Joy In The Midst of Struggles

A couple of weeks ago I was in Target and I needed to walk past a mom and son (he was about 5 years old). I said, "excuse me" and they moved over. Then I heard the boy say..  "She has a funny voice"...(this is often how children refer to me when they know I am different they say funny). Now it is not what the little boy said that bugged me. It was what the mom responded with "Don't say that" Boy responded: "Why?" Mom: "Because it is not nice to say" You may be thinking well what is wrong with the mother's response? Let me tell you. How are children supposed to learn how to be around and treat others with disabilities with love if they are taught to ignore them and not learn from them. You see that mom indirectly just taught that boy that it is inappropriate to ask questions about people who are different from them. The boy just gave a natural curious statement and instead of learning why it is that I talk funny he

Hello all! It's been a while! But as many of you that follow me on Instagram or Facebook may have recently saw my latest post about my shaky hands and I wanted to pop on here and describe more in detail so here we go! I have talked before about the therapies I went through as a kid and one thing I have not mentioned is I got Occupational and Physical therapy through the state called CCS and the way the state works is they provide you services until you are 21 and then you are kind of left to "adulting" with CP where you have to find new doctors and therapies to work for your body. Roughly 6 months ago maybe even longer I started noticing that my hands were more shaky than usual. When reaching for a glass or cup my hands are having a difficult time grabbing the cup or I spill the contents of the cup more easily. Now I take two kinds of medications Baclofen and Artane that are to help with my shakiness. I started these medications in high school and have had several adj

Do you ever have days, a week, or weeks where you notice the same thing popping up. Over the past two weeks I have been in conversations with 3 different sets of people and the same topic has popped up. What is this topic you may ask? It's the fact that this person typing this blog right now is so different from the girl back in high school or the girl from 4 years ago. You see the first person I had this conversation with I have known for 6 months, the next was my best friend I met in college, and the third was a group of girls I have known for two years. The two that have known me the shortest amount of time were shocked when I described myself from a while ago and the one from college completely agreed with me. You see when I think about my high school self and college self I see a shy girl that didn't want to look anyone in the eye for fear that they would see  my disability and immediately not like me. Or fear that if I look them in the eye then they will want to ask que

Hi all. Sorry it has been a while but with the holidays and everything I just got swept away. But lately my schedule has been a little more relaxed and since I lost my voice last week I have spent a lot of solitary time and one thing that kept popping up in my mind lately is how much things have changed in a year. In just over a month and a half it will be the year anniversary of me moving out on my own (how crazy is that?!). But it was around this time that was one of the hardest times of my life. I would drive home everyday just crying out of tiredness out of hurt out of frustration or stress. I was beyond overwhelmed with relationships changing, stress from doing my masters, and a job that was taking a lot out of me both physically and mentally. When I look at pictures of myself a year ago I see a girl with a fake smile because I was trying to do everything and be everything I thought everybody needed me to be. So then I began thinking how did I go from this very dark place to whe