Teaser:
Make no mistake, disability experience begins as a socially slippery slope, where no matter the origin of disability, it simply starts by seemingly focusing the entire world on us. If you’re born with disability, you’re immediately labeled as “special needs,” where there’s typically a hyper focus on you as a child, from home to school and beyond. Doctors, teachers, family, and even strangers in the supermarket will focus on you with an intensity that many children never experience.
Similarly, if you acquire a later-in-life injury or illness, the world immediately becomes about you, where family and friends are suddenly hyper-focused on you and your circumstance. Siblings fly in from out of town to be by your side. Parents make you their “baby” again. Your church’s congregation places you on its eternal prayer list. And, the entire town takes you to heart.
In these ways, when one with disability experiences the intrinsic hyper focus of others, it’s easy to become that two-year-old living in an all-about-me world, where being the center of attention is par for the course.
Yet, if you’re going to succeed – no matter how severe one’s disability, or how ravaging one’s illness – you need to get over yourself and your disability, period. The fact is, when we make life all about ourselves, it ultimately creates isolation, builds resentment in others, and destroys our lives. Successful relationships are a two-way street, where we must give to others just as they give to us. And, when we make our worlds all about ourselves due to disability, we create relationship dynamics that are a one-way street, never considering others, and we simply drain those around us. If we’re going to maintain healthy relationships, disability or not, we must routinely put others before ourselves.
Similarly, if you acquire a later-in-life injury or illness, the world immediately becomes about you, where family and friends are suddenly hyper-focused on you and your circumstance. Siblings fly in from out of town to be by your side. Parents make you their “baby” again. Your church’s congregation places you on its eternal prayer list. And, the entire town takes you to heart.
In these ways, when one with disability experiences the intrinsic hyper focus of others, it’s easy to become that two-year-old living in an all-about-me world, where being the center of attention is par for the course.
Yet, if you’re going to succeed – no matter how severe one’s disability, or how ravaging one’s illness – you need to get over yourself and your disability, period. The fact is, when we make life all about ourselves, it ultimately creates isolation, builds resentment in others, and destroys our lives. Successful relationships are a two-way street, where we must give to others just as they give to us. And, when we make our worlds all about ourselves due to disability, we create relationship dynamics that are a one-way street, never considering others, and we simply drain those around us. If we’re going to maintain healthy relationships, disability or not, we must routinely put others before ourselves.
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