A Wheelchair View

I started the Dr. Oz's Reparative Or 'Ex-Gay' Episode and couldn't bear to watch anymore of it after 10 minutes. It reminded me so much of a society who believes that my life would be so much better if I was not disabled so they try to "fix me" through therapy, surgery, and the worst one of all, faith healing. This stigma comes from small minds who are clinging to their cookie cutter magazine perfect world and anything beyond the mediocrity just has to be "fixed." After all we don't want to mess with the perfect body fantasy. Never mind that if we have a creator who does not make mistakes created people of all shapes, sizes, colors, abilities and yes, orientation; we are simply telling God how to do "his" job. We are robbing ourselves of the treasures of our diversities and the lessons we can learn from them all because we want to hold on to a idea that is just that, an idea. What if, my disability could be put into the background of wh...

Of all the terrains I have been on this one looks fairly simple. I rarely challenge my scooter's mobility when I am on a solo shoot. I am comfortable with pavement and shallow gravel and trails through low cut grass. I did recently get into a situation that was a steep incline and of all of my concerns I never thought that a stall on a steep hill would happen. Especially with well charged batteries. That is exactly what happened. I almost topped a  steep incline, not much higher than the one pictured here and right before reaching the top my scooter stalled and stopped. Having a fear of heights I was determined not to look back the very long slowly rising incline. I pulled my key out and pushed it back in to try to restart it but nothing. The circuit had been thrown and the button I needed to reset it was out of reach from my position. This is typically when anger and fear ultimately kick in. I got my cellphone and called my husband. While I was wa...

While I have never been spit on, enslaved or beaten and I have never experienced the bold disdain for being disabled I still identify with the discrimination that many African Americans face. You see, in my life, I have been asked to leave a restaurant by a manager who claimed that my presence was upsetting the other patrons. I have been denied access to classroom activities in school. I know what it is like to have teachers refuse to have me in their class rooms and I have also been denied jobs I was qualified for. I have tasted the bitterness of discrimination and I have witnessed first hand the heart wrenching abuse of those who have in history been viewed as less than human. In our American history disabled people have been enslaved, imprisoned and euthanized. Cases among cases go to court every year over sterilization and institutionalization and the right to live. I will never forget Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks but I will also not forget Terri Schiavo and the bitter fig...