I have to admit that I do have problems sometimes seeing beyond the ‘disability’ to the person.<\/p>\n
When feeling challenged about dealing with someone else’s disability–be it mental or physical–I try to remind myself of two things:<\/p>\n
1) disability can mean simply differently abled.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
As my parents and grandparents aged, I learned to be less impatient with them.<\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n
I hope that I can continue to feel that compassion for the differently abled that I encounter during the rest of my life.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
And by compassion I do NOT refer to pity. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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:… Continue reading Disabilties…..We Are All Disabled In Some Way<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[125,290,475,603,728,1047,1476,1695],"class_list":["post-643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-alzheimers","tag-broken-bones","tag-compassion","tag-disabilties","tag-external","tag-internal","tag-pity","tag-senile-dementia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-dont-think-so.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-dont-think-so.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-dont-think-so.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-dont-think-so.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-dont-think-so.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-dont-think-so.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-dont-think-so.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-dont-think-so.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-dont-think-so.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}