While stretching out your arm to grasp the good things in life one desires and dreams of, have you as a person with Cerebral Palsy become aware of what actions you must take in your life to accomplish want you want to become? The more often we decide for ourselves, organize our though and idea, take steps towards those actions, and continue to believe in touching the moon; the less we will compromise and permitted negatives to happen to us. With each rising of the bar, we take a new stand to allow only the characteristics that will permit us to touch our goals. That is way it is so important for the special needs individual to surround themselves with positive light, positive people and positive situations who believe that anything is possible.
A Fabrication of Our Feelings
It seems as though Cerebral Palsy individuals and their parents have a figment of their imagination. Have you or your special needs child ever sat in on an IPP or IEP meeting where the hearts of The Child Study Team (IEP) and the minds of The Social Guidance Group (IPP) is conveniently contradicting what you and your child know they need.
What the special needs, child, REALLY needs is often labeled a fabrication of their minds. But is it really? Who knows there child best? And who knows themselves even better!
Ask yourself.
Is it so
Have you ever sat-in on your own meeting being disabled and having Cerebral Palsy, or sat beside your child trying to figure out how you can help them? These meetings often seem to be well intentioned, but in reality, are isolated from our daily truth. Every person involved is aware of what they need far more so than any of those experts who have made a career out of it.
With this comes many a thought and question to mind:
I do not believe the experts because you abused me and my child’s trust. You didn’t listen to me and my needs and disrespected my knowledge of myself and my own child. You didn’t value me or my judgment to even take it under consideration.
People are not always reasonable. They don’t always want to hear what we have to say. They get defensive, insulted, cover up truths and rule over us. But, that does not mean we have to sit back and take it.
What can you do to change this?
Two Things Needed to Solve a Problem
Have you ever been in a situation where two minds clash? Often there is something not visible that determines our will and thoughts. Something is triggered within that makes us stand-up to attention and balk.
Our attitudes about what we are capable of, can lead to conflict and confusion unless we can see the picture in the same light. For instance: Standing in the Smithsonian museum looking at a beautiful Modigliani.
Are we on the same page?
Do we want the same results?
Are we willing to have open minds and be willing to be flexible to work with others?
Are we willing to be on the right path, do the right thing, and move forward?
Stuck On It?
Is it the way you speak, or the way you share?
Is it the way you carry yourself and share with others?
Is it the intensity you put on life’s issues?
Everything we do requires an energy that comes from within. Why is it so difficult for people to fully understand us and the meaning we’re trying to get across? Can you figure it out?
Wholeness
When you look from within out, what do you see? How do you feel? And what do you sense? Is it an accepting, loving energy which nurtures you and makes you feel full and complete inside, like the warm rays of the sun soothing and healing your wounds?
Or is it an intense, powerful, kinetic motion within, which prevents your sores from ever truly healing? Do you struggle on all levels to prevent that process from beginning?
How do you effectively reach for that calm?
It takes a bold, brave person to look oneself in the mirror and exam themselves. It takes an even more courageous heart to take careful and deliberate account of one’s life to bring peace and harmony to one’s body, mind, and soul. So be gentle. Do it easy, and wrap your arms around yourself; finding that healthy, sound, state of being; which is the beginning of the healing process.
Incremental Changes
Incremental Change
How many of my readers have tip toed through the hot sand, until you reach the shore line. Once there, the child within comes alive. You play tag with the ebb and flow, and gallop in pure gaiety and delight. All your troubles and worries seem to slip away with the warmth of the summer sun glowing down upon your solar plexus, while the capri water washes them away.
Or did they? It’s effortless to think this may be so. But in all actuality you have temporarily suppressed the thing you ought to have faced the most. It’s easy to wish, and hope your most burdensome problem away. If for only a moment or a day-
Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen until something within tips the scale. You reach that point, and suddenly everything is clear. You know instinctively what to do. You know how to stop doing or acting on what didn’t work. You know what your next step and action will be. It is significant. You then know within yourself how to move forward, get the help you need, and what action you ought to take.
In retrospect, have you given any thought to where you would be today if you hadn’t fallen, picked yourself up and tried, tried again? Where would you be emotionally or spiritually if you never failed in your prior attempts? How has your character changed, and what have you learned in the process? It almost always is a reoccurring, repetitive, rhythmic, cycle of a person’s growth process to finally succeed.
Are you grateful for what you have gone through? And acquired the knowledge you experienced? It is a difficult process for all, even me! Where would we be if we hadn’t endured or tried?
How Does the Disability Community Fit In?
For the last few day’s I have been thinking, mulling over, and contemplating ideas about what I should write next for the issue of this magazine. Then I talked with one of my disabled colleagues and discussed the kind of active activity programs going on in our community. We deliberated, and truly came up with nothing.
Sad to say, but when I did an on-line search, in Torrance, California, nothing came up at all. All the daily activity programs and schedules, I found in the greater Los Angeles area, and South Bay, are designed specifically for people without disabilities. This idea is distressing because a large number of our population gets unnoticed and forgotten. It’s as if we did not get recognized at all.
Hence, then, let me ask you; what kind of visible, direct, public notifications do you receive about group programs, daily activity plans, or special events going on in your community that are geared especially for the disabled? Do you get a written notice of sort informing and notifying you of new or on-going activities online or through your local newspapers? Could you tell me at the drop of a hat? Could you go online, find some kind of activity you wanted to do with a friend, and do it?
Sorrowfully, that often is not possible. Because we are not recognized and acknowledge the way the politicians and law makers say that we are. Activities are usually designed for sub-groups within the community, mainly and primarily for the mentally challenged, but nothing for the Cerebral Palsy person. We are a people, nation, all unto ourselves.
That is why it is so vitally important to speak up and out in the community you live in, so that your voice, wishes, and issues should be heard. Otherwise, they go hidden, ignored, and unnoticed. It also provides a forum for the development of our individual talents.
I ask you in all honesty, because twelve years ago I went to my local community center wanting to teach adaptive aerobics. I had not only the experience and qualifications, but talents in developing recreation programs and dance and could bring creative programs to the city. However, my offer was passed-over, and patronized by not truthfully being considered. I was denied in the subtlest of ways.
The lack of these programs, or the awareness of these such programs; bring little solace, relief, or comfort from the community to help build and create, and tell us about quality programs that would benefit us all.
What a waste this is for both us, and the larger community. Having such visible programs would help build stronger lives. Having these visible programs would give us more to do. And, having such visibility would give us a greater stake in our community and being productive citizens.
Time Hasn’t Changed a Thing
What is balance? In the Oxford dictionary, balance as early as 5000 BC., is defined as an exquisitely precise measuring of making things equal. Is it innate or is it what others say it will be? Have people tried to extinguish your candle and bribe you in threatening ways because what you were saying was right from the get go.
In the course of looking at this word many ideas have crossed my mind. What do you feel it is? The very purpose of balance is to strike a balance. But what if we know what our balance is, and others, like in the 1989 movie; “The Heart of Dixie” is threatened by our balance. We look for balance out side of ourselves because we have trouble believing our own inner core. So we seek others and their advice. When it doesn’t match up to ours, we look to others still again, put emphasis on social media and turn to people who will damper, divulge, and seek an edge above us. How do we stay at peace and calm when we don’t have a support system and network holding us up? What do we do then? Do we stay on the merry-go-round or do we get off?
What is the irony for you? Are you secure with your thoughts? Are you selfish like the dean in the college in the movie? Or, are you selfless, care about justice, other people, and the human heart, like Maggie DeLoach did with the African American student? The times change, the issues change as well, but the principal always remains the same.
How much are we each willing to contribute to uphold balance for all?
Conscious Mindfulness
In the mist of your daily routine, what are your thoughts? What are your intentions? How do you treat others and come across? Do you treat others with the same carefulness or attentiveness as you would a wounded bird whose wing is broken? Do you mindfully treat them with kindness? Or do you treat them like an alligator waiting to snap at the first gazelle that you see? Do you speak with a biting tongue? And growl at people because of your wounded dreams, thoughts, and ideas? Do you make other people plead for their existence because you are inflexible, unyielding, and uncompassionate?
Let’s mindfully think about our true nature for a minute. No one is judging, but us. We can either use it as a tool to make us more gentle and good-hearted, understanding and compassionate, or we can beat ourselves up and bring out all our worst characteristics. We can beat others up for our inability to like and accept ourselves, we can waste our own precious energy and time by being cruel, or, we can belittle, insult, minimize those because we can’t look and change ourselves.
Which do you choose today?