When I was a young teenager in the early sixties, visiting my older sister one summer, my eight-year-old niece and I were crossing a broad street in Sacramento on a hot afternoon, dressed in shorts and nice cotton blouses, on our way to a park. There had been a lot of traffic and we finally took off from the curb [...]

People ask me whether I think we as a group should be called “handicapped,” “disabled,” “differently-abled,” or “physically challenged.”  And I’m sure there are other labels or euphemisms for “crippled” or “paralyzed” (or for abnormal mental processes).  Two of those terms are really a mouthful.  I like handicapped best, because it is absolutely true.  I no longer mind being referred [...]

Frequently when young people see me walk with a cane, they treat me like I am a really old person – which was weird when it happened in my 30’s and 40’s, when I looked like I was in my 20’s and 30’s.  There is a bit of a differentiation between being treated like you are handicapped and being treated [...]

One of the oddest things people seem to think, in my point of view, is that most handicapped people are old.  This has been brought home to me numerous times.  It will be helpful for you to know that my sister, myself and my nieces all have generally looked younger than we really are, at least on most good days, [...]

When I was nearly forty, I was in a seminar team environment where each of us daily told others things we had going on about them in order to keep from building up issues.  Things like, “It annoyed me when you…” or “I feel a little attracted to you.”  It actually was fun and worked well. What happened for me [...]

In the mid-1980’s, I volunteered to assist at a seminar including a ropes course, a physical challenge designed to have participants go past their emotional or mental “blocks.”  I was really looking forward to seeing people free themselves from their worry or inhibitions while rappelling across a canyon.  As an outdoor lover, it seemed like the perfect thing for me [...]

Handicapped, disabled, differently-abled, physically challenged.  What a range of opinions there are about those terms. Losing a leg, as one of my friends did in an auto accident, means he is legally disabled, definitely handicapped.  He changed from a physical profession to a desk career.  So, he’s definitely handicapped, and by legal definition, he’s disabled.  It’s difficult to do even [...]

Maybe having polio also caused me to in some ways be more compassionate, yet in some ways more objective or maybe even less forgiving about what people say they cannot do.  I have a harder time believing that statement, “I can’t do it, I could never do it,” having found that I could do far more than I ever thought [...]