Smith, party of 5: a disability doesn’t take away our strengths.
A family is lined up for a picture.
We all want to feel useful.
We all want to feel like we contribute – to our family, our friends, our communities, and whichever group we feel part of.
Becoming disabled did not take away that desire.
But my Ableist preconceptions led me to fear I would not be able to.
Yet once in a while, I am reminded I have strengths - and my disability only made them stronger!
The call on the intercom
After spending two beautiful weeks in Hawai’i, my sister and her four kids, my mom, my other nephew, my son and I are waiting at the airport for our flight to board. We have gone through customs and are now sitting around, watching movies or youtube videos, just enjoying our last moments together. I decide to go get a coffee with my mom, and as we step out (roll out) of the waiting area, I hear on the intercom “Smith, party of five, last call for boarding at gate 12”.
Smith is my sister’s married name. Not really but for the sake of this blog, it is. We are currently all waiting at gate 16, for our flight to board in about one hour. So gate 12, boarding now, final call, should not have been heard concerning my sister.
I let her know and tell her to stay put, with her phone in hand. I will check at gate 12 what is going on. We all have our boarding passes, we are all meant to board the same plane. I know: I made the reservations myself. With four children, I know my sister gets a bit anxious travelling, so I make sure we stay together as long as we can. In this situation, we are all travelling back home via Vancouver, Canada. Only then do we split up: they go back to Toronto and we go back to Montreal. So she should not have been called on the intercom.
Change of plan
Gate 16 and Gate 12 are FAR apart, so I roll as fast as I can. Rolling this fast is your equivalency of running as fast as you can.
Obviously, someone is making a mistake. My sister is travelling with me. Our children have plans: who will sit beside whom, what they will watch together and what they will eat. They are excited about it.
I get to Gate 12, probably less out-of-breath as you would after running all this way. I can see the plane is boarding. I get to the counter and ask with “Smith, party of five” was called. We have boarding passes that say otherwise.
The agent explains my sister was re-routed on this DIRECT flight from Honolulu to Toronto, because her second flight from Vancouver to Toronto has been cancelled. The next available flight would have been 12 hours later, which means they would have waited for 12 hours in the Vancouver Airport.
Obviously, this is a good thing. For her and the kids. Less travel time. But this is changing all our plans! I text my sister to say Goodbye to our nephew and my son, and to come to Gate 12. After explaining the situation to her, we hug and kiss and she boards the plane with my beautiful nieces and nephew.
Everyone has strengths
Shortly after my accident, as I laid in my hospital bed, I feared I would be dependent on everybody else. I feared I would be a burden - someone my family would need to do things for, and not with. I thought, my disability had taken away all my capabilities and all my strengths. Of course, these thoughts are ableist in nature and led to the mental health issues that came soon after.
Now, over twelve years later, I can tell you it couldn’t be further away from the truth. For sure, I do require help for some things. Anything that require carrying heavy objects, getting things from high above, pulling or pushing suitcases (I can roll with one, but need help for the other) when I travel for longer than two days. I require help to clean my house and do some of the yard work. And I do need help getting the groceries in my house, folding my laundry, making my bed. But apart from those, I am autonomous in many things.
Not only am I autonomous, but I also have many strengths that allow me to help the people around me. One of those strength allows me to adjust rapidly when changes occur, like happened in Hawai’i.
You could say that my family and I have an interdependent relationship, one that is characterised with them helping me on some things and me helping them out on others. To each our strengths.
written by
Marjorie Aunos, PhD., is an internationally renowned researcher, adjunct professor, clinical psychologist, and award-winning inspirational speaker from Montreal, Canada.
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