My views on boxes and labels.

I had a rough deal during my school years. Truth be told, I think most of us did at some stage or another, be it through teasing and bullying to our own internal battles that no one else knew about but ourselves.

I remember Primary school when I eventually got well enough to attend full-time; I had missed out on the vital social development. I didn’t have any friends and those I did have either moved away shortly after we formed a bond or we changed classes. I was also teased and considered a bit of an outcast and to be fair, I exasperated the situation by playing on it. I guess even then I revelled at being ‘different’.
I was also a very angry girl; I was disruptive, aggressive and misunderstood. But because I was desperate to fit in too, I used my anger to make positive changes asides from destructive ones. This continued right throughout my teenage and adult life until last year I decided that my anger wasn't working for me anymore.

One particular memory that springs to mind was the day I scored a whole rounder for my team. I had always been a weak player and was quite often the last girl to be picked by the team captain. But the day I won for our team, when it came to my turn to bat, I channelled my anger into making my bat come into contact with the ball. I whacked it with all my might and with such velocity, the ball sored over our heads and beyond, it eventually (and it seemed like eternity when it did) landed at the very end of our playing field! I repeated this magical experience on every turn I had in that game.
That day changed my peers opinion of me and in turn changed my remaining years at primary school from miserable and lonely to happy and secure ones. Perhaps I did have something to offer to my classmates after all?!
I also became an amazing deep fielder, catching any ball that headed my way, I even got confident enough to make the most magnificent aerobatic dives any professional cricketer would’ve been proud of! Over time not only was I the first girl to be chosen for a team, I eventually became team captain and my heart swelled with pride.

And that’s when at the age of 9, I became aware of how I felt I could make a difference to someone else’s life by my own actions. Instead of automatically choosing the best for my team I went to the kids who were deemed hopeless, I picked them first rather than last. I still remember the groans and moans I got from my team mates, but in my little 9yr old mind I was determined that no other kid should endure the humiliation that I had done by being the last to be picked. I didn’t want anyone else to feel unworthy and having opportunities denied because they were looked upon as being rubbish or a failure. I wanted to encourage them, give them confidence and above all show them that I believed in them even if no-one else would.
Sadly for me, Secondary school would be another matter once again, but one to be written about for another time.

Looking back on this and various other memories, I understand now that these experiences have set me up for the life journey that I am now on. I am grateful for a chance meeting of an acquaintance a year ago who introduced me to her friend who was an EFT Matrix Re-imprinting practitioner. It was she who helped me to work through many personal issues that had inhibited my own personal & spiritual growth and become trained as a practitioner myself. It has helped me understand all my life experiences and that even the bad ones has helped shape me into the woman that I am today.

I am also grateful to a friend who’s family moved into the same village where I was brought up and who by chance (although nothing in the universe as it happens is by chance) was born with the very same condition as myself. She is very good with statistics whereas my memory fails me when it comes to numbers. But as I understand it, we are one in every two hundred and fifty thousand to be born and amazingly we end up in the same small village?! My Mum ended up child-minding her and her brother before and after school. But at 7yrs her senior, I at the age of 13 didn’t have much to do with her at the time. Over the years though, we have since become good friends.

Like many of us born with Esophageal Atresia and Tracheoesophageal Fistula (yeah its a mouthful) it comes with varying complications. I do not know the full list of problems my friend has experienced, nor do I know or understand the full extent of health issues I have, other than fused bones and bones that have gone a little AWOL. It’s not until with age when things become more noticeable that it gets investigated and things come to light.  We generally have far better things to do than focus on what inhibits us in life.
But one of the issues with my friend is an inability to comprehend subtle body language and difficulty (more so in in the past) with social engagement. With age she has learnt to adapt because like me, she is unwilling to give up or accept her own limitations. The mind if not the body is a powerful tool.
The medical profession has labelled her with Aspergers. She herself isn’t all that convinced with the diagnosis but has gone along with it because it makes those of us who don’t understand more comfortable with the situation in front of us.
But through years of those limited beliefs put in place both by ourselves and others, it has at times been hard to prove anything other than living alongside those set of guidelines and safety nets that are put in place for our own protection; Protection, as I perceive it, is just something that stems from fear, it is a cloak to prevent either ourselves or others we care about from getting hurt. Of course, there are extremes of this but in being over-protective we prevent ourselves and loved ones to any sort of personal and spiritual development. One of the hardest things being a parent I would imagine is letting your child go, to go forth in our world, to watch them make mistakes and to see them get hurt, but in doing so, you are giving the greatest gift one could give a child. And I speak not because I am a parent but because I still remember being a child.

Before I go on, I want to make it clear that there is no blame towards anyone or anything. We are all responsible for how we choose to feel and react. These are merely my  observations based on my own experiences.

But it is interesting how society and the government put us in boxes with labels to help people like my friend and like many others ‘worse off’ and I use that term loosely for it is only through personal perception that we may feel some are worse off than others.
By giving diagnosis to a problem, is effectively giving another label to make those around them more comfortable and accepting of them, thus in turn avoids the real issues.
The real issues being that we are all unique. For example, my friend and I were born with the same rare condition – it was fixed but underneath are much deeper complexities that have to be dealt with and treated in our own unique way that is healthy and right for each of us as individuals and sometimes that will take time due to the very nature of the issues involved – Time  that society doesn’t seem to allow, because of the pressure of back to work schemes, financial worries, even bullying etc and don't get me started on the education system!
And then there are folk who for whatever reason are unable to maintain a  part-time job let alone a full-time one. I do not believe this gives the goverment the right to force them to work nor a reason to throw them on the scrap heap, but rather to be encouraged in finding out and reaching their full potential in whatever it may be, whatever form it may come in and however unconventional it may seem.

I myself have been guilty of living by my own limitations. For instance, I am deaf in one ear. I have always avoided interacting in large groups due to difficultly in hearing. However over time, I have learnt to adapt, I can now explain to complete strangers that I have to move to my ‘good side’ so that I can hear them. It takes the pressure off of me trying to lip read (to which I have become quite adapt). Not only can I lip read, but I learnt to do sign language too, both of which I probably wouldn't have done had I been hearing in both ears.
Looking back, I cannot believe that at one time I was ashamed and embarrassed of my disability. People mistook me for being shy or even rude. I didn’t want to be seen as a weak link and so instead of explaining the misunderstanding. I pretended not to care.  So you understand, it is up to all of us to look beneath the judgements, look beyond the disability, look behind the anger, the bitterness the nonchalance, and not only see, but feel and understand the true soul behind the shields they put up and labels that they are given, because in truth, they could be crying out for recognition, for some piece of verification that they too are worthy enough to contribute to society be it through working, through music, or sport, through art, through making or building, creating, or inventing, we ALL have something to offer.

So I guess with the way my path is going, the way that work is coming my way involving art workshops for adults with learning disabilities, I want to test my words and put them into practice and just because I have been labelled as a resident artist for them, I hope to offer them so much more than just Art because of all the reasons I wrote above and more.
I had a short stint in this area 2yrs ago but I gave it up. I turned down another unrelated but similar opportunity last year so when yet another one came up this year, I decided to take the hint the universe was giving me and accept her challenge.
I will make mistakes, I will feel out my depth at times, I will get things wrong, but the one thing I will always remember is to keep in mind that little 9yr old girl and know in my heart, like I did all those years ago, that somehow, in some way however small, I can make a difference.
And with that thought in mind, what will you do?