Living with Cerebral Palsy and Intersectionality

Glass half full or half empty? Fuck the glass. It just doesn't work like that for me. It's neither, it's both, the glass has broken, and I carry the gifts of fullness and despair. “When everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am” (Goo Goo Dolls, Iris, 1998). I haven't given up on the pursuit of wanting you to know who I am for over four decades because there's something deeper than the glass in my head.  It's not easy to wake up in my body or even my mind every day. It's not choice and it is choice. It's not resilience and it is resilience. It's for sure survival. “Ain't it funny how the night moves?” Yes, Bob Segar, it is funny how the night moves in waves of flashbacks of full and empty, good and bad, love and loss. It's not my aim to speak in riddles but to paint a picture of why I bluntly forego the glass, of why I want you to know who I am, of why the battle inside makes not giving up both a goal and an obstacle...

Tonight's the night. At 6:03 pm Mountain Time my first album in over a decade, Resuscitative Efforts debuts.  Resuscitative Efforts track list: 6:04 (First Breaths) tells you that I almost didn't make it past 6:03 42 years ago. Blood and Oxygen is a bluesy journey back to songwriting.  Deep Inside is a rock n’ roll soul tune with biting questions.  On the Interlude is a short narrative about my musical hiatus and the name of the album.  Custom Tailored 2025 Remix is a present day spin on one of my 2008 originals.  Shedding Blues is all about the journey back to myself but with sounds I've never played with. Folsom Prison Blues is a cover of a Johnny Cash classic that I did back in 2010. Voice of the Other is social commentary and observation from someone whose voice has been “too loud.”  Something Like Wild Thing is one hundred percent improvisation to an old school sound. Meaning, I hit record and whatever lyrics came out is what's on the track.  Grea...

  I'll remember that moment for the rest of my life. I tell stories of living with a disability in context. I'm thankful for that context. I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't live with Cerebral Palsy. I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't watched my parents work through the struggles of addictions and mental health. I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't spent decades in the Church before leaving. I wouldn't be who I am without songwriting. I wouldn't be who I am without grief. I wouldn't be who I am without loss and love (also the title of my 2007 album). I'm grateful for it all, but I'm especially thankful for the love along the way. Because of my messy and beautiful context, I've spent a lifetime overcoming a deficit and it's not my disability that I'm overcoming. It's a deficit of self-worth. The downside of my context is the negative messages about myself that I believed. Worthless. Sinner. Powerless. Not enough. Slow. Un...

I'm like John Cena, “You can't see me.” I was eighteen years old going into my senior year of high school. I was excited to do senior pictures because you had the freedom to do what you wanted, to fit the photo to your personality. My personality, an anti-authority, anti-censorship, one track, attitude driven teenager in full on defense mode from years of bullying. I was and sometimes still am hypersensitive to how you see my outward appearance. I know my gait and posture are typically a first impression for people. As a teenager, I was in full on internalized ableism mode.  I wanted my CP in the background because I’d had enough of the senseless ridicule. For the senior picture, I wanted my personality to come out. The Matrix was still huge at the time and I wanted to leave a legacy of “cool me.” This backfired in every way. My CP showed up in the photo and it bothered me to no end. My neck naturally tilts to the right instead of remaining centered. Problem one, I didn’t want ...

I got a phone call that changed my life. It was late and I was hanging out with friends, not planning on going home that night. My dad had fallen down the basement stairs on his way to bed for the night and crawled to the phone to call me and if I recall correctly, I called 911 for him. My friends and I raced to my house to meet EMS. I didn't realize it right away, but that night would change the entire course of my life.  I was sitting in Bible study when the phone rang and then rang again. My dad called me to tell me that my mom was found unresponsive and had died from an overdose. That phone call changed my life too. Events like this have made virtually every phone call send chills up my spine.  I got to call my dad to tell him that I was going to be a dad too. It wasn't his first time being a grandpa, but being a grandpa to all of his grandchildren is probably the only thing I remember giving him genuine joy for a very long time.  The phone rang and I felt that famili...

I have a confession, I have a lot of mixed feelings when it comes to the Church. I was born into Evangelical Christian traditions, a stint with Baptists, most of my childhood and early teen years in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (a mega church in the suburbs no less), and my teens to mid-twenties with the Salvation Army. Then, I went the Exvangelical route and spent like ten or twelve years in the Lutheran tradition. I now live in agnostic apostate territory. The Church gave a lot to me. The Church took a lot from me. I'd say that the Church and I are even and I'm okay being on the outside of it. But, that succinct paragraph packages a couple of decades a little too nicely.  In another life, I was a lot closer to current religious and political uprisings than even I can fully comprehend. But, an old friend and former pastor of mine called me a nonconformist for a reason. I tend to challenge the systems I'm in. When I was an Evangelical, I pushed the limits and rules o...