Comes a Time for Independence

When I became a wheelchair user at the age of sixteen, I assumed that was it. End of the run. LIFE, with all its tender possibilities, was somewhere out there, somewhere far beyond my arthritic grasp. So I sat, isolated and hopeless.

Like my parents, friends, and neighbors, I had grown up believing that disability was a fate worse than death. The narrow images of disability that I had come to accept as the only realities were those of the sweet, doomed poster child and the beggar on the corner. Images of helplessness were the ones I knew, and they immobilized me with dread.

I had no idea that while I sat mired in self-pity in front of a television set in San Rafael, California, a freedom fighter named Ed Roberts, using a wheelchair for mobility and a portable respirator for breathing assistance, was helping to create a new image of disability by insisting on his right to an education at a university just across the bay. Because I had only images of helplessness as reference, I was unable to imagine that a severely disabled person could live on campus, hire attendents to assist with personal care needs, take control of his own life.

Although the "independent living movement" was born two years before I was ever in a wheelchair and took root practically in my front yard, it was almost ten years before I found out about it. It was not heralded on the 6 O'Clock News, nor did it garner bold headlines. Norman Mailer did not rush out to capture its essence. Yet, this quiet revolution did survive, did reach across America, blossoming because it spoke to the need in all people to have a say in their own destinies. And with this movement came a new image of disability to use as reference: the image of an independent, dynamic human being with possibilities.

Unfortunately, the old images of helplessness still dominate, albeit augmented by the equally narrow image of disabled persons as Supercrips, intrepid individuals who can do everything an able-bodied person can do--only better. Overly simplistic, these extreme images either emphasize only the limitations of disability or they ignore the limitations altogether. They are images that shackle us all by denying the complexity that makes every person unique. They are images that offer too few possibilities.

The book I am doing, COMES A TIME, will be a book of possibilities. It will not be a book about heroic souls who magically triumph over their disabilities. It will be, instead, a book about steady souls who persist, who attempt peaceful coexistence with their disabilities and, with luck and hard work, sometimes overcome the obstacles they encounter in a society that tells them they are amazing when they "succeed" and pitiful when they do not, a society that knows little about their real lives or their potential.

The disabled individuals whose stories will make COMES A TIME remarkable will be people willing to share their experiences of growing up disabled or becoming disabled, of living with an unstable or progressive disability, of living with pain, of working and playing, of loving, of losing, of living independent lives. Their stories will not be included because they represent the lives of perfect role models, but because they represent the struggle and promise, the dream and reality of independence. They will be included because they represent possibilities.

I was fortunate: my time finally did come. But it came with far more pain and struggle than would have been the case if my parents, friends, neighbors, and I had grown up with full-blooded images of disabled persons from which to learn. Sadly, there are still millions of disabled persons not as fortunate as I was, individuals whose time has not yet come and may never come if they are not allowed to see the possibilities.

COMES A TIME will be a book of individuals, some admirable, some not, but all sharing a common refusal to accept disability as a lock on life. I want to offer it as a reference of images in the hope that all who read it will be inspired to think about the images of disability they carry with them and question how those images may serve to handicap the human spirit. I think it will be entertaining and enlightening because between its covers will be stories of LIFE.

If you have a story of independence that you would like to share through this book, please contact me for more information. Although I may not be able to use each person's story (limited grant funds for transcribing and phone calls and space constraints), I will enjoy hearing from you and will enthusiastically respond to everyone who writes. Cheryl Wade, 2222 Derby St., Berkeley, California, 94705.