Coronavirus Quarantine: Welcome To Our Normal Reality. (Sort of).

Today is Cerebral Palsy awareness day. People with cerebral palsy and quite frankly other medical diagnoses face many challenges. Though I could list numerous challenges, I want to focus on a specific challenge which we all are experiencing right now. This challenge is isolation. When I bring up this in conversations with individuals, they often lament and say,  oh I can not begin to imagine what it is like. Just the other week, I was talking to a friend who said this. At the same time we, as the disability community,  often wish typical able bodied peers could experience what we go through. Unfortunately, this pandemic is offering a pretty good real life example of what the disability community faces on a daily basis through social distancing. 

Millions of people globally are being asked and in some cases being mandated to stay at home. While we, as a disability community, are not normally mandated to stay home, we are stuck at home and confined to our places of residences due to physical barriers. These barriers tend to be bigger problems for us than they need to be due to a lack of empathy, understanding, or just the slightest amount of patience it takes to include us.  Even when we are at physical social events, 75% of the time we feel socially distant though being physically present. This is due to not being fully engaged with whether it be because of fear of the unknown, not sure how to approach us, or a lack of patience with our communication adaptations. As a result, we rely heavily on the internet, screens, social media, and streaming services to basically stay sane and get through day by day. Though these circumstances are on steroids, even for me, I sympathize with anyone who is losing their minds. It’s mentally draining and taxing. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone in the world frankly. 

We all have our own methods of coping with these circumstances. For me, I tend to focus intently on a future trip that I want to take. Though any trip I was planning is on an indefinite pause, I am still thinking about two trips I hope to take once this pandemic passes, one is out to Utah and one is just up the eastern seaboard to Washington DC. While I am not a clinical psychologist or mental health expert, I do recommend each person watching this to pick an activity that you deeply take pleasure in and tell yourself that one day you will be able to do this activity and for now this is unfortunately your reality. The silver lining in this bizarre time is that we are all in this together whether you are a person with a disability or a typical able bodied individual. There’s great comfort in this. 

Finally, I hope this experience makes people more aware of their fellow humans. Though this video will probably not go viral, I do hope this experience will help able bodied individuals to be more conscientious about their friends with disabilities and just might change the way we’re viewed and treated. For now though, reach out to them, ask them how they are doing, and get to know them through FaceTime, Skype, etc. Use this time to get to know us and our personalized needs. Then when this pandemic passes you will already know them as individuals, be aware of their needs, and know how you could accommodate them in your normal social circles.