Don’t stare just say hi

Being a woman with spastic Cerebral palsy and being wheelchair-bound going out in public makes me stand out like a sore thumb and it sometimes causes people to have owl eyes and stare at me as if I’m an alien who came from outer space and befriended a little boy named Elliot and his siblings I’m a regular person with arms and legs the only difference is I use a wheelchair to help me get around in our world that is full of cracks
and obstacles that people don’t understand unless you’re the one going through it and when people stare at me while out in public instead of just simply saying hi it bothers me vs if someone just says hi to me because I don’t want to be seen as someone different I just want to be known as the woman who has a passion for telling my story through my articles and advocating for Cerebral palsy and the next generation of people who are going to be impacted by cerebral palsy.

Although I do embrace my cerebral palsy I want people to see past the chair and see that I’m an average 25-year-old woman who is typical if you ask me I love Country music has a passion for English literature and advocating, I love watching Netflix and my favorite television series on the streaming service is The Ranch if that’s not normal I don’t what is.

So if you see out in public please just say hi and don’t stare at me ask me what’s my story I’ll be more than happy to tell you my story it may take me a while but that’s okay and it means a lot to me that you would want to get to know me for the person that I’m that the object that reflects my footsteps but not my personality and what I’m capable of as a person and my different abilities.

I strongly feel when people ask me about my condition while I’m out and about navigating through society it makes me feel more safer within a society that I don’t really feel was made for me and it gives me more of a strength to keep pushing forward to tell my experiences and share the story of how I’ve been able to overcome obstacles which happen to have been some my greatest life lessons by far and to honest overcoming the obstacle of being stared at taught me a very valuable lesson that it all starts with us and the way we allow the staring owls to affect us and that understanding and willingness to learn about people with different abilities all start with us and how we teach and educate people about our different abilities.

Also, I learned that we can’t let the negative owls affects us and the way that the view us despite the fact we have disabilities and people still believe in the stigmas and are close-minded those are the people that I called the negative owls and I’ve come across many of those but the one that I always remember is that they don’t determine who I am and where I’ve been so I just have to keep on smiling and remember that I was diagnosed with Cerebral palsy for a reason and it makes me beautiful and I have nothing to be ashamed of.