I often hear that sighted people don’t know how to talk with someone who is different from them. … This is not something I am necessarily skilled at either. I have had to learn how as I have lived my life in community with many people who are different from myself, including my own family. In many of my interactions, it comes to light that people assume that my family members are blind and that I have chosen blind people as my friends, college roommates, dating partners, etc. Life is much more complex than this. All of my blood relatives are sighted; and while my husband is blind, I have had sighted dating partners in the past. My friends include both blind and sighted people equally.
I have always lived as a part of the sighted community. I participated in the same activities as my peers and a few that some of my peers did not do. I didn’t do any of these things because I wanted to be competitive. In fact, if I had things my way, I would have avoided some of them altogether, like the time I climbed up onto ropes strung up in a tree or the time I went rock climbing in a cave–not because of blindness but because I am allergic to the world. But when a child is blind, often parents and professionals work hard to make sure that the child has plenty of learning experiences so that the child develops skills and concepts to make it possible to do things independently and with confidence. I needed to know how to orient myself in space–not just on the ground but in a tree. Since I did not have the ability to see a tree, I needed to understand a tree from the perspective of being in it. My experience climbing the ropes in a tree helped me to understand the rudiments, including that the tree continued above me.
This is only one experience that I had as a child that opened my understanding of the world. Most people, of course, are not aware of all the experiences I had that taught me how to relate to the world and live in it. People attempt to understand me by closing their eyes and imagining how they would relate to the world; and their first emotion is fear. This exercise creates a barrier between us instead of a means for relationship. I cannot communicate the positive things about my experience, or a sense of encouragement that alleviates a person’s fear. My inability to relate to a person’s fear becomes a perceived refusal to understand rather than a simple difference of perspective.
I have had to learn to relate from the viewpoint that I am the one who is considered “different”; that I am the one who is feared; and that I am often the one who makes people angry because I don’t have the culturally appropriate attitude about myself, about receiving help from others, or about being quiet when others express their views about people with disabilities. Sometimes these attitudes even come from within the disability community. In order to live peaceably with others, people with disabilities sometimes internalize the attitudes of others around them–perhaps all of us are vulnerable to this at times. Yet in order to maintain personal dignity and self-respect, I must live in the independence that I have learned. This brings me into conflict with both the general public and with people who feel frustrated when I challenge internalization of societal attitudes about disability.
The terror of blindness leads to another general fear: that of not helping enough. I often say to people that I want them to trust me to ask for the help I need. The next question is often unspoken, but I can feel it in the air: “But what if you don’t know you need help???”
I would like to assure some of the people who are afraid to ask this question: sometimes I know I need help before you do. Sometimes I am the best person to give help; but the lack of relationship that exists in the community because everyone wants to help me prevents the community from knowing how I can help and prevents me from contributing to the community’s welfare.
Perhaps the best way to put this into perspective is to say that numerous times throughout my life, the power has gone out and a chorus of people has shouted at me, “Stay right there! Don’t move until I can help you!”
Who was in the best position to help those people navigate the dark room? All the people who were in the dark and who had lived their lives afraid of blindness?
Sometimes the people who have done the most to influence my life, and the lives of others in the community where I live, are the people who have not allowed their fear of not helping at the right times to get in the way of letting me do something that I am in the process of doing. Perhaps even more meaningful still are those who help the rest of the community to know that it is ok to not “help” at all times. Hearing one person say to another, “She can do that,” is more encouraging than I know how to put in words, because it means that I am no longer alone in helping the community to feel comfortable with what I can do or how to relate to me.
So if you wonder how to help, this might just be what I need most from you. Please help others around us to be more relaxed, so that we can do more together and I can stop worrying about how to help everyone feel more comfortable.
If you like what you read here, please make a donation by clicking the donate button on the right.
- Learning From My Younger Self - February 10, 2024
- more reflections on ITD - June 30, 2023
- On travel while at ITD: reflections after day 1 - June 27, 2023
- ITD day 1 - June 27, 2023
- ITD day 1 - June 27, 2023
- Job Descriptions, Inclusivity, and Equity for People with Disabilities - October 15, 2022
- Traveling without a Guide Dog: Experience with Cane and Walker - October 14, 2022
- Disability and Church, Intersection - June 11, 2022
- Review: When Chronic Pain and Illness Take Everything Away - June 11, 2022
- Grammar and Style Resources for Writers - June 9, 2022
