YES! I Feel Empowered

Upon opening a fortune cookie I read, "A different world cannot be made by indifferent people." I know one person that embodies this phrase more than any other individual I have ever met--Donna Fox.

I met her through the YES! Group Young Empowered Self Advocates, sponsored through Louisville Metro Arc and the Center for Accessible Living. She came on as my Co-leader. And it is through her that the group has most flourished and grown bigger than I could ever have dreamed. Her work with YES! is just one of her jobs, but it is wrong to call it a job--for Donna, YES! is a calling. She embraces our mission of educating and empowering young people with physical and developmental disabilities to see beyond any barriers, whether they are imposed by society or ourselves, and she sees no limit for YES!  I don't think the word "limit" exists in Donna's vocabulary. And she works tirelessly to see that world come to light with every waking moment.

This past Thursday, the YES! Group had its 2015 "YES! We Have Talent!" Talent show. For those reading the CAL Blog, if you were unable to attend, you missed an extraordinary show, which was mainly the production of my extraordinary Co-leader, Donna Fox. To see so many new members participating and to see young people who barely spoke when I first joined the group as a Mentor years ago perform (and with mountains of confidence) in front of a large crowd of family, friends, and YES! supporters, filled me with more emotion than I can express in words. And I will say again that the credit I can take for it is small in comparison to what Donna has done.

I suppose I could list Donna's jobs, likes and hobbies (She loves her dogs, her family, and is now a proud grandmother.), but I think it is more important to again emphasize how she does make the world different by being a person who refuses to be indifferent. Even as her Co-leader, she has helped me to see myself in a better light and approach the world with more optimism. I could write pages and pages of adjectives to describe Donna: buoyant, energetic, strong, fearless, passionate, but it has been and is seeing her through YES! that best describes her commitment to a world without barriers, a world in which we all see ourselves as the strong, capable, and exceptional human beings she has pushed us all to be.

I want to thank you, Donna Fox, on behalf of the YES! Group and on a personal note. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed. They are written concretely in the heart of every YES! member and YES! parent. And they are most certainly etched in my heart. I know I've thanked you before, but I wanted to put it words, how incredible I think you are and how blessed we all are to have you in our lives.

- By Stephanie Hickey

Let's stop talking about what Kanye did

...and talk more about WHY he did it.  

If you are angry because Kanye "picked on" a person with a disability or because he singled both of them out (there was also a lady with a prosthetic leg), you might be missing the bigger picture. 

We need to talk about the root of the problem. He stopped his concert for three minutes until the person was forced to "prove" that he was "disabled enough" to not obey the command. And while Kanye has been publicly chastised for it, that act of ableism seems okay to many, many people on a smaller scale in public settings every day. Disagree? Well, have you ever questioned (aloud or in your head) someone who "doesn't look disabled" in an accessible parking space? That's ableism. 

It's the self righteousness attitude of able-bodied people who think they're the "disability police." So many people with disabilities face never ending confrontations and challenges to their rights in their daily public lives: The person with fibromyalgia who gets hassled every time he legally parks in an accessible parking space; the person with the CP or Spina Bifida that can stand for very short periods of time out of their wheelchair who are challenged as "fakers" if they ever get out of that chair in public; the lady at Kanye's concert who had to detach her prosthetic leg and hold it in the air to prove she was allowed to sit down at a public event. 

Why does anyone feel they have the right to demand proof of disability from other people in public situations? AND what about the people at Kanye's concert who had invisible disabilities that might have stopped them from standing for long periods of times. Would they have been publicly shamed until they were forced to stand? 

This is an all too common public opinion that people with disabilities have an "onus of proof" on themselves in order to access the services or things that they need to function in the community. That attitude is more disabling than any disability. 

We as a society need to stop assuming that "everyone else can do everything that I can do" because we ALL have different abilities (disability or not) and not every disability is visible.

By Keith Hosey

Image used with permission. 

Compassion, Love and Reality Checks - A conversation on Mental Illness and Suicide

By Barbara Louise Davis

    As a person who has survived the suicides of my mother, spouse and an uncle, news of Robin William’s death reminded me of the guilt, confusion, anger and compassion I felt in those times. It took years to get to the compassion, and longer to lose the feelings of blame. Some of this happened through therapy; some as a result of working with CAL’s consumers with mental and physical disabilities over the last 30 years. Lessons I have learned are shared below:

Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of.

    I’m not ashamed of having depression and PTSD.  I’ve taught my son not to be ashamed of mental illness, and to seek treatment when or if needed. Sadly, not everyone feels this way. There is still a lot of stigma attached to mental illness, which causes some not to seek treatment. We need to open our minds and have dialogs with our children and others in order to lessen this stigma.

Budget cuts make getting help difficult.

    Services to those who are poor and/or living with a physical or mental disability are usually first to be cut. A relative is currently trying his best to get services for mental illness, only to have doors shut in his face constantly due to lack of funding,  The frustration he is experiencing as he seeks help is worsening his condition. Sadly, in my years of working with individuals who are mentally ill, I have seen this often.

Love isn’t always enough.

    Robin William’s daughter expressed the thought that she would never understand why, when he was so loved, he couldn’t stay. For many years I felt this way about my mother. She too, was much-beloved. I also wondered why she didn’t love us enough to stay. It took me years to understand that she probably lived as long as she did because she was so much loved. I now understand, too, that she loved us all very much. Unfortunately, there came a time when the emotional pain was so overwhelming it over-rode all rational thought and made it impossible for her to think about anything but ending the pain.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

    Sometimes we grow frustrated trying to get a mentally ill individual to take medications, seek therapy, hospitalization, or join a support group. People can be quick to pass harsh judgments on those who don’t do what needs to be done to “get better.” In truth, mental illness can render a person physically debilitated. There are fears of financial burdens, of being overwhelmed by paperwork, “telephone tag”, the general run-around that can accompany a quest for services, and being stigmatized by others. We can help by being patient and encouraging, by offering help with some of the phone calls and paperwork if needed, and by refraining from showing annoyance or frustration if the individual isn’t acting as quickly as we would like. We should realize that, as a psychiatrist once said to me, “The only suicide we can prevent is our own.” I share this not to discourage one from doing whatever can be done to get the person help, but so that survivors can understand they did not fail, and are not to blame. There is only so much we can do; the rest is up to the person with mental illness.

What Do We Really See In the Mirror?

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt said that. What she's saying is that no one can make you feel bad about you unless you listen to their negative comments. Not to disagree with the fine and great Mrs. Roosevelt, but she is not completely right. Yes, if we chose to focus only on the bad comments listen to the bad comments alone, then we are consenting to feel inferior.

But what I want to say is that I do feel people have the POWER to make us give our consent, especially through repetition and persistence. If a comment is said, no matter how off-hand or however well-intended, and even if we recognize it as negative and choose to shrug it off, it plants seeds of doubt. Here’s an example to which everyone can relate. You think you look good in particular clothes and wear them often. What if someone said, "I'm surprised you're wearing that. It is not flattering."  "Are you sure you don't want to change?" You ignore them, because you like those clothes and choose to wear them on another occasion; they say, "You're wearing that again? I told you it's not very flattering to your body." Even if you dismiss them again, the seed of self-doubt has been planted. "Do I really not look good in this?" You question yourself. And that seed grows. "What OTHER clothes do I really NOT look good in?" "Do I not look good in any of these things because I am fat?" "Does no one want to tell me that?" So see, you start to question yourself. You start to over think and before you know
it, you begin to feel inferior--with or without your consent.

As individuals with disabilities, a lot of people tell us things “for our own good” And some of us are born not seeing barriers. We are always thinking. "Why CAN'T I do this?" if someone says, "You can't do that!" Some of us have that attitude pushed on us by loved ones until we adopt it as our own. And some of us do see barriers. I'll admit that I used to, even though I played the "can-do-girl" for my family. I eventually grew into her. And this Roosevelt quote was one of my favorites because I thought, "This is true, and I'm not letting anyone make me feel INFERIOR." For the most part, I live up to my word, but there are times, I let those seeds get to me. And what I am wondering is for other individuals with disabilities still growing into their "can-do" or "no-barriers" attitude, how much do those "for-their-own-good" comments grow into seeds of self doubt that become poisonous and regress their growth. So, “for their own good”, be quiet and let us grow.

- By Stephanie Hickey - 

Image Credit: https://flic.kr/p/9hcV4h