As a woman with cerebral palsy, people often ask me, “have you ever thought about what life would be like if you were just cured of cerebral palsy,” and, ” do you even want a cure for cerebral palsy?”
My answer always remains the same, “no.”
I just want more awareness of cerebral palsy because let’s be honest, I love the way my body is formed, and I love the way God made me.
Yes, I must admit there are days where I become frustrated with my cerebral palsy like anybody would. I think the most frustrating part for me is, a 22-year-old woman, seeing all of my friends live on their own and be independent.
I can’t necessarily do things without having the obstacle in front of me first like for example I always dreamt of moving up to the mountains and living in Tennessee. The reality is, I cannot do that because I would always need 24-hour care. So I need to live close to my family so that dream could never become a reality without me having to go the extra mile.
I’m not saying that I hate my life, but a lot of the times I wish that people would become more aware of cerebral palsy and what it brings to the world and understand our daily lives from our point of views.
I wish for Cerebral Palsy awareness month that the President of the United States would light the white house green for all the 17 million people globally that have Cerebral Palsy.
I wish people would not only go green for St. Patrick day, but they would go green for the 31 days we have in March for all the 17 million people with Cerebral Palsy out there.
I wish people would become more educated on what Cerebral Palsy is and what it entails. Part of teaching about Cerebral Palsy hits home for me because my biological father was not in my life until I was 18. Years ago we reconnected, but I found my relationship with him to be very difficult because he doesn’t have an understanding of how my Cerebral Palsy came about. He always says, “Your legs broke when you were a baby that’s why you’re handicapped.”
At first, I would get irritated and upset that he didn’t even acknowledge the fact that my condition has a name. For the fact that my legs are not broken, I just have low muscle tone throughout my whole body.
But then I got to thinking you can’t help what somebody doesn’t know. The best thing you can do is educate and bring awareness to it. So that way when you go to bed at night, you go to bed knowing that you did your best to make people aware of your daily life.
When it comes to finding a cure, I say let’s worry about that after we start to see more outreach about cerebral palsy awareness. To the point where we can walk into a store in March, and they have T-shirts that say, “cerebral palsy awareness,” and, “go green,” or they have positive commercials about it.
Instead of the sad ones that law firms put together for parents with children with cerebral palsy to sue the hospitals if they feel their child’s cerebral palsy was caused by neglect.
Yes to some extent it does bring cerebral palsy awareness, and it makes people aware, but it doesn’t make people aware of the positive things. It doesn’t make people aware of the greatness that we all can do as a world phenomenon. Together we are one.
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