Stella

#3
DRUMSTICK FOR A BLIND MAN, PLEASE!!!

One thing I like least is hypocrisy, but I am as guilty as the next person of exhibiting it.

As I grow older, I suppose, I become more and more uncomfortable with things like my number three today.

I even recently answered a question for this very challenge about the

Blind Bonus

sometimes given to myself and others.

When I was sixteen I got a trip to California from an organization who awards wishes and dream trips to young people with disabilities. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything now, but as I look back I feel a strange discomfort.

A blind man holds up a sign, like they would have done hundreds of years ago, as beggars on a street corner. This feels wrong to me.

Don’t get me wrong…Dave Grohl was a stand-up dude for fulfilling the guy’s request, my own blind brother received a pair of drumsticks from R.E.M. once, but I just wish we didn’t have to use such a thing to get attention and gifts.

I make jokes and I share this story because it really was a nice thing to do and supposedly the Foo Fighter’s front man is known for granting such favours; there’s nothing wrong with giving a dying cancer patient something they greatly long for. I don’t mean to take it all so seriously.

Take what we can get, is the “blind bonus” motto, but I honestly don’t think, as an adult, I would want to hold up any sign.

#4 Would You Rather?

I recently came across a Facebook status on an author’s page. The game of “Would You Rather?” is played often on such FB pages.

This time the question was:

Would you rather…be unable to speak or be unable to see?

I generally do not like these kinds of questions. I have often thought would I rather be blind or deaf…and I guess that’s a question for another day’s post.

😉

I wasn’t so bothered by the question, in this case however, as I was to read the responses and to see that nine out of ten people said they would rather be unable to speak than see.

It just sort of shocked and saddened me to realize how much fear there is out there about losing one’s sight. I thought, to be unable to communicate one’s thoughts, feelings, and needs through words might be more of a concern to those answering.

A common response I saw was: “I could still write down what I wanted to say. At least if I couldn’t speak I could still read. I need to be able to read books.”

Coming from those on an author’s FB page I wasn’t so surprised to hear that, but I did reply with the solution that I assumed might be more well-known. There is always the technology to read without sight. Audio books are becoming more and more common. These things don’t immediately occur to most people and I get that.

I just know that people take for granted being able to relay to someone else what they want. I know of people who can not do this and I have seen how hard that is, for everyone involved.

The fear of blindness is just so common and I am left feeling like the monster everyone is afraid of. I realize it is the blindness not the person they are referring to, but here I share my biggest fears with disability. That is what this challenge is all about.

I will tackle the question of how I feel about my own blindness and whether I would choose to see if I could, in a few weeks time here.

#5 Disability Confident: Rethinking Disabilities

“Would you like to have higher employee retention, lower absenteeism, greater innovation, and profitability? It’s possible…if you change your thinking.”

Who wouldn’t want this, right?

🙂

This was the pitch by the Ontario Disability Employment Network to attract businesses to attend their one-day conference on the benefits of hiring people with disabilities.

At the start of February I was watching a program on my local television channel here in Ontario:

TVO.org – Creating a Barrier Free Ontario – On The Agenda with Steve Paikin

On their nightly program they focused on a conference being held the day after my birthday, at a hotel in Toronto, and I immediately perked up. It definitely sounded like something I would like to attend.

Ontario Disability Employment Network (ODEN) – Rethinking Disabilities Conference, Toronto

It goes on to say the benefits already found are that companies who hire those with disabilities are found to:

**revolutionize their workforces and delivering bottom line results.

And at the conference attendees would be:

**Learning how to leverage the latest in progressive employment practices to put your organization at the forefront of a new movement.

**You’ll hear from business leaders from across North America who have embraced this new approach to hiring and are now disability confident.

**Build your knowledge and learn about a whole new way to create an inclusive workplace and gain a strong competitive advantage through improved culture, loyalty and employee innovation.

Disability confident…hmmm.

I was intrigued to listen to the program and maybe even attend the conference. I knew it was for employers more than myself, and was happy to hear about the fact that these conferences were happening, but maybe if I were there I could represent more of those who are in need of the chances to prove our skills and worth.

I didn’t want to look at it like that.

I guess though everyone must prove their worth and skill to an employer and I have always wanted equal treatment and consideration.

The term “disability confident” was an interesting one to me, but I couldn’t quite figure out why.

I looked into the specifics of attending and emailed someone in charge. I received a reply very quickly, which was most appreciated.

It looked like they were happy to have me there, if I were willing to pay the price of admission.

I suppose businesses are able to afford hundreds of dollars for a one-day conference which might help them achieve everything I listed above, but I certainly could not afford it. I was not one of the people on Steve Paikin’s program: a lawyer or a politician. I was on fixed government income and assistance and one of those hoping to get off those one day.

This is not to complain because they gave me a discount, but unfortunately it was still more than I could spend, even on a worthy cause.

It was too last minute and they informed me:

Hi Kerry,

So sorry I didn’t respond to your email sooner. I was out of town at the end of the week and it slipped by me while I was trying to catch up.

Unfortunately there’s not much else I can do this time. Typically we try to keep 2 or 3 complementary passes for situations like this but we are running very close to the wire and may even lose money on this particular event. As a not-for-profit without any financial resources, we just can’t afford to do that. Our food costs for the day are running almost $200 alone, plus there’s all the other expenses.

I hope you understand our situation and perhaps we can accommodate you at a future event.

Thanks,

Joe

—–Original Message—–
From: Kerry Kijewski [mailto:kkherheadache@gmail.com]
Sent: February-05-15 9:35 AM
To: Joe Dale
Subject: Re: Inquiry

Hello Again,

Thank you again for looking into this for me and for offering me the discount.

Unfortunately I am unable to come, due to the cost.

This is really a shame because I saw the program on TV the other night and I am very passionate on the subject of it and this conference.

It’s unfortunate, again, because I am not one of the lucky and hardworking few, like on that program the other night, with a well paying career. I am one of the majority of people with disabilities who hasn’t had so much luck finding jobs and thus I am on government assistance and am unable to afford this conference.

I just figured that it might be a positive thing for me to be there, as I am one of those for whom the speakers are going to be speaking about.. I am not happy with the current situation and would love to see improvements on employment opportunities for myself and others with visual impairments.

I am saying this just to explain why I seemed so interested in attending your conference and why I now have to decline.

Is there any other conferences or public forums you could recommend that I could afford, that are about these issues?

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,
Kerry Kijewski

I included the above email exchange to show that I did my best to inquire and explain my situation and they seemed to do their best to accommodate, however it was not enough and did not work out in the end.

“Join the movement that is changing the face of Canadian businesses and building a powerful new economy.”

http://www.crwdp.ca/en/rdc

I hope to find a conference of some kind, relating to these issues most important to me, sometime in the future. I would like to get involved somehow and am passionate on these issues and thought this would be a good topic to end with for this week’s free posting.

***

Hope you enjoyed my Free Five today. I borrowed the framework and idea from something new I am trying and of which I started a few weeks back, with the following:

In The News and On My Mind: #1000Speak Edition

I hope to continue, on Wednesdays mostly, but have already veered from the plan I had for it when I posted it.

🙂

I don’t know what the future of Redefining Disability is, as these things rarely go as planned when the bloggers who come up with them start out. Like #1000Speak, this one took off and Rose of

http://rosebfischer.com

had no clue anyone would even want to take part in the beginning.

I will go on because I like devoting my Memoir Monday to this topic and because Rose came up with a set of questions such as this one:

What would you tell someone who has recently been diagnosed with your disabilities or disabilities that you are familiar with?

I will answer that one in one week’s time.

International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day, 2014

November 22nd is International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day

It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that most people know of or have a loved one who has committed suicide. This is sad but true.

I myself have a cousin on both my father and my mother’s side of the family who have.

I wrote a post about my father’s brother’s son, who took his life on a hot summer’s day, ten years ago:

Summertime Sadness.

seven years later, on a cold day in December, I got the call and sank to my knees on my kitchen floor, when my uncle solemnly informed me of the news.

It had happened again.

Now I had to be the one to tell my mother that her younger brother’s son had ended his own life.

These were some of the hardest words I’ve ever uttered.

This just goes to show that it happens, to people every single day, only after much suffering by the one who eventually can not take it anymore.

I don’t know if there is any hope of ending this sad sad thing, if awareness and understanding will ever be enough.

All I know is that we need each other to help move on when a tragedy such as this strikes a family down. We need to stand back up and be there for one another.

For more on this, please visit:

http://suicideprevention.ca

Schoolwork

During last Monday’s post for

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge

I described a typical

Day in the Life,

for me, someone who just happens to be visually impaired. I explained how I do the everyday things we all must do.

In contrast, my school and work experiences haven’t been typical at all.

***

Q: Is your work or school life affected by disability? Describe some of these challenges.

A: Simply put … yes.

This may be the most difficult question I have answered for this challenge yet. It involves a lot of what my educational history has been and a lot of the fears I have for my future.

As a writer who uses writing to convey my feelings and thoughts in, what should be a clear and concise manner, I am not sure where to begin or what to focus on here. I am under know obligation to even answer if I don’t want to, (the option to simply skip over any questions I find difficult to respond to), but then how would I ever come close to figuring out how school and work have or will affect me in future? It’s through the writing that I come to find the answers I seek.

My parents, my mother had to fight hard to get me educated along with my peers in my neighbourhood school system. I did not feel it when I was young, but there was great pressure to prove all that hard work worth it and to show people I was just as capable as any other child.

Things became complex when my situation was made even more complicated by additional health problems. I was in sixth grade and over time everything began to suffer: my schoolwork, my social development, my physical health and state of mind. At first glance it appeared the stress and the pressure had finally gotten to me and maybe it was all too much.

After I was finally diagnosed with kidney disease my blindness suddenly seemed like nothing at all in comparison.

Would I make it to high school? Would I graduate?

It’s years later and I did make it to high school. I made it through a year of dialysis and a kidney transplant and I battled back to be ready for the next stage of my life. They wanted to hold me back because they thought I wasn’t ready. They were wrong, but I couldn’t possibly know what life had in store for me.

I did not graduate. This isn’t easy to talk about, but I have to.

Again my blindness was overshadowed by the other medical issues that plagued me through my teen years and beyond. I could not concentrate on completing high school when I could barely get through a day without pain.

I became isolated. I faded from view. I fell behind.

Now I am thirty and I feel like ever getting a degree or a job is way far off and, many days, I simply can not see either one happening for me. I know, however, that this is just the fear talking. The fear that I can’t hack it is a constant companion.

The truth is that my blindness has been an issue, but it hasn’t been my biggest one. This isn’t to say it hasn’t been a challenge and that it won’t present problems for me in going forward, but what else is there to do but fight for the future I know I deserve.

We are coming to the end of October in a few short days and with this the final few days of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. I wrote about the part we as a society all must play to find a way to bring people with disabilities such as blindness into the work force a few weeks back:

National Disability Employment Awareness Month.

This is possible, I believe, and necessary for a more inclusive world.

I hope to return to completion of additional education as I enter into the decade that is my thirties. Better late than never.

I will get my high school diploma. I will strive for a degree in English literature, creative writing, or tourism. These are my passions and any disability I have dealt with in my life has made me dream bigger, able to see how far I have come and to feel appreciative for all those who have helped me along the way all the more.

I will do my part in showing the world that I can learn and work just as hard as anybody else who looks for fulfilment through a useful degree or a worthwhile job.

If my school and work life have or will be affected by my disabilities it’s all the inspiration and motivation I will ever need to carve my own spot in future.

And I will celebrate by announcing it here when I do achieve these goals. Disability does affect all these parts of life, but it does not have to define who I am and predict what future success I may have.

IT CAN BE DONE.

***

For next week:

Is your family life affected by disability? In what ways?

A brand new month and maybe a brand new perspective.

I will think about this and may once more return to asking those family members involved.