“You’re SO brave!”

Tags

bravery, changes, edmonton, emotional health, Getting by, life lessons, moving, personal, perspective, reflections

“You are SO brave!”
I hear this phrase a lot. Maybe not as much as I used to, but I do hear it, usually relating to the fact that I’m a blind person who works, has a thriving jewelry-making business, and/or gets out of bed in the morning. I don’t think of myself as particularly brave for doing any of these things, and yet many people bestow this attribute on me.
But there was a time in my life where I heard that phrase – “You’re SO Brave!” – a lot more frequently. I hated to hear it, because I thought it was inaccurate, but looking back, maybe not so much.
This morning, I got an email wishing me a happy 13 years of patronage at the Edmonton Public Library.
THIRTEEN YEARS!
It seems like so very long ago, when I packed up everything I owned, effectively transplanting enough furniture to fill an entire apartment, and sinking my entire life savings into rent for my apartment’s six-month lease. I did this, moving to a city where I knew a grand total of one person – not well – with no job, no work experience, and nothing but a hope and a prayer that I would get one in the near future.
Thirteen years ago – almost to the day – my friends and I stayed up until 2:00 in the morning, eating junk food and drinking pop (we were straight-laced kids) and playing endless rounds of card games. I remember thinking it was pointless to try and get any sleep, since I had a flight to catch at some horribly early hour. Thirteen years ago – almost to the day – I slept through the entire flight, and my mom had to wake me up so I could get off the plane. My furniture hadn’t arrived at my apartment yet, so Mom and I slept on the floor in sleeping bags and I tried hard not to kick the lamp we bought and set on the floor to provide a little light into my apartment’s dark corners. I had the power turned on, but before I contacted phone and Internet providers, Mom and I took the train to the downtown branch of the Edmonton Public Library. I’m such a bookworm that I had a library card before I had phone, Internet, food, and more clothes than those that fit into my wobbly rolling suitcase.
My furniture took over a week to arrive, so Mom left me alone in that apartment for five or six days, where I slept in the sleeping bag on my living room floor until she arrived again on the same day my furniture appeared.
None of this made me feel particularly brave, and yet, over and over and over again, I heard it. “You’re so brave!”
The one person I knew in Edmonton took me under their wing. I was welcomed into their home and community for holidays, gatherings and a Christmas production where everything went horribly wrong. When they would introduce me as their “friend from Vancouver,” who moved to Edmonton for job prospects, and was building a life here, I heard it.
“You’re so brave.”
Months went by where I lived on very little. My parents helped me out when they could, but I lived on a lot of noodles and the kindness of neighbors and newfound friends – some of whom would invite me over for dinner or bring me oranges from their grocery shopping trip. The first job I got was a part-time gig, but it enabled me to renew my apartment’s lease for a year, spring for the occasional pizza, and explore other opportunities (some of which fell flat on their face). Some months I barely made rent – one memorable month I supplemented my income by making balloon animals at a downtown Canada Day festivity. I paid my rent at 10:00 PM on July 1 and lived on heaven-knows-what until I got myself another job later in the month.
Many friends and family back home – and new acquaintances and friends in Edmonton – told me I was so brave for doing all this, but for me it was a matter of emotional survival. The more I heard it – “You’re SO brave!” – the more I wanted to scream. To me, it was about simple mathematics: cheap rent plus job opportunities equals hope. Living at home minus career opportunities equals despair. To me, at age twenty, bravery had nothing to do with anything; to me, I couldn’t just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again an expect different results, so I made a change.
A big change.
A brave change.
Over the last thirteen years, I’ve borrowed hundreds – no, thousands – of books in various formats from the library. I’ve worked an amazing amount of jobs and gone through stretches of unemployment. I’ve married, bought a home, built a life.
And you know what?
I was brave.
But I’m glad I didn’t see myself that way all those years ago. Because if I had, I might have talked myself out of it in the first place. Or held myself up as some inspirational figure. Or denied myself some opportunities because they were “beneath me.”
To me, all those years ago, I did what needed to be done, and in hindsight, I did something brave.
Even now, as I’ve explored new career paths, begun planning an amazing trip, I don’t see myself as brave. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe in the moment, we shouldn’t see our spontaneous or daring actions as “brave.” Maybe, the next time someone comes up to me and tells me I’m brave for getting out there and living my life with blindness, I’ll remember this time in my life, smile at them, and say thank you.
Because they would not be entirely wrong.

What about you? What has made you brave? What has stopped you from doing something possibly scary but that you know will make you grow? What will light that spark in you?

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Living in the Middle of the Road

Tags

advocacy, alienation, anger, comeraderie, defensiveness, learning lessons, moderation, personal

It’s funny, the patterns you see, when looking back. Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a blog post about how not everything is a fight. Even though they were absolutely right on this count, the person who inspired that post had their own agenda, their own reasons to grind me down. In response to their comments – some that were accurate and some that were cruel – I tried to buckle down, to keep quiet, to not speak out about anything; in effect, I tried to become a quiet little mouse who never uttered a word as it came to perceptions of my blindness. I lost part of myself in the process. I believed most of what this person said – much of it to my detriment – and it took me years to realize that they could be right about one thing and yet still be very very wrong about everything else.

Somewhere along the way, I’ve met some amazing people who’ve helped me become a strong and forceful disabilities advocate. They are compelling and fearless and take no prisoners. I owe a great deal to them, for their willingness to stand up for people with a wide variety of disabilities – not just the unique challenges and triumphs their own disability(ies) present. They’ve made me feel welcome, and since then have encouraged me to share my perspective and kindly corrected me when I made mistakes that hurt them.
And yet, in between those two extremes, is the middle of the road. In many ways, I’ve found myself swerving from one extreme to the other, using bravado and force to overcompensate for the pain of passivity, of having my face shoved into the shoulder of the road.
Recently – and it’s not the first time – a loved one told me that I shouldn’t be upset when someone is surprised that I hold the job I do, and chooses to express this shock with sickly-sweet tones that one usually only hears directed at very young children. This was on top of a bunch of other little things that made the whole day just go sideways, even if nothing itself was earth-shakingly bad. To be honest, I’m still reeling from the comment itself, and the later understanding that I’ve been overloading a loved one with too-frequent complaints about how people respond to my blindness. They have the luxury to decide whether or not to hear about it; but it is such an integral and frequent part of my day that I don’t think twice about sharing it. In the moment of impact, it just didn’t feel fair.

But is it really unfair when I am expecting them to help carry my own burden for me when they’re not willing or able to do so on a regular basis? If I expect understanding from others, should I not offer it in return?

I chose to take that hurtful comment and seek out some self-reflection with the help of trusted friends. As of right now, however, I have no easy answers.
Have I been angry?

Yes.

Have I had cause to be angry?

Yes.

Do I expect others to be angry on my behalf?

If I’m honest, yes. Because I highly doubt they’d put up and shut up about being denied opportunities, infantilized, bodily manipulated, and underestimated on a very frequent basis.

Is that reasonable?

I don’t know.

Is it reasonable for friends and family to not want to hear about it all anymore?

I don’t know. I can’t choose to ignore it all, but I can choose when and with whom I open up these dialogues. It is my responsibility to be considerate and not over-burden loved ones with my own emotional baggage, no matter how reasonable and justified the baggage is. But it is also theirs to remember that no one likes their bruised feelings and interpretation of events dismissed out of hand, especially when they’re releasing some pent-up tension, as we all do.

Is it understandable for frustrations to boil over into a lack of empathy, cruelty and harsh words?

Yes, on both sides of the issue.

So what does this mean for me?

I don’t know.

 

My blog May look different in the coming weeks or months. Maybe I will take a break. Maybe I’ll do something radical and remove myself from disability spaces. Maybe I’ll do none of these things. Maybe I’ll do all of them.

I doubt I will ever be content sitting on the sidelines long-term, because allowing others to speak for me will limit my own opportunities, and those for the people who come behind me. But I can’t keep swerving between hostile aggression and docile compliance, because neither accomplishes anything. And I can’t keep coasting through, keeping my head down, allowing my presence alone to be an example, because where I am and what I do are only part of my story.

So I’m going back to the proverbial “driver’s manual”, to figure out the best advocacy “vehicle” for myself and my loved ones. Maybe I change what I say and how I say it. Maybe I choose my battles more carefully. Maybe I emotionally check in with my friends and family to see if they’re in a space to carry a particular burden with me. Maybe I take some time out to just exist, particularly on days where everything just goes sideways and I wouldn’t respond objectively anyway. Maybe I have all the tools I need, but I need to teach myself how best to use them. I’m not doing anything drastic, nor will I suddenly become a door mat.

But I am so very tired, on all fronts.

And maybe for now – on this leg of my journey – it’s time for someone else to take the wheel for me.

“Sorry, not Interested!”: How Disability advocacy Is a LOT like Telemarketing

Tags

allies, disability, equality, perception, rejection, support, telemarketing

Not long ago, I spent several months as a business-to-business telemarketer. It was, by far, the most challenging – and in a way the most empowering – job I ever had. Sales doesn’t come naturally to me, but it was a skill I wanted to cultivate. But as with my ability to grow plants (I think about them and they die), my sales skills looked a little bit scraggly by the time another – more well-suited – opportunity came along.

But during those few months, I couldn’t help noticing how telemarketing is a lot like disability advocacy, and in some unexpected ways.

 

Read your Audience

 

When you make a sales call – any kind of sales call – it’s not enough to be friendly. In fact, if you’re too friendly, you can come across as sleazy or a pushover. Conversely, you can’t be too aggressive, because pushiness can be spotted a mile away. No one will buy your product or book an appointment with your service if you make them feel like you’re only in it for the sale. Even slight word changes can be the difference between making that sale and pushing a prospective buyer away.

Similarly, there are so many ways to do disability activism, some more successful than others. The “friendly educator” may get some individual positive results by remaining peaceful, while still feeding into the narrative of disability equating to docile compliance. But the chip-on-the-shoulder anger – over everything – can create equally damaging results, thrusting aside barriers while simultaneously alienating the very people to whom we are advocating.

Whether in sales or activism, it’s important to read an audience. Some people will respond to friendly coaxing; others do require a more forceful approach. In either arena, I have found that reading a situation will likely provide better results than a one-size-fits-all methodology.

And yet, no matter how one presents oneself, it’s important to be authentic; people can see a phony mask of sincerity or bravado a mile away, and few things shut them down more quickly.

 

It’s Hard, Dirty Work

 

When I was making sales calls, I felt a certain sense of shame surrounding the work I did to make a living. There’s a huge stigma around cold-calling unless it’s only one part of multi-faceted job duties. It’s not a warm-and-fuzzy industry, and it has been given a bad name by disreputable companies with pushy sales tactics and unethical practices (for the record, I worked for a company that strongly stressed ethical conduct). You make call after call after call, hoping to build enough trust and rapport with each contact to get that sale. If you are successful enough at it, your success can buoy you up when inevitable rejections drag you down. But your job – day after day after day – is to try and try and try again.

In a similar way, unless disability issues directly affect someone, few people seem to want to discuss activism. The main disability narrative – of recipients of charity, of helplessness, of pity – doesn’t leave much room for strong, vocal or visual opposition. And when this gets brought up, it frequently feels like we’re speaking into an echo chamber and hearing the sounds of crickets in response. Sometimes it feels very very thankless and exhausting, and many people seem to think that it’s our full-time job to educate the public on an on-call basis with no compensation – material or otherwise – for it.

 

You’re doing it Wrong!

 

There’s always a peanut gallery. It can be both a huge benefit – for encouragement and solidarity – and soul-destroying because of all the second-guessing. In sales, you’re either not pushing hard enough, not creating your own opportunities, not getting the job done. On the other hand, you’re wasting your time on prospects that are just too polite to tell you “no.” In disability spaces, I’ve seen so much finger-pointing. We’re “too pushy”, “too soft”, too understanding, or won’t just let it go, cut our losses and move on. And while I’m all for “best practices” (they’re important to provide some guidance) we all have our unique style of doing things that can still get the job done even if our colleague doesn’t do things exactly the same way. In fact, my successful sales style – and activism style – will differ from someone else’s. And I think they should; that doesn’t make any particular style wrong or bad, just different.

 

Some people Just Won’t “Buy it”

 

In sales, you can do everything right, and still your prospect isn’t interested. It’s not personal, not about you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Sometimes you make your “sales pitch” at inopportune moments, and sometimes – no matter how gentle you are – any pointing out of inequality or access concerns are just not ready to be received. This doesn’t mean we stop trying; it may mean we need to reflect on our strategy, ask some probing questions, or – in some situations – make an executive decision to cut our losses and move on.

 

But There are Those that Will

 

Acceptance can come from some truly unexpected places. I called one company just after they’d watched a Youtube video put together by the company I was fundraising for. They were so startled by the coincidence that they threw a huge commission my way; it was the biggest sale I ever made, and it came out of nowhere.

Sometimes, it’s easy for people with disabilities to constantly be in “fighting” mode (to maintain our right of equal access, personal autonomy, or basic human respect), and we can lose sight of the people in our lives who do “just get it”. Sometimes, they come from unexpected corners – from the teacher who asks great questions to the parent who both nurtures and empowers to the friend who knows how to do just the right things at just the right time to the stranger who asks how they can help and respects our reply. Sometimes, we write off opportunities so easily because we feel so discouraged by all the rejection and mental gymnastics just to get through the day. And yet, those moments of brilliance, of comeraderie, of success, spur us on to keep trying.

 

So What do we do from Here?

 

Even seasoned sales reps need to fine-tune their pitch to connect with prospective donors or buyers or customers. Just because something used to work doesn’t mean it will be effective next month or next year. Similarly, I do think disability activism may need a facelift as well, to allow each of us to self-advocate in the way we do best without pointing fingers at how wrong everyone else is. Sometimes aggression is necessary, and sometimes it gets in the way; sometimes we swat flies with a sledgehammer when luring them with honey would’ve been better, and sometimes we let things go that we probably shouldn’t. But the best salespeople – and the best disability activists – are always learning and questioning, fine-tuning their craft. Even though my days as a telemarketer are over, I’m still an advocate for myself if no one else. Everyone hears “no” sometimes, and, in my case, far too often it is because of my disability; but hopefully with more of those great people who do get it, we’ll soon live in a world where there will be more “yes”s than “No”s, and the “no”s are based on facts and bad timing, not negative perception.

Where I’m going and Where I’ve Been

Tags

journey, personal, reflection, road trip, travel

Two months ago today, I wrote a blog post just hours after returning from a road trip that changed me deeply. I came face to face with myself, and it wasn’t always a pretty picture. That trip made me grow up in ways I never thought I needed, and it created new dreams, presented once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and strengthened relationships.
let’s look back a little bit, shall we?

The Bare Facts

Total trip distance: 5449 km (at minimum, detours make this hard to calculate)
Total Traveling Time: 64.5 hours
Tanks of gas: 16
Times we pitched our tent: 5
Times we changed our itinerary: 5 major trip changes
Places we missed out on: 2 (Mount St. Helen’s itself, Garnet)
Once-in-a-life-time experiences: Countless, but two stand out (Sleeping under the stars, and Old Faithful)
Number of inside jokes: Too many to count
Catch phrases: “A bucket of chili!”, “twenty Minutes to Bozeman”, and a bunch more
Regrets: For me, that the trip was so fast that we never got to settle in, and missed out on some cool experiences; others may have different feelings

 

Why did I Write about My Vacation?

 

I created the previous blog posts through a combination of memory, audio recordings I made at the time, facebook posts, text messages, photos, and, where applicable, speaking with the others involved. In particular, the exhausted monologues of day 1, Day 5, and day 7 provided great jumping off points for me to tell my story. All impressions are my own, or are impressions or thoughts that have been directly expressed to me by those who went through them. Many of you have thanked me for writing this blog series about our trip, warts and missteps and all, and for that you have my gratitude. It would’ve been very easy to sugar-coat things, to paint this amazing trip in the rosy glow of remembrance, to put all of us in the most positive light possible. But it wouldn’t have been raw and real and authentic, and it certainly wouldn’t have been this road trip. I took great pains to describe feelings and conflicts and impressions as accurately as I could, with greatest emphasis on my own reactions and feelings. Others’ words, actions or attitudes may have coloured my reactions or thoughts, but I am only responsible for how I respond to them.
As to why I wrote this? It’s a remembrance, to the person I was before and the person I’m becoming. I don’t want to lose sight of either incarnation of her.

 

What’s Happened Since

 

In the weeks following our journey, fire devastated huge swaths of area we had previously covered. Oregon’s I-84 was closed in portions we had traveled less than a week earlier due to the Eagle Creek Fire, which is still burning two months later. Over a million acres of Montana land have been scorched by multiple wildfires that have devastated land, property, and air quality; even now, some roads have just recently reopened. If we had taken the same trip even a week later – or if we take it in the future – it would look and feel and smell completely different than it did on our journey. I feel like we were given a gift, some of the last glimpses of this unspoiled land before it all burned away.

As for the four of us personally, we’ve all had to go back to “real life” (to our jobs and our homes and our countries), but flashes of the Epic Road trip of Awesome still linger and pop out and unbidden moments. The roof bag is still stuffed with camping gear, my toiletry bag is already stocked for my next adventure, and the T-shirts I bought in Montana are among my personal favourites. We temporarily misplaced the bag from the Montana Gift Corral containing the plaque and bracelet, and I frantically messaged them when we couldn’t find it to see if we’d left it behind somewhere and maybe someone had turned it in. When the answer was “no”, I considered re-purchasing the items, but shipping to Canada would’ve been prohibitively expensive. Sarah found it in her duffel bag a few weeks later, and you can now frequently find me wearing the bracelet she and Ben found for me. I was right about how it fit, though; I’ve started to dub it the “boomerang bracelet” because I’ve lost it so many times and always gotten it back. It, like so much of this trip, must have been meant to be.

 

So…. Now What?

 

If you follow me on social media, you’ll know this bit. That dream of traveling around Montana has started to form concrete dimmensions. I hadn’t even unpacked my backpack before I sat down and spent hours researching ways to get from Alberta to Montana by bus (hint: you can’t do it). I researched planes and trains and started looking into accommodations. The idea gripped me so fiercely that Ben and I agreed that we’d forego our original plans for next summer so I could take this trip in the fall (he’s planning a different excursion of his own). I’ve spent hours on travel sites, configuring itineraries, changing plans, mentally organizing it in my head on nights when I can’t sleep. When my current job went from a temporary contract to a permanent one a month ago, I felt safe enough to book my train ride into Montana, and extending the planned itinerary from two weeks to three. It’s getting real now, not this abstract “someday” concept anymore.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be back in Montana in September, 2018. Not only will I be touring Montana, but my trip will branch out into Washington State, Wyoming, and Colorado. I will be on my own, carrying nothing but a backpack on my back and a guide dog’s harness in my left hand. I’ll be looking straight into the future, doing things that – if I think too hard – I might talk myself out of because they’re new or unpracticed and a little scary.

Maybe I will rediscover my “brave.”

If you’ve ever supported the work of this blog, please consider buying me a coffee and help make this trip possible.

In Bozeman, I bought a black T-shirt that feels so very soft to the touch. On the front of it is a phrase that is apt, and I close with it now.

The mountains are calling.

I must go.