I have to admit that I do have problems sometimes seeing beyond the ‘disability’ to the person.
When feeling challenged about dealing with someone else’s disability–be it mental or physical–I try to remind myself of two things:
1) disability can mean simply differently abled.
2) what my mother said to me as a small child: we are all disabled in some way–some people’s disabilities are external and some are internal.
As my parents and grandparents aged, I learned to be less impatient with them.
I learned to have compassion for their disabilities (my maternal grandfather had Alzheimers for 12 years, my maternal grandmother had senile dementia for the last 2-3 years of her life, my father had physical challenges that left him using a cane for the last year of his life, my mother has had a lot of physical challenges ranging from knee surgery to breaking her shoulder).
I hope that I can continue to feel that compassion for the differently abled that I encounter during the rest of my life.
Breaking a finger on my dominant hand and being unable to write with that hand for 3 months (6 weeks in a cast plus the healing after the cast was removed) also taught me to have compassion for my own disabilities as well as others.
Being unable to stand in line long enough to go on the tour of the White House when I was in Washington DC due to my weight and being so out of shape reinforced the lesson my broken finger had taught me.
And by compassion I do NOT refer to pity.