“Our wind blows on toward those hills we will never see.”
– from “On Castle Hill,” by Marge Piercy
Times do change and things are possible today that I wouldn’t have thought possible ten years ago. Who knows what the next ten years will bring?
– Toni, post polio
I feel so much love even though people do turn their heads and pretend I’m not there. It makes me angry sometimes but that gives me the drive to do something because I’m not alone. There’s a lot of disabled people out there.
– Re’gena, spinal cord injury
No self-pity, ’cause that’s out. I was told so often when I was young, “I DON’T WANT YOU, THEY DON’T WANT YOU, NOBODY’S GONNA WANT YOU, if you cause trouble nobody’s gonna want you.” At a certain age in my life, it dawned on me—well, I want me. If no one else on earth wants me, I do. When that came to me, that gave me courage and so I just proceeded on.
– Baybie, blind
I’m happy because I like to be a human being.
– Ann Marie, Down’s syndrome
I like to be treated the same as everybody else, so far as possible, and that’s pretty far! I’ve found that I can do more things than most people think I can. Maybe not everyone with a visual handicap gets around as much as I do. Most of them could, though, if they had the chance to learn and practice. I bet they want to. I know I want to. Because I like people. I like the world. And I think it’s going to like me!
– Antoinette, blind
You don’t have to have 100% of the world at your disposal. No one does. But what you have can fill up a whole life. The world is enormous. No one gets it all.
– Corbett, post polio
I get frustrated with the slowness of change, and the slowness of people to change. We’ve come a long, long way, but we still have a very lengthy journey ahead of us. I am amazed and angered at how few people see me as a person. I am a human being who happens to be blind, not a blind being who happens to be human. But it is astounding how few people understand that. I don’t think I will ever rest until they do- not just for me, but all of us!
– Eunice, blind
