Peyton:
Pleasured I am pointed to hearing your understanding that lasted, large, limiting, linear labels are hulking jungles greeted by limitations. Keeping one limited is to measure there wastes of their great gifts. One’s tears taste lime. Understares, terror builds. One washes their tears by return try freed to their Creator, as rest there they hunger. Polling my limits I kettled boiling red, as heard I’m trapped. There I wasted my lived times in pity.
Limiting labels murder poignancy of sweet journey. I watered my liking to keep open living by questing for others better lives poignantly sweetened by encouraging swiping labels away. Wastes caging pertinent persons must stop. A trepid heart needs verses assuring “I’m deared by this very looking world. I can be me. My heart need caw no longer.” There joy is heard. These awesome pertinent persons can be freed to limitless. It greeted I hurrah.
Dianne:
I spent much of Peyton’s first twenty years deliberating and comparing the severity of differences in persons labeled with disabilities that I met or read about. In the early years, this private, internal discussion between me, myself and I, offered some relief to my worries over Peyton’s delays and differences, as her challenges did not seem insurmountable if I therapied her enough. And professionals agreed.
In the days before Internet could bring me many children to compare her levels of functionings and measured progress to, I found I could usually comfort my fearful self with observations that the few children we met with disabilities seemed to have much greater challenges than hers.
A case in point was my own cousin’s (on my father’s side) son who was several years younger than Peyton. When talkative Wilson was three and not walking, he was tested. Duchene’s muscular dystrophy was diagnosed. Devastated and sad describes our entire family. Debilitating muscles until death in his early twenties was the best case scenario. Pity him I did. And compare I did. While Peyton would be continuing to improve, he would be suffering a slow and sure death.
Not so. Peyton lost functioning and filled with a suffocating sadness she could not begin to shake for well over a decade. Yet Wilson lived happy. At his celebration of life five years ago I reflected on my foolish attempts to comfort myself by comparing the severity of challenges, and how thankful I am for new understandings of acceptance and valuing Peyton for ALL she is. Above all, I am comforted knowing she can really feel my love finally.
