Yesterday she wrote a blog entry that I think is an important expansion to the thoughts I shared in my last post. She picked up where my expertise leaves off. So to both introduce you to Patty (if you don’t know her already) and also share her thoughts about spouses of disabled war vets, I’m reprinting her post. Here it is:

“…If you’re married to someone learning to go after his or her dreams with a body that can’t do some of the things it could do before, it’s going to throw some new obstacles in the path to your dreams, too. People are going to treat your spouse differently now. And it’s going to affect you. Your spouse must handle many things differently now. It’s going to affect how he or she handles your relationship, too.

Expect love. It won’t — it can’t — come in the same packages as before, but it will be there. Find other ways to get the other forms of help and support you need to follow your dreams.

Assume love. Don’t jump to conclusions about the meaning of a harsh or discouraging word or a change in daily rituals. You’ve both got a lot of adjusting to do, and you’re going to overadjust a few times before you get it right.

Look for third alternatives. Honor the dreams. Respect the efforts. Don’t ever think your first idea or two is all you get to choose from. Build the new rituals, the new furniture layouts, the new traditions, the new chore-sharing arrangements that build the new life and move toward the lifelong dreams that make you both whole no matter what.”

Click HERE to visit Patty’s blog

Click HERE to visit her Website

Next Teleconference

THIS SATURDAY!!

Just a reminder, my next teleconference is:

December 6th

3:00 – 4:00 PM ET

If you’re interested in participating, please fill out the form on the contact page. Once I get your email I’ll send you the phone number and access code you’ll need to join in the conversation. After you have done this once, you’ll automatically be informed of all future calls.

There is no charge for the teleconference, except what your long distance carrier charges for a call.

The Call

The conference call is set up in an informal format. I will introduce the topic and then the rest of the call is open to question and answers.

During Saturday’s conversation:

Let me help you help yourself locate and capitalize on the opportunities embedded in your problems.  Or in other words, bring your sh*t to the table and we’ll explore how you might wish to apply the “7 Opportunities for Landing Butter Side Up” to your own life situations.

1: Don’t Prevent the Fall
2: What To Do on the Way Down
3: What To Do upon Landing
4: What to Do When You Don’t Land Right side Up
5: The Five Second Rule
6: How To Get Up
7: Don’t Prevent the Fall

It’s a good perspective check as more and more people are worrying about their futures. Those who can best learning to adapt and grow are our trail blazers right now. The life mantra for successful people who have a disability has really always been “adapt and grow”

Here’s the post, let me know what you think:

I think there’s a lot to be learned from bearing witness to how social media has been changing the lives of people with disabilities. Considering able-bodied people’s lives are being crippled by a scary economic climate, it might be very timely to see what your gimpy population has been up to. The disabled have long sought methods to get ourselves, our strengths and our contributions through our own front doors. Computers with adaptive technology, along with the power of social media, have been a piece of the passport we’ve been seeking.

We find that we have the power to open our own doors. Social media with its speak at your own pace nature means people who could not have easily been a part of the conversation are now important contributors. Biases and distractions concerning our manner, wheelchairs, service dogs or white canes are not distracting you from
our words, creativity and ability.

Social media is becoming more and more barrier free, we are easily going where ever we want to go. While many see their lives as narrowing because of the economy, people with disabilities are going through a time of liberation, easily traveling around the world every time we power up our computer.

I am not suggesting we all stay in our living rooms and click away our days. I am saying that there is much more that is possible than impossible. It’s important to see that the world has not closed its doors to you just because your employer’s doors have.

Rachel

THIS SATURDAY!!

Just a reminder, my next teleconference is:

November 22nd

3:00 – 4:00 PM EST

If you’re interested in participating, please fill out the form on the contact page. Once I get your email I’ll send you the phone number and access code you’ll need to join in the conversation. After you have done this once, you’ll automatically be informed of all future calls.

There is no charge for the teleconference, except what your long distance carrier charges for a call.

The Call

The conference call is set up in an informal format. I will introduce the topic and then the rest of the call is open to question and answers.

During Saturday’s conversation we’ll be addressing

(We will not likely get through all the steps but here they are just to get you curious)

The 7 steps for Land Butter Side Up

Step 1: Don’t Prevent the Fall
Step 2: What To Do on the Way Down
Step 3: What To Do upon Landing
Step 4: What to Do When You Don’t Land Right side Up ( Some Flip and Flick Techniques)
Step 5: The Five Second Rule
Step 6: How To Get Up
Step 7: Don’t Prevent the Fall

]]> http://www.whynotrachel.com/2008/11/19/teleconference-7-steps-for-landing-butter-side-up/feed/ http://www.whynotrachel.com/2008/06/21/bear-naked-form/ http://www.whynotrachel.com/2008/06/21/bear-naked-form/#comments Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:11:33 +0000 admin http://whynotrachel.wordpress.com/?p=101 An edited life has become unexeptable for me. What do I mean by an edited life? It’s a life in which I alter what I want to do because of fear. Fear has many faces and manifests itself in as many ways as there are people on this earth.

Don’t be fooled, small, seemingly unimportant edits can end up being a big fat road block on the path to ones best life. One seemly binine edit almost derailed the one thing I want to do more than just about anything, write this book.

You see, I can’t spell. It’s more than just a few words now and again. I just don’t see the miss spellings. It gets worst the faster I write, the more tired or distracted I am, and when I’m taking notes from something I’m listening to. It’s so bad sometimes that I can’t even understand what I wrote!

I’ve forever edited myself. Not sending little informal notes to friends, not doing applications or servays on site, all kinds of big and small ways that I avoided writing for fear my poor spelling would be exposed.

Getting anything out with correct spelling is tedious and always requires someone else to look over my words. Even with spell check I will still not catch all of my mistakes.

So as much as I love the written language, as much as I have always wanted to be a writer, I knew that with my “problem” it would just never happen. People who can not spell are stupid. If someone reads something that has spelling errors, they will see the errors, not the words, not the message, that’s what I figured.

The argument that that’s what spell check and editors are for is a fine argument, however, I need to get an editor to see past the countless errors to get at the content. I figure I would never be able to kick the door open that far.

Trying to hide this “issue” my whole life has been exhausting. So I’m here to say… I CAN NOT SPELL! I CAN write and that’s what’s really important.

I will figure it out. I will find a way to get my book combed over again and again, so that all the words are spelled right so the message is not lost in individual words. I know spelling is important, my friend Dianne put it to me this way “a miss spelled word is like a black dot on a white wall, I can’t help but see it.” because I want you to see the whole wall and not focus on the black dots, I do work hard to clean up my spelling (most of the time).

I do think I will have a page like this one in my book though. I will expose my faulty spelling gene in all it’s phinetic glory. I will show readers what my spelling really looks like in it’s bear naked form. This will be as strong an illistration as any to prove that an “issue” need not stop you from making a dream come true!

So if you are reading this and you are not doing something you really want to do, if you are editing your life for fear of being exposed, knock it off. Show off your whole self in all its messiness. Come as you are and we’ll figure out what you’ll need to do to make a dream come true.

Rachel

Answer this simple question.

What’s your favorite color? 

Sounds silly? 

It is!

Answer it anyway, because it can be fun too.

Post your answer on comments.  If you don’t know how to comment on a blog click here

(…And no, I have not run out of things to talk about on my blog)

I’ll be back to ask the next part of the question ON TUESDAY!