Discover and Unleash Inner Strength: The Power of Trying and Overcoming Disability with Depression

Did you know you can power a 220V light bulb without electricity or batteries?

Until I discovered the video below, I didn’t know.

This trick of natural power, magnetism, always existed, even when I didn’t know it could be applied that way.

When our depression and anxiety brought by our disability and challenge fatigue bring us down to a crippling point worse than the disability itself, our mind can easily believe that our future will be filled with the same traps and barriers we have known in the past. That’s a typical logical fallacy of the depressed mind. It prefers protecting us against danger by using data from the past without having any evidence about the future. Such caution might be useful to make sure we don’t do something stupid that would put our body at risk of injury, but if the goal is to get out of our emotional and mental pit, that’s not helpful at all. The depressed mind likes to think it is a psychic, but it’s not; just like I might think I sing like a superstar in the shower, but ….)

One of the best ways to get out of the mental pit about disability is to train your mind to rediscover the part of your power, your ability, that you are not using yet. Despite our mind’s strongest objections and demotivation, we must try new things or new ways of doing old things.

Here are some of the things I never thought my cerebral palsy would allow me to do :

• Skydiving at 19 yo. I even did it alone, when most people non-disabled would not even try it. My doctors do not recommend it anymore as it could be too rough for my 46 yo arthritic hips. (Don’t do this without consulting with your health professionals)
• Walking underwater to see the fish of the Australian Great Coral Reef at 39 years old. (Doctors said yes after I asked and found someone to help me. Yes, I know, I look like a Marsian in Mars Attack, but it was fun!
• Learning to sail in an accessible sailboat at 45 years old, thanks to a para-sailing program in Hamilton, Ontario. It takes a staff member and a special device to hoist me onto the boat, but who cares? In the end, I still get to enjoy wonderful freedom on the water safely.
• Travelling internationally to the USA, Cuba, Bermuda, Mexico (even lived there), France, Germany, Poland, alone (Yes, by myself!) ; and with some help, the Netherlands, Israel, Palestine and Australia. When I was in high school, I was not allowed to participate in international school trips; they required that I pay for myself and extra people to accompany me, my disability being a “liability.” I took my first international trip alone to Paris at 25 years old. The first day was a difficult adaptation, but I managed, and now, I have the travel bug. It requires more planning than most people, but in the end, I’m still doing it! At 46 years old, I am no longer autonomous enough to travel alone, but I still do with my partner and friends. I had a chance to talk to the teachers who once denied me travel. They are 75 years old and still haven’t left Canada yet. Who is unfit for travel again? Ha Ha.
• Playing music. When we thought I couldn’t do much with my left hand, I started learning piano at 5 years old, progressing up levels of the University of Québec in Montréal’s preparatory school of music.
  • I had to stop lessons at 16 years old as my left hand could not keep up, so I started teaching beginners.
  • 30 Years later, I found a creative harp teacher who could teach and adapt things for me.
  • But, surprise 🤩, we discovered that, with some perseverant practice, my left hand is as capable as a non-disabled hand with the harp! My teacher was tearing up with pride seeing my progress last week. We would have never figured it out without trying for a few months!

a clownfish swims right in front of me as I walk underwater

Me walking underwater looking like a Mars Attack alien

Etienne happy to play his harpe despite a busted string!

When we want to be physically able to do something and we can’t, it’s frustrating at best. When we are faced with permanent limitations brought by disability, it really sucks. Most non-disabled people have no idea how hard it is emotionally sometimes, but it doesn’t have to be the end of it. It’s time to be creative and give ourselves the mental space to be flexible. Disability or not, it’s a good reflex to develop for life in general. The earliest you learn it, the better.

I would have never seen the world if I had accepted the limitations others placed on me as condemnation and the limitations my own mind wanted to place on me.
I would have never learned to sail and play the harp if I had surrendered to my depressed mind trying to convince me that my best days of learning were behind me.
I would not have hope if I had let the worsening parts of my disability decide that other parts of me were no longer able to grow.
I wouldn’t be here to support you if I had decided I was doomed to rot in my house, excluded from society after I was forced to stop working.

I know it is not easy to challenge the strong thoughts of depressed and anxious minds, but I am living proof that it is possible. It can feel overwhelming to think our demons are waging a big war against ourselves on top of the barriers of disability. It is demoralizing and disempowering to think that our only way out is to find a way to win a war.

But that is a faulty goal. Winning a war is not what you and I need.

We only need a series of first steps to give us a chance to be surprised. Taking the small risk of trying something new is all we need to train our minds to change the channel and get on with a more hopeful program. Surprises bring hope.

Try, just try, again. We can’t discover new power in ourselves if we don’t try.

If even sharp and harsh razor blades that cut deeply can power new light by themselves, so can you, even when you feel a part of you has been cut off. Don’t give up. Discover what has been unused, dormant, but powerful in you. That’s Rising Disabled.

I wonder what you and I will discover this month? Nice surprises welcome!