Heartbreak Hotel; I'll be Missing You

I'm staring at a mountain as I write this. Not the mountains I know, but one I’d never seen before. It's very grounding. I need that a lot. Especially in new spaces. While in this location, I spent a lot of time navigating unfamiliar spaces, winding walkways, cobblestone sidewalks (the beautiful treachery), and new people. All of this newness requires lots of mapping and intentionality on my part. 

The mountain may be very grounding but the spaces I'm navigating take me out of that grounded state. When it comes to spaces, I don't like unpredictability. When it comes to life, I expect unpredictability. That's a funny conundrum. Comfortable in uncertainty in one context and completely disrupted by it in another context. 

A note about cobblestone sidewalks. They're gorgeous, but awful to walk on when you have balance issues. Maybe this is why I don't get excited about historical spaces (most of them are harder to navigate because accessibility wasn't always a thought and still needs work). 

As I hope you've learned by now reading Cerebral Palsy and Intersectionality, holistic context is everything. I'm out here being grounded by the mountains, being disrupted by spatial mapping, and then I hit that social intersection of meeting new people. I work with people and meet new people every day, which is generally easy, and transactional. Spending longer periods of time with people I just met is another kind of mapping. How much of this story do I tell them? I decided to talk about talking about CP and Intersectionality. I talk about how that gets connected to my day job. I fight the mask a lot. I struggle to connect because I want to get right to the deep end. This is funny because I will literally talk to anyone. But at an event where connecting is the goal, I found it was the most difficult new thing I had to map – even more difficult than cobblestone. 

Yet, doing this work and sharing my story of Cerebral Palsy and Intersectionality is bringing me in contact with a lot of new people. As I was writing this, I stopped to talk to someone about how I'll be sharing my story with a group for Organizational Development Practitioners at the end of May. At least for that I don't have to walk on uneven surfaces or navigate meeting rooms with round tables. Oddly enough, round table seating creates more trip hazards for me. The irony is that most of the places I'll go to speak in person will be staged this way. 

I typically pick seats on the outside of the room to minimize the number of obstacles I'll have to navigate that can add to the networking challenges. Here's a list of mapping challenges I encountered the week I wrote this:

Long winding hallways with oddly tiered elevators. I doubled my previous week's step count and spent more time sitting. Neither of which were ideal. Taking elevators when others chose the stairs disrupted conversation. Most of my meals were buffet style. I love a good buffet, but navigating them is really difficult for me. I usually make jokes about how I might throw some food around so that people aren't surprised when I drop stuff. By the time I sit down to eat, my thoughts are tired and I'm quickly overwhelmed by sensory intake. But, I'd love to have a deep conversation with you. In fact, that's like all I want to do. 

I navigated multiple other spaces where I was distracted from engagement because I'm mapping the room. This is why I don't enjoy traveling, why I don't enjoy hiking, why I get nervous when you park across the street from a venue (because I'm thinking about how I'm going to cross the street safely before you even park the car). We took a group photo and I had to stand a bit to the side because I knew if I moved I would fall.

I did all of these things because I was doing a training program for leadership development, celebrating Mother's Day with my family because it took a village to get me to this event, mourning Mother's Day because it's the last day I spoke to my mom before she passed away in a most unfortunate way, and I was in the training during the anniversary of her passing, which also marked ten years since the end of my ministry career. Those heartbreaking endings helped build the life I have today.

Here's what I needed during these events. I needed more time to get to and from meeting spaces. I needed more coffee than I had. I needed to ask for help when I was running late to breakfast one day, which I got. I needed someone to hang out with when I drew an upsetting tarot card, which I got (note I don't do tarot but what the card said felt bad). I needed more deep and meaningful conversation. I needed community because I couldn't really tell this room full of people I'd just met that I was reliving some past grief and riding that wave. I needed someone to tell me that my presence mattered. I needed longer session breaks to take two elevators to the nearest cup of coffee or I just needed coffee in the room. I needed more screen contrast because I couldn't read half of the slides. I needed you to repeat your name because I couldn't see your name tags and my short term memory isn't what it used to be. There's more, but I want to address why I didn't always speak up about that. In the moment, I needed people to ask if I needed anything and to be as aware as possible that I'm having a different experience. I don't always say anything because it's harder to articulate in the moment and because I'm probably mapping and thinking about stuff. But, here's the thing, you also show up in your experience with your own needs, and I don't know what those are any more than you understand mine. We both have an opportunity to learn from each other.