Special Magnificence

It’s the start of a new week once more and once again, on this Memoir Monday, I participate in:

The Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge.

Last week I answered Part A of this question:

If you have a medical diagnosis, do you see yourself as having a disability? Why or why not?

And

HEre, was my answer.

And Now, in Week Four, Part B: My mother speaks to the following:

Q: If you don’t have one, how do you view the concept of disability or the people in your life who have them?

A: Disability is such a broad term, it can be physical, developmental, very minor in it’s effects or all encompassing.

When you’ve had little experience with someone with disabilities, you often only see what someone is unable to do. The longer you know or more people you know with disabilities, you see them first as the person that they are and don’t even see their disability.

Everyone does their best to cope and deal with their own disability.
One of the hardest parts is when you are closely related, feeling helpless to fix or make it all better for the people you love.

Thank you to my mother and father for their sincere and heartfelt answers to the questions I have asked them to answer these last few weeks.

Next week, together, we answer the following question:

What have your experiences been with medical treatment and/or therapy been like? Do you have positive, negative, or mixed feelings about your experiences?

***

“The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of the hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.”

The above quote is from J.R.R. Tolkien, on this the eve of the first day of autumn and Hobbit Day.

This, in Middle-Earth, is when the celebrations take place: The Big Birthday.

This, around the world, is the start of the autumn season and Frodo, Bilbo, and Tolkien are celebrated by fans everywhere.
I love this particular season, feeling a shift and a change.

September 22nd is a big day for Frodo and Bilbo in those books and for me, I feel it too.

This week and day were first recognized and celebrated back in 1978 and since then parties have been thrown, food consumed for the occasion, and Middle-Earth literature and films have been screened. Both Tolkien and his son Christopher (just like Bilbo and his nephew Frodo) are celebrated all week long.

In past years my favourite holiday was always Christmas, but this year in particular I am looking forward to the theme of harvest, the apples and the pumpkins, and the bright colours of the leaves and the cool and crisp fall air.

It was the start of a new journey for both Bilbo and Frodo. Sure, the journey was just beginning and their were many cold, dark, and difficult days to come still.

I know winter naturally follows fall, but these autumn months are just the break from the crazy days of summer that I have been waiting for. Those two loveable creatures of my favourite stories in literature give me so much joy.

“Today is a day of special magnificence!”

Happy Hobbit Day to you all.

IN YOUR FACE

Last Monday, for the

Redefining Disability Awareness Challenge,

I shared a wonderful post from my very own parents, which I called:

Literally.

Last week’s question was answered by my parents, from the perspective of raising not one, but two children with a disability. They will be back again next week with another thoughtful response, but this week it is my turn once more.

🙂

Week Three: Part A

Q: If you have a medical diagnosis, do you see yourself as having a disability? Why or why not?

A: I probably would not be here answering these questions if my answer were no.

🙂

I have had several of these in my lifetime. The main one was the LCA, see

Here.

Then there was the Senior-Loken Syndrome, which included the renal failure and scoliosis.

These, to say the least, made my teen years interesting ones.

I have had many different diagnosis suggestions from neurologists with the headaches and chronic pain I have dealt with over the last ten to fifteen years now. However, unlike the obvious medical signs that I am blind or that my kidneys stopped working or when an x-ray clearly showed signs of a curvature in the spine, chronic pain shows no signs that can be clearly and medically spotted.

All of this is true and yet, I can not let any of it weigh, drag, or generally bring me down for very long. Whether it’s one medically diagnosed disability or multiple, if it is at all possible to get on with the business of living, I would highly recommend doing so, to myself and anyone else out there.

I did not come up with the term and I do my best to deal with it in this society of labels.

I am so pleased to participate in this awareness challenge of disability because I know I must live life, not just with disability, but in spite of it. I have had it in some form all my life and this makes it very difficult to live in any sort of denial, not that I haven’t had my moments. It just becomes a part of you and something that it would do no good to refute. It’s not that it wouldn’t occur to me because I am human and I have my bad days, but I know I must take control of my own life, to take the power away from the cruelty and the harshness that living with the label of disability often causes.

Yes, the short answer is that I have disability as a part of my life and the person I am. This is the cold, hard, in-your-face reality of the situation. I look forward to getting further into the issues surrounding life with disability, with some of the questions I have yet to answer, in the weeks to come.

Check back next Monday for more.

Next week my two parents will be answering the following, Part B:

If you don’t have one, how do you view the concept of disability and the people in your life who have them?

***

Speaking of in-your-face.

🙂

With September being Chronic Pain Awareness Month I wanted to share here an initiative being organized by the ones fighting to lessen the stigma surrounding chronic pain and a new way to hopefully bring attention to this silent and invisible scourge.

I asked to do what I could to help migraine, headache, and chronic pain ambassador JP Summers, and this is what she had to say:

“Here is the information for the Pie Challenge. I hope we get some media attention for the sake of all of us that are tired of our condition not being considered severe.”

Please check out the links below to see what’s being done:

Twitter,

Facebook,

and

Website.

Of course this is a take on the:

Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS,

because every person has their own unique story of suffering and deserves to be heard and helped, whether it’s by way of ice cold water being poured over the head or a pie in the face.

Whatever works and get’s peoples’ attention, right?