YOUR VOICE MATTERS !!!

Why is it important to vote? If we don’t then we can not say what we like what is going on in our country.  America stands for freedom. As Americans we have more freedom then other countries outside the United States of America. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize how hard many people had to fight for that freedom, not only with other countries but in the United States as well to help make everyone equal as the Constitution says.

It took a while to get to where we are today.  For many years, women were not treated as equals to men and did not get the right to vote until the 1920's.   Equal rights for African Americans were denied in many areas of the country until the 1960's when the fight let by Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges brought attention to these issues.  Also in the 1960's another groups fight to be equal was just starting to be heard in the fight for equal rights for people with disabilities.   President Kennedy, who had a sister with a disability was a leader who helped address this.

While during his time in office, there where laws and bills that began to have positive change. Lyndon B. Johnson took over after President Kennedy’s assassination and carried on the changes.  In 1965 people with disabilities finally had the right to vote.  That was not that long ago! Then in 1975 people with disabilities began to have the right to a proper education. 

Ok.  So now we have the right to vote, right to education, what about the right to work and be out in the committee …?   So we are getting closer to a more open minded world where we say everyone has the right to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to live freely.  Fast-forward to 1990 when President George H. W. Bush passed the Americans with Disabilities Act which gave people the right to be able to work and be more apart of their community instead of being put out of site out of mind. This is why it is so important to have our voices heard nothing is changed by keeping silent.

So many things have changes for the better. In 2008 Barack Obama was elected the first African American president and we may soon have the first woman  elected as are president. But before that a man named Franklin D Roosevelt who battled polio was elected president 4 times during World War II.  It was very rare to see or hear of anyone with a disability back then holding a job much less being President of the United States.   The power to vote is important and with it we can make important changes.

A Change Can Do You Good

Can you look at someone and really tell what’s going from the outside? We are taught to protect ourselves from the things that can hurt us and to treat people the way you want to be treated. There are also things that we may never know until the unexpected happens. In my case most people know that I have a physical disability called Cerebral Palsy even though it’s not as noticeable as you might think. It was more visible when I was younger because I wore braces but it was the 80s and high socks where kind of in then so the first decade of my life the brace was covered. But as I got older the little things got harder to hide.  Most kids at age 12 can tie their shoes and when puberty hit learning how to shave was harder than the average person that has perfectly good 100% use of two hands. Yes, I have two hands but one is more mobile than the other mainly allowing it to use as a helper. As I have grown up and learned how to work around most things that most people would not have to.

I have mild ADD it is mild and it is controlled by medication to help me concentrate

There are many things that when you are forced to live with and accept, and there are things that you have to accept but wish you did not have to. I had to learn that at a very young age. There were lots of things that I could not do or be a part of with all my friends because I had to work harder at them in order to succeed. Sometimes it made it hard to have a social life because when everyone was out having fun and finished with their school work I was still working on assignments. I was still on the first assignment that I had started an hour ago then they might have been done with all of their homework by then. There were times when I had to spilt my time in half and come back so after school actives were tough.

But very few knew that I have a seizure disorder because it was controlled by medication and I was able to live a pretty normal life. Then my mid 20s I started feeling hot flashes, twitching and then getting sick after. What is going on? I’m eating right sleeping fine working out.  Then when things started happening more frequently we had the doctor run some test and during my EEG it came up as that I was having seizure like symptoms. I was left with two options, play it safe and just up the dosage of the meds that I was on or… take a risk and change my medicine completely.

There were pros and cons that I had to think about on my way to get there. One of the big ones was if I stayed on Depakote and I had children, they might be born with a birth defect. With the other medication I would not have to worry about that if it worked. I chose to take a big risk and switch my medicine. It was very scary but worth it because now almost two years later I have been on the new medicine and have not had any seizure like systems and there is no negative side effect to the Kepra like the Depakote had. Yes, change can be scary but it can also be a very good thing.

There are things that we can control that help us but then there are things that are we cannot.  I wish that people would accept things for what they are. However, the world is not always like that and we need to try our best to make sure that people understand because it is not such a black and white world as it used to be.

Temple Grandin

Temple was born on August 29, 1947 in Boston, MA.  She was diagnosed with autism at a young age. Back then there were not very many people that were diagnosed with autism and not much was known about what to do with them.  As a result, there were still a lot of questions for people that were not aware of people with disabilities on how they should be treated. She was one of a kind and stood out in many ways.  Yes, she was very different and did not do things the way most others did.  However, she found the way that worked for her to overcome these obstacles so she could find her way to become as successful as she could.  She accepted her challenges and was not afraid to ask for help.

Some of the most important people that gave Temple her best encouragement were her family and teachers, especially her high school teacher that would become her biggest fan.  He saw something in Temple and believed she was going to do big things in life. And his prediction came true as she went on to become one of the few people with a disability to continue on with their education after high school.

For most people, whether or not they had a disability it was rare that they went on to college. The fact that she had a disability made her stand out even more. In 1970 she graduated from Franklin Pierce College/University with a bachelor’s degree in Human Psychology and a master’s degree in in Animal Science in 1975 from Arizona State University.  She then went on to receive her Doctorate in Animal Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989.  She holds many titles because she was not afraid failing trying other ways to what was suggested for her.  Today she continues to make fight for awareness for people with disabilities and has a big interest in animal rights movement.

To most people all these milestones may not be a big deal but for people with disabilities it is a big deal.  Temple was able to accomplish these during an era that not many people where identifying with diagnoses of a disability with the proper supports.  There were not any programs that where developed in schools and the right to hold a job. She overcame these obstacles at a time when people with disabilities where almost invisible and that shows a lot of what she stands for.