Morning Elvis; Evening Smoke on the Water

“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 is everything and that the lens in which we read life makes a difference in how we interpret the journey. I am scared shitless to tell you how “I've never made it to Graceland,” which for me is to lay down the fight for belonging. But, I've seen a lot of “smoke on the water and fire in the sky,” which for me is the lip service to my right to play in your sandbox.

I want to speak with love and compassion because that's what my wounded inner child needs to be seen and heard by others. But, my tired and angry protectors want you to quiver at the thought of me holding a live microphone ready to lay down some truth. 

Until the moment I walk on that stage, I will be asking what lens do you need me to speak from? Will it be a main course of love, courage, and creativity, with a side of mother fucker, or something different? I don't know yet. Not for lack of planning. I've got more stories than time to fill and a tag team partner ready with stats and questions that are sure to be a lighthouse for me to bring you along my journey of life, death, heaven, hell, and the sounds of silence as we make it safely back to shore. 

These things are for certain when I get on that stage, you will hear things I've never written here, you will feel something, you will learn why your stories are important to how you show up in life and work, you will recognize how no one is immune from ableism, you will walk away knowing something you didn't know before, you will look at me differently (which is neither good or bad), and you will make a choice to change the way you see disability and disabled people or to stay comfortable. You will also get the opportunity to ask the questions you think you're not supposed to ask – just be ready to get a real and potentially messy answer. (Note my emdash isn't AI generated, I've never used Chat GPT because I love to write).

Thanks to the half a dozen or so people who've encouraged and inspired me to stand way outside of my comfort zone and leave my walls behind to show the world just what it means to live the impossible. 

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