Living with Cerebral Palsy and Intersectionality

For me, belonging was giving you what you wanted in order to be loved. It was my only option to be in relationship with others. Some of that is because my dad was an addict and my mom was an alcoholic. Some of that is because I was excluded by ableist behavior and bullying because I have CP. And, some of that is because even my relationship to God was conditional. Success doesn't erase trauma. Even though all that stuff is in the past, it shows up every fucking day. “Just gonna stand there and hear me cry, well, that's alright because I love the way you lie” (Eminem and Rihanna, Love The Way You Lie). Some things that I share with you are hard to reconcile because I don't go too far beyond the surface in some places. I have always sought belonging, that was a big part of the appeal of church for me back in the day. But that wasn't just in external groups, communities, friendships, workplaces, and so on. That was in my own skin and in my own home.  I ingratiated the vill...

Today I'm going to talk about footwear. Maybe not the most exhilarating topic in the world, but I've always had questions about why one would put saddle shoes on a 3-year-old kid with CP. Yes, unfortunately I have pictures to prove it. Why did I decide to write a whole piece about this? Living with CP, what goes on my feet is absolutely essential and critical to how I navigate the world. Thankfully, I don't remember a lot about saddle shoes other than that they were painful and I never wanted to wear them. Thank you 1980s. For me, the shoe game is about durability and stability. I've gone through every type of shoe phase you can fathom. Early on, there were the saddle shoes that were not ideal for my condition or my comfort. Then I spent a lot of time in sneakers outfitted with braces and uncomfortable wax molds trying to correct my gait. I know that doctors and physical therapists were just trying to do me a favor with these tools, but the stuff was painfully uncomfor...

 I talk about life with Cerebral Palsy in the context of family addictions, mental illness, and enough religious baggage to write a book (we're about halfway there). But, why? To deconstruct the mask, to be seen, to invite conversations, to promote questions over assumptions, to shine a light on the importance of context, and to tell my own story instead of having it told for me. At work, I promote the importance of customer service to the point of being annoying. The rest of the time, as I wrote in a poem this year, “I'm alive in the shadows of death.” Human beings, disabled or not yet disabled, are complex creatures. I recently shared with an interviewee my passion for introspection and personal growth. I believe in the importance of kindness because biblical compassion is literally etched into my skin, even though I left the Church a few years ago. I do my best, which isn't always very good, to extend kindness to others because I know what it's like to be treated lik...

I cannot change my physical limitations. I can manage them and work to hold off new ones, but my Cerebral Palsy is like an environment, it's there no matter what I do. That's okay with me. What is challenging is when I can't do what you can do, when I can't meet your expectations, and when I can't do things the way I used to do them.  I can read over a hundred emails a day and frequently do, but it's probably a safe bet that it takes me longer than someone who doesn't have vision limitations. I know that it's preferable to respond to people quickly. It's safe to say pushing myself to keep up with any technological demand contributed to the carpal tunnel I developed a few years ago.  My eyesight gets a little worse every year. I'm legally blind without prescription eyewear. I can read things faster on my phone than on a computer (I think because the smaller screen concentrates my vision and because it's closer to my face), but if I do that too...

“Let's think of the humble of birth Yes, let us drink to the salt of the earth” ~ (Salt of the Earth, The Rolling Stones) A lot of the stories I tell you are about challenges and adversity in my life with Cerebral Palsy in context, there's no shortage of that, but I practice gratitude every day because I wouldn't be able to have a vast perspective on life without that stuff. It positively informs how I engage with the world. Most of the way I do customer service in my job stems from my ministry career and decades in the Church. Something like the golden rule and meeting people where they're at. Some of it comes from ingrained codependence and learning to anticipate the needs of my parents in their addiction behaviors. Some of it comes from living with CP and preferring to treat everyone with some level of compassion. The rest is just on the job experience, like most people. I'm not saying these things make me a saint to people, they don't. The counter balance of...