Fr. Leo: I have known Adam for many years and have been inspired by his courage and joy.He has lived with Cerebral Palsy and is presently a very successful teacher in a Catholic elementary school.Following is his story.
Know what’s hard? Figuring out who you’re supposed to be when you don’t feel like you measure up to the ideal that everyone else seems to like. That’s hard! I grew up understanding that I was different from most other people, and it didn’t feel like a good kind of different! The way I walk and the way I do certain things was – and is – very different from the way most people do things. On top of that, there’s no hiding how I’m different, it’s out there in plain view for everyone to see. The second I stand up and begin to move, it’s obvious something isn’t quite “right” about me. Growing up knowing this means that every time I met someone, I was certain that this was the first thing they saw about me – the first thing people would use to make a judgment about me. Whether or not people did anything to make me feel self-conscious (and most often they didn’t), this feeling, which came from within, would bother me. To be perfectly honest, this feeling has never gone away completely. It’s normal for all of us to want others to see us in our very best light. I’m guessing this is harder to do when we feel that others are going to see us as less than best right from the start.
Back to my time growing up – a time that was probably more difficult for me than I am able to acknowledge today. I can remember having a very hard time accepting that I was different. All I wanted was to be seen as the same. I remember a time where I felt very angry that I would never be the person I wanted to be – athletic, fast. I recall daydreams of winning sprints against classmates, proving to them that I could do it, amazing them with my miraculous physical abilities. I guess when reality is hard for us to swallow we turn to fantasy for hope. Looking back, I think that imagining I could accomplish some great feat like this was important to building some level of confidence. On top of this, one of my biggest fears growing up was that others would connect my walking to my thinking. I can remember feeling angry that I was forced to do tests each year at school that proved I was “exceptional” when the test questions were quite easy for me. I felt that the tests were meant to question my academic ability. When there’s one aspect of life that is difficult, I think it’s important to find a positive sense of self in something that is easy. For me, this was my academic ability. I think over time, I took the desire that I had to accomplish something big, and transferred it to more realistic goals. Instead of imagining that I could someday be the first NHL player with cerebral palsy, I began to believe that I had something to teach.
It’s not often that I’ve felt frightened by being different. One exception was my first day of grade nine – a vulnerable day for any student! I can recall walking down a set of stairs, looking up and seeing another student mocking the way I was walking. It was bad enough that I was already feeling self-conscious, it wasn’t like I needed such an obvious reminder that I was different. Even though there were just me and that other student in the hall, I certainly didn’t feel that I belonged; I felt that I was put in my place by a fellow student. As an adult now I can look back and try and rationalize that the student was either curious or ignorant. At the time though, it hurt and it made me wonder how I would ever make it through high school. Around the same time, I can remember a group of classmates whom I knew very well calling me a very degrading name. Outwardly, I dealt with it by laughing with them, the implication being that I was laughing at myself. By laughing, I’m sure I was protecting myself from the full reality of the pain that I would have felt if I had let it in. Sometimes a wall helps - especially in this case, I felt confused that people I considered to be friends would want to tease me. I guess they wanted to make sure that they separated themselves from my difference – maybe it was important for them to assert that they weren’t like me. It felt like they too were putting me in my place, again I was forced to wonder if I belonged amongst my peers. What was my place? How was I going to be someone that people liked having around? In retrospect, there were a lot of people that like me and treated me well, but I know that I have a weakness: dwelling on the negative that people see in me much more than the positive. These are by no means memories that I dwell on today, however, when I do recall them, the feelings from that time remain quite vivid.
It’s hard for me to pinpoint why things started going better, but the way people treated me did eventually change. Maybe after I had surgery later in grade nine and had to use a wheelchair for a few weeks, people were able to feel more empathetic. Or maybe as I was able to figure myself out, I was able to let others see other parts of who I was. Or perhaps it’s simply that we all grew up a bit! I suppose I’ve been blessed with having a mostly positive outlook on people and situations (I think my parents had a lot to do with this). I discovered that the more effort I put into seeing the best in others, the more people seemed to respect me. I became involved in a social justice club at school, inspired by my own experiences of feeling different from others, feeling like my voice and my identity didn’t matter. I felt moved to be a voice for others who were in the same kind of situation. One of my most special memories from high school was being chosen by my classmates in grade thirteen as the male student who best exemplified the Catholic values of my high school. Obviously a lot happened between grade nine, when I felt excluded, and grade thirteen, when this happened.
I can remember being on a class trip to Montreal in grade eight. On our tour of St. Joseph’s Oratory, we were shown the wall of crutches and canes which had belonged to all those who had been healed by praying there. So I prayed. And then I waited to be healed. I remember getting off the bus at our rest stop in Kingston fully expecting to walk normally. I was sad to find out that nothing had changed. “What had I done wrong?” I asked myself. Had I said the wrong prayer? Prayed in the wrong place? Maybe God thought I didn’t mean it enough, wasn’t serious enough. THANK GOD I WAS NEVER HEALED ON THAT TRIP. It took a long time and a lot of experiences for me to understand that in God’s eyes I’m perfectly created just the way I am, God didn’t need to change the way I walk. I just needed time to change the way I saw myself.
Even today, I haven’t got it all figured out, there are still worries and frustrations. I can only drive my own car because of adaptations – I have to work around this sometimes. I occasionally trip and fall in front of my whole class as I’m teaching them – I have to be okay with them seeing me fall. I’m wary of hurting myself from a fall in my own place when no one is around – I have to be careful. If, one day I become a parent, what will it be like for my child to grow up with a parent who’s not like everyone else? Will a day come (in the distant future) when I need to use a wheelchair to get around? Experience now tells me that we all have questions and frustrations like these though, and that we find the best answers when we support and understand each other.
If anything, I’ve come to understand that it’s not when I live without pain or struggle that I am at my best, it’s when I see that pain and struggle as a part of the call to be more fully myself. The prophet Isaiah talked about a day when the valleys would be raised and the hills made low and all people would stand together on even ground. My personal experiences, both difficult and happy, have led me to dream of that day too.