Saturday, December 13, 2014

Living Forward When Affected by Chronic Disease

A well-educated couple I know have had issues finding and keeping jobs for the last 25 years. Both now have chronic conditions. It made be wonder about the interplay between negative responses to difficult situations and on-going health concerns. Does having a chronic condition become a convenient justification or rationale for not finding a job, a significant other, or some other goal one has difficultly achieving?

As I was mulling this over, I found myself inspired by Caroline Casey’s TED talk where she made the comment Stop with the labels … because we are not jam jars; we are extraordinary, different, wonderful people.  



Casey found out at 17 that she had been legally blind since birth. Her parents had made a conscious decision not to raise her with labels of being disabled or treating her as “special.” She is testament that you are what you believe yourself to be.  At 28, she could no longer deny her vision issues and finally accepted “all the bits” about herself . Not only was this empowering and freeing, it allowed her to start some amazing projects and become a “social entrepreneur.”


I started with my usual “consider” list but decided that this was a good opportunity to update Healing the Whole Person: Ways to Increase Well Being, which contains lots of helpful “considers” l and is worth a few minutes to review

No comments:

Post a Comment