Living with Cerebral Palsy and Intersectionality

“I've never made it to Graceland” (Florence+The Machine).  This is your sandbox and I'm just playing in it. I don't owe the world my stories but I'm giving them as a gift because my hope is that you truly want to be allies for the disabled beyond catchy poster slogans for inclusion (I forgot that's a dirty word and I'm not supposed to say it anymore). Oh, shit, my bad. I've never made it to the space I want to hold. On Monday, I step on a stage in front of my colleagues to tell these stories.  I'm going to share how my fight for a seat at the table of life began. I'm going to share about my journey from the operating room, to the altar, to the exodus, to tech support, and the director's chair was influenced by my life with Cerebral Palsy and its intersectionality with an environment of addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, and religious trauma, and how that made the man and the professional I am today.  Bible scholarship taught me that context i...

It's no secret to most that I enjoy conversation and talking in general. When it comes to Cerebral Palsy, talking about it is a learning experience. I want to tell you what it's like for me day-to-day, but doing that requires next level vulnerability and disentanglement.  Many people have made assumptions about my CP and I have had to overcome those assumptions for as long as I can remember. It's not just that people assumed that I couldn't do things, it's also the instances where I lived and believed those assumptions.  Take, for instance, my desire to go to art school in high school because I wouldn't have to go to gym class anymore. I wanted my CP to be invisible and be a non-factor. A lot of people around me helped me with that by not “seeing me like that.” In a way they were doing what I wanted and in another way they weren't really seeing me. High school was a long time ago, but invisible things happen every day that create challenges for me that most ...

I've been reading the Anti-Ableist Manifesto by Tiffany Yu, I wasn't even 25 pages in before I decided anyone who knows me needed to put it on their reading list. There are lots of good topics in the book that I plan to share my perspective on and have in one way or another. But, here I'm going to get into the words people say around disability and my experience.  First, let me say that I'm no disability language expert. In the past year alone, I've learned more about how much terminology has changed around disability. When I was a kid I participated in a program called the Handicapped Sports Program, which was a sports program for kids with disabilities. Since then, many in the disability community have moved away from the word handicapped.  The gist I get with that word and other words that have been commonly used to describe being disabled (like differently abled) is that they imply that there's something wrong with being disabled. My experience is that a lot...

I'm about to navigate a topic of living with a disability that I've experienced first hand but am not the knowledge base expert on. Underrepresentation. I was in my late thirties the first time I read a work of fiction with a prominent character who had Cerebral Palsy. Let that sink in.  Growing up, if I watched a movie with someone who had a disability, it likely wasn't CP, the character probably had a pity/sympathy arc, I can almost guarantee they were bullied, and they definitely weren't the main character.  There's an old saying, art imitates life. As a child, I definitely endured a fair amount of bullying. As a teenager, I felt like I was on the sidelines of the things I wanted to do socially. The only space that I've ever felt close to breaking those stereotypes is professionally because of my accomplishments.  But, the only times I've ever felt like I was living my own narrative are when I've been on stage with a guitar, writing, or sharing real s...