Elsewhere in this paper, you can read about my experience at the Easter Seals Drop Zone last week. A common theme when people ask me about my experience is "I would never be brave enough to do that."
Yes, it did take a certain amount and type of courage to go to the rooftop of one of the tallest buildings in Saskatoon and climb out over the edge. But I don't consider myself nearly as courageous as the parents of a newborn or young child who suddenly have to adjust all their hopes and dreams for the future when they discover their baby has a disability.
I'm not as brave as the mother I know who has to do everything for her 10-year-old daughter - feed and diaper her as if she were still a baby - day after day after day. That mother also organizes a two-hour block of time in her day that is used to simply sit and hold her child.
She doesn't get to use her spare time to go watch her daughter's dance recital or baseball games. She just holds her daughter, who will never walk or talk, for two hours straight, every day, so that - hopefully - her daughter will know she is loved. That kind of parenting takes courage just to get up in the morning.
I'm not as brave as the young man with cerebral palsy I knew in Regina. He was not in a wheelchair but he lurched as he walked and you had to focus carefully to make out the words in his slurred speech. You could though, if you bothered to make the effort - you could understand what he was saying, if you wanted to.
That young man was one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. He had a brilliant mind, but what I remember most about him is the hurt on his face and the pain in his eyes when he told me about comments overheard when he would make his way down a crowded sidewalk.
"Did you see that? He shouldn't even be allowed out." "Isn't that disgusting? Drunk already, at this time of day."
He was as brave as he could be for a very long time, trying to be out and about in society, wanting to contribute to the community. But, finally, he couldn't take the rejection any more and killed himself when he was about 30 years old.
I had to write a bio to be read by the announcer as I came down the wall at Carleton Tower in Saskatoon last week. It started like this.
We all have challenges. We all have a fear of not being "good enough." We all need to be loved and accepted for who we are.
The people at Easter Seals and the counsellors and support staff at Camp Easter Seal give that love and acceptance to those society sometimes marginalizes. We may not write letters to grandparents suggesting an autistic child be euthanized, as happened recently in Newcastle, Ont., but sometimes we stare for too long at someone who looks "different." Sometimes we don't know what to say so we don't say anything when a kind word was really needed.
Easter Seals staff know what to say. What a treasure for a disabled child or adult to have a place to go where they are seen as a child or a person first and their disability comes second.
The bio went on to talk about who I was and where I was from and that I was rappelling as Superman's high school girlfriend, Lana Lang. It concluded as follows.
Helena asks everyone here today to remember we all want the same thing, love and acceptance. There is no greater gift we can give the others in the lives - friends, family, acquaintances, strangers on the street.
