God has bestowed CP upon me, which I used to consider merely a curse. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that cerebral palsy truly is a blessing in disguise—and sometimes, not in disguise.
God has blessed me with the gift of speech and writing. I feel like He did that for a reason. I feel it. I feel that I am supposed to be an advocate for others with CP, since many people with cerebral palsy are nonverbal and that doesn’t happen to be the case for me.
I am able to type and to speak, and I plan to use those gifts. At times, I feel guilty for the mildness of CP that I have, but then I remind myself it’s not my fault how I was born. It’s no one’s fault. It was God’s plan for me. When I do feel guilty, I comfort myself by reasoning that I was meant to be an advocate for others.
But being an advocate for others means that first, I have to be an advocate for myself.
Until recently, when kids said something offensive or repeatedly bullied me, I would either a) brush it off or b) tell my parents. My mom and dad are amazing advocates, and they always have been. They handle situations with grace and make sure to ask me how I would like the situation to be handled.
A few times, I have informed my peers how they’ve made me feel. A few weeks ago was the first time I’ve ever spoken up for myself with an adult. Previously, my parents have been the ones to have the conversation with adults who have hurt me (when necessary, of course).
As you can imagine, confrontation with adults is much harder, and maybe that’s partly why I’ve never really done it. I’ve tried to tell myself: “No, it’s not confrontational, you’re just having an educational conversation.”
No matter how you put it—the situation ends up being confrontational.
In this case, it was my teacher.
I had signed up to go on my school’s Beta field trip. I guess I don’t have to justify why I wanted to go—being in the club is enough—but I digress. I had tried to be as involved as possible with the Beta club. (If you don’t know, you need a 3.6 GPA to be in Beta, at least in my school. I have a 4.3 GPA.) Anyway, I ran—and lost—twice for the position of Beta Club Secretary. No one could say I hadn’t tried to participate.
With this field trip, I could go. I deserved to go. So I signed up. At the time, I figured there might be stairs, but shrugged it off. My teacher, whom I trusted, could help me navigate them.
It was a Michaelangelo exhibit at the River Center, which, if you live in Louisiana, you know that the places around the River Center can have a fair amount of stairs.
My teacher explained to me that usually there are handicapped spots around the River Center, so we could probably take the elevator or something.
Right. There was no elevator.
Doesn’t matter. So, to better understand, there are words to describe CP that I don’t care for. (5 is the worst word, 1 is the best.)
1) disability
2) abnormality
3) handicapped
4)deformity
5) brain-damaged/Crippled
The last two are different words, but I consider them the same level of offense.
Maybe some people don’t understand why “crippled” is offensive. The best way to explain it is that the word “crippled” for a person with cerebral palsy (or me, at least) is the equivalent of the word “retarded” for a person with an intellectual challenge, or the word “midget” for someone who has dwarfism. And the word “crippled” may not be offensive for everyone with a physical disability, I don’t know. All I know is that the word “crippled” is offensive to me.
The reason why is because when you call a person “crippled”, while it may be true that the person has physical challenges, that is not even close to what defines them. The problem I have with the word is that it denotes a person’s worth to one thing.
And no one’s worth is just one single thing.
I am worth more than my legs. I shouldn’t even have to say that. I am not in control of the way my legs are. If you want to define me based on my personality, fine. Do that. I am in charge of my personality.
The word “crippled” means “severely damaged or malfunctioning.” I am in NO way malfunctioning. I will never overcome cerebral palsy. It is a part of me. It is not meant to be overcome. I am not damaged. God made me the way I am for a reason. To use the word crippled implies that the person cannot function. I, and anyone with a disability, can function. We are far from dead, far from beaten. I am not a mistake. People that choose to call my brain “damaged” from cerebral palsy are wrong. People can tell me that all they want; I will never ever believe it. I will never, ever believe that I am not functioning. I keep going every single day. Not only that, I thrive.
Not to mention, the word “crippled”—at least for me—sums me up with the thing I am least proud of about my body, and about myself. I am not ashamed of having cerebral palsy, nor is the message I am sending to be ashamed. But is cerebral palsy the first thing I want people to know about me, or to think of when they hear my name? Absolutely not.
Anyway, back to what happened.
On the day we were going on the field trip, all of us gathered in the choir room for the chaperones—one of which was my teacher—to take attendance. After, I met my teacher in the corner. I had asked her if I could stay with her so she could help me on the bus and things like that. A few minutes later, a girl came in on crutches. She had broken her leg the day before.
Not to minimalize the pain of having a broken leg, but having a broken leg is temporary. My condition—cerebral palsy—is not temporary. Cerebral palsy is permanent. I will deal with it my whole life. After six weeks or so, a broken leg heals, and it’s good as new.
(I know we all have things we deal with in life, but sometimes I’m envious of having a broken leg. It heals, and then it’s just like it was. My legs will never be quite like that. (If that sounds petty, I’m sorry. I don’t mean it to be.))
My teacher, seeing the girl who was on crutches, said, “Hey, come over here. She’s crippled too.”
At first, I don’t even really know if I even registered what she said. But when I did—I got hot all over and felt like I could scream. A lot of people say I don’t really have a temper, because I hide it well and very rarely act on it. But when I get mad, I’m mad. Believe me, I try not to get angry, but to basically refer to someone as severely damaged is uncalled for.
I didn’t say anything, just looked at the floor. Looking back on it, I think my teacher meant it as a joke to put the girl at ease. But honestly, once she got the cast off, she could pretend she never broke her leg if she wanted to. Pretend she’d never been associated with the girl who needed to go slower. I can’t do that. If anything, it’s uncomfortable to be in a group apart from others, which I’d need to do for my whole life—and she wouldn’t—so I would have preferred to be comforted instead of referred to as crippled.
After that, I paired up with my friend and either she or the teacher helped me.
Maybe some of the problem is, I’m able to “mask” pretty well. At times, I feel like I’m directly in the middle of two worlds, but to be called crippled like that in front of someone else— Boom. Done.
You’re not like me, you’re “crippled”.
When I went home, I told my parents what had happened to make sure I wasn’t overreacting, and they were both pretty angry. They said that I had three choices—(1) I could handle it with a) an in-person, private conversation or b) an email; (2) they could handle it for me or (3) do nothing.
I didn’t want to do nothing. I did that too much, and the person never ended up knowing that they’d hurt me. At first, I wasn’t thinking of an educational opportunity, but there was that factor, too. And if the teacher ever had another student in her class with a physical challenge, she’d be more careful with the words she used.
I didn’t want to email her. She could easily read the subject line of my email and just send me an apology to passify me, without really knowing—or caring—what she did to hurt my feelings.
So I decided to have an in-person conversation with her.
This is what I planned to say:
Hi, Mrs. [Teacher’s Name],
I really don’t want to upset you or anything, but—Last Friday, when [girl’s name] came in on her crutches, you said, “Oh, she’s crippled, too.” I just find the word crippled really offensive because it denotes my worth to just one thing, and I am more than my legs. I acknowledge that I have a physical challenge, or special needs, but that’s not all I am. You hurt my feelings when you said “crippled” and I don’t want another kid with physical challenges to be referred to as that.
I just found it really disappointing.
What ended up happening was not what I expected. Getting her to have a private conversation with me was easy enough.
At first I was fairly reluctant to do it. She was my math teacher, and I need the most help with math, although I have an A in the subject. Also, I was aware that I still had two months of eighth grade to go. I didn’t want to make my last two months of middle school awkward.
Despite my misgivings, I embraced the challenge. I want to become an advocate someday for people with disabilities. To do that, I have to learn to speak up for myself. I’ll be on my own someday, and I will need to rely on myself. Besides, I am passionate about words and the way we use them. So I agreed to have the conversation. All I had to do was try.
“Hi,” I tentatively started, my face bright red as she stared at me expectantly, “I really don’t want to upset you or anything, but—l-last Friday, when that girl came in on crutches, you said ‘Oh, she’s crippled, too.’ I just find the word ‘crippled’ really offensive—”
I do stutter at times, and I feel like maybe she would have felt like I was more legit if I’d gotten my words out.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she interrupted. “I’ll delete that word from my vocabulary. It’s just like the word ‘retarded’, you know? When I was in school, we never thought anything of it.”
And that was it. She turned to go back in the classroom door. I stood there and eventually followed her, my unspoken words dying on my lips. I never got to explain why I found the word offensive, and she’ll never know. She’ll just think it’s something we don’t do because we don’t do it. That’s sad to me.
More than that, as I watched her walk away, questions filled my head—and anger. She had gotten to say something hurtful to me, and didn’t have the courtesy to hear what I was going to (respectfully) say back. Would my parents be disappointed? I had done what I set out to do, but then again, I hadn’t. I hadn’t said what I wanted—what I needed—to say.
Helplessness washed over me. Most of the time, I felt helpless about what my legs did and didn’t do. I felt helpless when people said things to me I didn’t like. And I felt helpless now, as I was cut off, the conversation I had engineered too soon drawn to a close. Furthermore, what business did I have being an advocate for others if I couldn’t even get the words out I needed to speak up for myself? I had begun to internalize—you crippled girl—and she put the word in my head. I needed to talk. But she didn’t let me. My first attempt to speak up for myself disappeared through that classroom door.
I comforted myself—I’m only thirteen. This was my first time advocating for myself. My parents were proud of me. When I got home, they hugged me as I cried.
What struck me was that someone who could be so bold with her words wasn’t brave enough to stick around to hear the consequences.
So yes, I may have physical challenges. But I have power in other ways. If people don’t want to listen when they make mistakes, that is their choice. But I can be content with my choice to be respectful and speak up for myself—no matter what the other person chooses to do with my words.