Do It Myself Blog – Glenda Watson Hyatt

On today’s show, Oprah kicked off her O Girl, O Beautiful Revolution to celebrate a girl’s beauty regardless of her physical attributes. Similarly, “Every girl deserves to feel beautiful just the way she is,” is the slogan for Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, which includes women of all colours with jiggly bits. These initiatives aim to embrace a broader, healthier view of beauty and to boost self-esteem. Interestingly, neither initiative included girls and women with obvious disabilities. Are we not beautiful?

Our society equates the ability to walk with valued and beauty. A questionable apartment manager once commented to me, “Too bad you can’t walk, you’re pretty.” For that moment, I was thankful I didn’t rely on biped mobility.

Like African-Americans and –Canadians who lighten their skin colour or relax their hair and individuals of Asian descendant who resort to plastic surgery in order to feel beautiful according to Western society’s standard of beauty, people with physical disabilities are often treated or fixed, or wait for a cure, to be more normal, more acceptable, and, thus, more valued.

These real-life beauty campaigns are encouraging and are definitely a needed step in the right direction. But, if we are going to celebrate the beauty of diversity, let’s make the celebration truly inclusive.

Dove, if you need a real life, fiery red-head woman, I am available!

Blogging is fulfilling my childhood dream of having a regular column in which to share personal experiences of living with a disability so that readers may come to know me, the person, and to realize that I am more than my cerebral palsy. My goal is to alleviate people’s fears of those with disabilities in a non-confrontational and humorous way. Unlike writing a column in a local newspaper, blogging has allowed me to touch people from around the world. My dream would be even sweeter if I could find a way to be paid for blogging.

Charles Jolley has launched a social sponsorship experiment Blog for a Year. The aim is to find out what would happen if patrons from all over the world could come together to give one deserving writer the boost he or she needs to launch a professional career as a blogger. Blog for a Year awards one winner a year-long contract to blog full time on a blog of his or her own choosing. The award is funded by donations from participants and sponsors. The competition ends when the Blogger Fund reaches $160,000 or on January 1, 2008, whichever comes first. In either case, when the competition ends, the person with the most votes will be offered the job.

The winner will be paid $80,000 (or half of the Blogger Fund) in even bi-weekly installments, like a regular paycheque. Personally, $80,000US would keep me blogging for two or three years! The fund is currently $1350; enough to buy a bagful of pre-cut fruits and veggies bi-weekly for one year, which would save a few fingers!)

At this point, I would like to request your support in votes, please. And you can vote every day until New Year’s Day, 2008. I am several thousand votes behind the front runner, but, with your support and help in spreading the word, I am confident I have a fair chance in being offered this job.

Thanks for your support!

(Photo credit: Tue Romanow)

A couple of weeks ago, I shared how my husband Darrell needs to jump through disablistic hoops to get a new gel cushion for his manual wheelchair. As a quick update, the occupational therapist (OT) – the one who assessed Darrell last year for his new electric chair – called yesterday to say his file has now been reopened, but first Darrell needs his doctor to fill out the Ministry form before the OT can assess for the exact same cushion that is on the power chair. Why didn’t the OT mention this step to Darrell two weeks ago so that he could have booked a doctor’s appointment while waiting for his file to find its way back to the OT’s desk?

The OT suggested that, in the meantime, Darrell park both wheelchairs beside the bed, transfer to the bed, swap the cushion from one chair to the other, and then transfer to the other chair. Darrell and I aren’t sure how he, himself, is supposed to get both chairs to his side of the bed and then get out again. It comes back to levitating – a skill neither one of us has mastered yet.

He does have a doctor’s appointment for the 28th to have the doctor fill out the same form as he did less than a year ago. No doubt, the doctor will charge us the same fee for completing a form! Unless I’ve missed a memo in the last forty years, cerebral palsy is still a non-progressive, lifelong neurological disorder. Why not stamp CP on our foreheads and be done with it? Save a few trees in the process. Better yet, stamp it on another body part – I would gladly moon a few bureaucrats!

Stay tuned…

Have a great long weekend, my Canadian friends!

(Photo credit: Meliha Gojak)

In British Columbia, there is a strong push to get people eating more fruit and vegetables by the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics.

It’s not that I don’t find grocery store displays of brightly coloured fruits and vegetables tempting. It’s not that I don’t enjoy experiencing the crunch, texture and taste of a variety of fresh fruits and veggies. It’s the cleaning, peeling and chopping that I find deterring.

With my husband and me both having cerebral palsy and, thus, limited hand function, we rely on frozen juice from concentrate, frozen vegetables requiring minimal effort to cook in the microwave and easy-to-eat fruits, like grapes and bananas. We also take a multivitamin supplement fill in any gaps in our diet.

Last Friday, in a spirit of adventure and in attempt to broaden our culinary capabilities, we purchased a Starfrit Rotato Express and a Quick Chop as seen on TV. Sunday afternoon, in what felt like an occupational therapy session, we figured out how to safely use these time-saving kitchen devices. The Rotato was slick, peeling potatoes and an orange in mere seconds. The orange was so juicy and tasty!

The Quick Chop required most work than shown on TV as the pieces need to be cut to fit inside the chopper and then the chopped bits needed to be separated. It was as fast to manually tear the green peppers into bite-size pieces. Besides, precisely cut pieces don’t enhance the taste or nutritional value. It is yet to be determined whether the Quick Chop emains on active duty or dishonourably discharged to the back corner of a cluttered kitchen cupboard.

As I was wiping off the Rotato, I had a cp moment and my finger went flying across a sharp piece. Instantly I had a red geyser. Thank goodness it wasn’t my typing thumb!

My next mission is to find steel fingertip gloves. Alternatively, we stick with bananas and vitamin pills until we can afford a personal chef!

(Photo credit: Jeff Hallam)

Growing up labeled as “functionally non-verbal”, I only spoke to those close to me; those who were patient with Glenda-ish. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say to other people (oftentimes, quite the opposite!); it was simply easier to remain non-verbal. Although it was frustrating many times, it was comfortable. I wasn’t expected to give a class presentation or an oral report; a written assignment was an acceptable substitute.

Every so often in life, if you are lucky, situations or opportunities come along that stretch your comfort zone beyond recognition and leaves you with abilities or talents that you didn’t know were within you. Such an opportunity presented itself to me in April, 2005, when I was asked to speak at the Social Planning and Research Council of British Columbia’s (SPARC BC), “Beyond the Obvious: Exploring the Accessible Community Dialogue”. As I shared in my autobiography I’ll Do It Myself:

My initial thought was But I don’t give speeches. I can’t. Since I was raised without the word “can’t “in my vocabulary, that was a fleeing thought. I quickly turned my thought to How can I do this?

I had been using the free computer software ReadPlease for a couple of years to proofread my writing. ReadPlease reads aloud text that is copied into the program. I thought, Maybe I could put ReadPlease onto my laptop and have it read aloud my speech for me. I hesitantly agreed to speak. Unsure if the technology would work, I took a printed copy of the speech with me, in case I needed someone else to read it on my behalf.

Finally, it was my turn to take the stage. Being on stage alone for the first time in my life, with two hundred eyes staring at me, I wanted to run. But, I didn’t. I gave my speech. When I was done, I left the stage, trembling. I had given my first ever speech! And the technology worked!

Afterwards something amazing happened. For the rest of the day people actually came up to me and spoke with me. I was heard for the first time. I was no longer invisible, no longer silent. It was an amazing, unexplainable feeling that I would like to experience again. I would like to give more speeches. I would like to be heard again.

This first speech pushed me beyond my comfort zone. The days and moments leading up to my speech were terrifying. I knew my athetoid cerebral palsy would kick into high gear and my head control would vanish, leaving me bobbing for invisible apples. But, because I took the risk, I experienced a moment that I would not have had otherwise. And, I realized something about myself: that I could present a speech AND survive. Perhaps the apple bobbing wasn’t quite as bad as I feared.

At the end of June, I am offering a web accessibility training session for the Information Technology (IT) staff for a local city – another first for me. I am scared; this is so far out of my comfort zone. But, I know I will survive and that it will be an amazing feeling when I come out on the other side. And, it could quite possibly open doors that I do not know even exist yet.

Taking the risk to try something pushes us out of our known comfort zone and forces us to grow and to realize awesome things about ourselves. Stretching beyond our comfort zone is when dreams are reached.

What first can you take to expand your comfort zone to reach your dream?