Amie was
born without fibular bones, and had both of her legs amputated below the knee
when she was just an infant. She learned
to walk on prosthetics, then to run – competing at the national and
international level as a championship sprinter, and setting world records at
the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta. At
Georgetown, where she double majored in history and diplomacy, she became the
first amputee to compete in NCAA Division 1 Track and Field. This is her story.
This
information all comes from the video in which I share with my clients and most
of this is in her own words, because what she has to say is so invaluable I
want you to have it now. In the video,
Amie stands on the stage and talks to us about being disabled. She reads us the entry in a thesaurus of the
word ‘disabled.’ Here it is:
Disabled:
An adjective. Crippled, helpless,
useless, wreaked, stalled, maimed, wounded, mangled, lame, mutilated, run-down,
worn-out, weakened, impotent, castrated, paralyzed, handicapped, senile,
decrepit, laid-up, done-up, done for, done in, cracked up, counted out. See also hurt, useless, weak. Ant.
Healthy, strong, capable.
When Amie first read this in the thesaurus, she laughed, it was
so ludicrous, but then she got choked up around the word ‘mangled.’ Amie had to stop and collect herself from the
emotional shock and impact the assault from these words unleashed. Print date of this thesaurus was from the
early 1980’s. Thank God she didn't read
that as a child growing up. From this
entry, it would seem that Amie was born into a world that would perceive
someone like Amie to have nothing positive whatsoever going for them. When, in fact, today she is celebrated for
the opportunities and adventures her life has procured.
Amie decided
to look up the updated version of this entry for ‘disabled.’ She looked in the 2009 Edition of the
Merriam-Webster Thesaurus.
Unfortunately, it wasn't much better.
Here are some of the entries for ‘disabled’ in this one:
Disabled: blind, deaf, mute, paralyzed,
quadriplegic, immobile, immobilized, ailing, diseased, ill, sick, unfit. Some near ant: bouncing, chipper, fit,
healthy, hearty, robust, whole, wholesome.
Ant: able-bodied, nondisabled.
Amie found
these to be very unsettling, and she was right, these are unsettling
words. They carry a lot of power. But it’s not just about the words. It’s about what we believe when we label
people with these words. It’s about the
values behind the words and how we construct those values. This is something I really want you to
get. Our language affects our
thinking, and how we view the world and how we view other people.
Many ancient
societies believed, including the Romans and the Greeks, that to utter a curse
verbally was so powerful because to say the thing out loud brought it into
existence. So, if this is true, what
reality do we want to call into existence?
Do we want to call into existence a person who is limited or a person
who is empowered? By casually doing
something as simple as naming a person, a child, we might be putting lids and
casting shadows on their power. Wouldn't
we want to open doors for them instead?
The person
who opened the door for Amie was her childhood doctor, Dr. Pizzatillo. He had the perfect disposition to work with
children. One of the things Amie had to
do as a five year old child was work with these thick elastic bands during her
physical exercise repetitions. Amie
hated it. She tried as a five year old
child to bargain her way out of doing the exercises but to no avail. Dr. Pizzatillo came in one day and told her,
when she was having a very difficult time, ‘Wow, Amie, you are such a strong,
powerful little girl, I think you’re going to break one of those bands. When you do break it, I’m going to give you
100 bucks.’ This was a simple ploy to
get Amie to do the exercises. And, it
worked.
What he
effectively did for her was re-shape an awful daily occurrence into a new and
promising experience for her. His vision
and declaration of her as a strong and powerful little girl shaped her own view
of herself as inherently strong and powerful person well into the future. This is an example of how adults in positions
of power can ignite the power of a child.
But if you
think back to the previous entries I wrote out for you from the thesaurus about
‘disabled’, our language isn't allowing us to evolve into the reality that we
would all want: the possibility of a person to see themselves as capable. Our language just hasn't caught up with the
changes in our society, much of which has been brought up as a consequence of
technology. Just take a look at all the
medical marvels that we have: people can
get titanium knees and hips, prosthetic legs, there is laser surgery to correct
vision – think about that for a second.
This is amazing. Look at our
social media networking platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc – this
enables us to self-identify and own our own dispositions about ourselves. Technology is revealing to us what has always
been a truth: that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our
society. And this above all: our
human ability to adapt is our greatest asset.
People
always wanted to talk to Amie about overcoming adversity, and to Amie, this
phrase never sat right with her.
Implicit in this phrase – overcoming adversity – is the idea that
success or happiness is about emerging on the other side of a challenging
experience unscathed or unmarked by the experience. As if her successes and achievements in her
life came about by side-stepping or circumnavigating the presumed pitfalls of
living a life with prosthetics, or what other people perceive as her
disability.
But the fact
is we are changed. We are marked by a
challenge, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, or all of
them combined, and what Amie suggests in this video is that this is a good
thing. Adversity isn't an obstacle that
we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It’s a part of our life. It’s like your shadow, it’s always with
you. Now this is not intended to
diminish any of your struggles. You may
have experienced absolute horrors in your life, incredible conflicts and
destructive violence, on either an emotional or a physical level, or both; you
may have seen things you wish you’d never have seen; you may have done things
you wish you’d never had done; you may have experienced extraordinary pain in
your life; I am not in any way diminishing the significance of a person’s
struggle with PTSD, depression, and trauma. But
the question is not whether you are going to meet with adversity, but how are
you going to meet it?
Our
responsibility is not simply shielding those we care about from the challenges
of adversity, but preparing them to meet it well. We do a disservice to our kids, our friends,
and our loved ones when we make them feel they are not equipped to adapt. There is a very important distinction between
the medical fact of Amie being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion
that Amie is disabled. Truthfully, the
only real and consistent disability Amie had to face in the world was ever
thinking she could be described by the definitions of being disabled. In our desire to protect those we care about
from the truth of their medical prognosis, or a prognosis on the expected
quality of their life, we have to make sure we don’t put the first brick in a
wall that will actually disable somebody.
Perhaps the
existing model of looking at you and seeing what is broken in you and how do we
fix it serves to be more disabling to an individual than the pathology
itself. By not treating the wholeness
of a person, by not acknowledging their potency, we are creating another ill on
top of whatever natural struggle they may have. PTSD is normal, honorable, and inevitable in
environments of intense conflict. It’s a
sign of your own humanity. You should
have been wounded by these events and you need to take the time to heal and
mend your wounds, share your story with those who understand and can guide you
back to yourself, who can help you to transform the pain of those memories and
turn those experiences into gifts. I've
said this before, and I will say it again.
We will continue to re-live the same traumas over and over again in some
form until we transform them. You
accomplish this transformation by connecting to your wholeness.
However,
when we don’t treat the wholeness of a person, when we don’t acknowledge their
potency, what happens is we are effectively grading someone’s worth to our
community, so we need to see through the pathology, and into the range of human
capability. Each and every one of you reading this blog can overcome, heal, and transform your pain. I've done it.
I know how to do it. And you can
do it as well.
There is a
partnership between those perceived differences and our greatest creative
ability. It’s not about devaluing or
degrading these difficult trying times as something we want to avoid but instead,
find those opportunities wrapped in the adversity.
Here’s Amie’s idea what to do when adversity
confronts us, and I agree with her 100%.
She says ‘it’s not so much about overcoming adversity, but opening
ourselves up to it; embracing it; Dancing with it.’
Adversity is
natural, consistent, and useful and when we look at it in that way we are less
burdened by the presence of adversity.
Charles
Darwin has a great quote about the essence of the human character. He says, “It’s not the strongest, or the most
intelligent, it’s the one that is most adaptable to change that survives.” Conflict is the genesis of creation. The human ability to thrive and flourish is
driven by the struggles of the human spirit through conflict into
transformation. This is our greatest
human skill: transformation and adaptation.
It’s not until we are tested that we learn what we are made of and
maybe, that’s the gift of adversity - a sense of Self; a sense of our own
power.
When we look
at it this way, we can give ourselves a gift.
We can re-imagine adversity as change.
It’s just change we haven’t adapted to just yet.
So many
people talk about being normal. We often
hear people saying, “I just want to be normal”, or “Why can’t you be normal?”
as if being normal was the ultimate desire to be cherished. But what is normalcy? There’s no normal. There’s common, there’s typical, but there’s
no normal. We must change this paradigm
from achieving normalcy to possibility or potency, and then we can release the
power of so many people, children and adults alike, and invite them to engage
in their rare and invaluable abilities with the community.
Anthropologists
say the one thing we as humans have always required of our community members is
to be of use, to be able to contribute.
And there is a vast potential in the Human Will. This is our X factor. Unless repeatedly told otherwise, and given a
little support, a child or an adult will achieve. There is a difference between the medical
condition and what someone might do with it.
No prognosis, whether it’s an amputee or a person with PTSD, can account
for how powerful this could be in the determinate in the quality of someone’s
life.
At 15 years
old, if you would have asked Amie if she would have traded her prosthetics for
flesh and bone legs, she wouldn't have hesitated for a second. She aspired for that ‘normalcy’ back
then. But if you ask her today, she’s not
so sure. And it’s because of the
experiences she’s had with them, and not in spite of the experiences she’s had
with them.
All you need
is one person, one person, to show you the epiphany of your own power, and
boom, you’re off. If you can hand someone
their own key to their own power, our spirit is so receptive, if you can do
that for someone, and open a door for them at a crucial moment, you are
educating them in the best sense. You
are teaching them to open doors for themselves.
To Educate. The root word of educate is ‘educe’ which
means to bring forth what is within to bring out potential. So my question to you is: What potential do
you want to bring out?
There was an
interesting case study done in the 1960’s England called the ‘Streaming
Trials.’ What they did was they
separated ‘A’ students from ‘D’ students and for 3 months, they gave the ‘D’
students ‘A’s, told them they were ‘A’s, they were bright, and at the end of
the 3 months, these students were performing at ‘A’ level. The heartbreaking flipside is they told the
‘A’ students they were ‘D’ students, and that’s exactly what happened. They failed.
Others dropped out. A crucial
part of this case study was the teachers were duped too. The teachers were simply told that these are the
‘A’ students and these are the ‘D’ students, and that’s how they went about
treating them and teaching them.
What does
this show us? It shows that the only
true disability is a crushed spirit. A
person who has a crushed spirit doesn't have any hope, they don’t have any
curiosity or a deflated curiosity, they don’t see any beauty in life, and it
deprives a person of his or her innate ability to imagine.
If instead
we could bolster the human spirit to keep hope, see the beauty in themselves
and in others, and to be curious and imaginative, then we are truly using our
power well. When a spirit has those
qualities, we are able to create new realities and new ways of being.
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Charlie Pacello is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
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