Introductions

When I talk about living with Cerebral Palsy in person, sometimes I begin with the statement “I've spent over 40 years seeking to be seen, heard, respected, and more.


Over the past couple of years, I've made it a goal to learn more about the condition I live with and to use my voice to talk about it. In no way am I an expert, but I have lived with Cerebral Palsy for over 40 years. 


Living with CP impacted my entry into this world. Living with CP shaped my childhood along with some other things. Living with CP has impacted my medical journey. Living with CP defined my professional trajectory. Living with CP has been an obstacle that created defiance. Living with CP shapes how I see the world and how I move in it. 


How it started, a brain injury before, during or after the birth process. I was born 2 months premature. I've always had other related conditions in addition to the CP. I'll share about those in future posts. I was born 3 lb 11 oz. By all rights, I shouldn't be here today.


Where it went; most of my childhood was spent in and out of the hospital. My teen years were of self-imposed invisibility, also known as ableism. I wanted to blend in, not be different. I chose my first career because I could physically do the job. All of the related interests in that field came after that. 


How it's going; I started to feel a lot of pain a few years ago that I couldn't ignore anymore. The gift that came out of this was that I stopped ignoring my CP and started to learn. Now I have a story to tell. A story of living with CP, of doing everything and more that I was told I would never do, of living through complex trauma, and navigating environments impacted by alcoholism, addiction, religion, and mental health issues. I evolved with and through Cerebral Palsy, dysfunction, and hope. 


My name is Tim, I live with Cerebral Palsy and the intersection of everything else that life throws at a human being. These are my stories. Stay tuned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What God's Got to Do with It?

“Can I pray for God to heal your legs?” Is a question I was sincerely asked by a well-meaning college student. I was in a position to be asked questions like that because I spent most of my life in the Church in some way or another. Church gave me hope amidst the struggles, it gave me a space to belong sometimes and sometimes not, it gave me my first career (largely influenced by my Cerebral Palsy), and it gave me a different lens to see the world – where people like me were included in the eyes of God. How it started – I was born into the Church. My parents got “saved” sometime before I was born. The first church I spent time in was some kind of Baptist church in the city. Sometime after that I spent most of my childhood attending an Evangelical Presbyterian Megachurch in the suburbs with members of the paternal side of my family. My existence was considered a miracle from surviving premature birth, being on oxygen in the early years, enduring surgeries at a young age, and learning ho...
Read more

Life in 2D and Redirecting Challenges

In my first post, I laid down an introduction to my life with Cerebral Palsy and the other parts of my lived experience that intersect with the CP. The wider context is important to me because I want to honor the role CP plays in my life every day, I also want to honor my other life shaping experiences, and I want to bring awareness to the whole human being living with a disability.  I was born with Cerebral Palsy. To the best of my knowledge, I have Spastic Diplegia CP. I put it that way because I'm piecing parts of my story together with missing data. I no longer have access to my earliest medical records, which is part of the story, but I've been doing lots of homework over the past few years. How it started – I had other conditions along with the CP, which is not uncommon. I had amblyopia (AKA Lazy Eye) and I've never had depth perception (driving and 3D movies are the biggest casualties of that). I also had surgery twice for Craniosynostosis (my skull didn't develo...
Read more