The Real Woman Within Amanda-Leigh

Amanda-Leigh holding Luigi before exercising

Tuesday Morning from Amanda-Leigh:

Yesterday morning I wrote my heart out in my personal journal. There are some things so private a woman cannot share publicly. Some things I can. There is one thing I feel I must share. I want other people to be able to understand exactly where I have come from. At the same time, I do not wish to exploit myself. There is only so much a woman can offer of herself before she begins to feel violated and terrified that other people will know her true self. And then what? Will the world want to change her also? Will the world like what is shown? Will she go back into her safe haven of hiding?

These are my true struggles I face on a daily basis. This day ends my eight week supply of Phentermine. I will be honest. I am terrified of running back to my old ways of using food to cope with problems. I am terrified of succeeding. I am terrified of fitting into new clothes and receiving compliments I heard in the past. When a woman’s body changes, she changes as well. I do not like having rashes in the summer time. I do not like grown men staring at a part of my body that is sacred. My body is not something I want to be given away freely. I have worked so hard to mold my muscles into a new artwork.

I look at myself in the mirror and I do not feel disgusted with myself anymore. When I take two showers a day and brush my teeth after every meal, I am able to feel a sense of having my own identity in this world. When I wash my face, I feel better about the woman. I do not feel trapped inside a locked door the way I used to. I am not losing weight for anybody else’s pleasure. I am not working so hard to please anybody else. Nobody else gets paid for my feelings of discomfort in modernism. Nobody.  In fact, I do not receive monetary gain from hours of working out. I do not wish to receive monetary gain from doing something God wants for my life.

When I have worked out on my stationary bike recently, I remember being at the old J.D. McCarty Center in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1984-1985. I would spend hours in Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, and Physical Therapy each day. At dinner time with other residents, I would be falling asleep in my plate. When I saw one of the therapists when I returned to the Center the day puberty hit me, he really was not nice to me. He made a smart comment to me that my mind has blocked. Probably this is for a good reason.

The old J.D. McCarty Center was torn down years ago. I used to visit the big empty lot on 12^th and Alameda in 2010. I never visited the Center in 2002 before it was torn down. I could never bring myself up to going back. I was able to visit the burial place alone at the age of thirty. At the age of thirty, I was stronger emotionally and wrote about the past in my personal journal. Plus, I had a strong feminist counselor at the time who was able to get everything out of me without closing up. Closing up was the easiest way I coped with everything from childhood. That was the way I did not have to deal with everything. I could deny reality existed.

The old J.D. McCarty Center is nothing like the old dried up weeds were in the child’s movie The Secret Garden. When I left this empty field, I have not looked back. I am truly amazed at one movement, however. On the end of one side a window area enclosed a swimming pool. Where are the remains of this pool? Was this pool dug up, or does soil and grass fill its lifeless body? Why does this even matter to me as a thirty-three year old woman?

These questions and emotions are real. These are not some fictitious characters in fine literature. What I felt was real. I may have taken the wrong paths in life and gotten myself into some whoppers of hungry sinners, but I am nothing like my enemy. I do not wish to be like the one who sits high on a throne while other people worship him (or her). I am not like one of the king’s sons who had an automatic career waiting for him. I have worked my up from day one. This is something to be grateful for. I have worked for this independence I have discovered. I have been given a second chance at life.

Over the years, I have not had a desire to personally look the Administration up from the Center and befriend them on a personal level. Feelings and experiences from the past remain covered up beyond the soil and grass of the open field. Nobody crosses the boundary of that comfort zone. I am comfortable knowing that nobody from the Center grew with me. This gives me a feeling of comfort. Nobody from that period is looking for me. I do not wish to make my presence known from that period. Nobody from that period had the strength I did to keep up with the reality of life's challenges. Nobody's character from that period grew stronger to help a patient who struggled. My success in this world has been independent of the Center. The Center was my launching pad. Does a successful Prince return to his small launching pad in a pond as an older, wiser man? In his naive, years of fruitful ways, he may return once or twice. Then the Prince moves on to bigger and better explorations of this world. The Prince does not revisit places or people who may hold him back from worldly success. There is no need for a second edition of Babylon Revisited by a modernized F. Scott Fitzgerald, is there?

My real battle over the years has been the need to be accepted. Whenever I do reflect back to the old Center, I do so with sadness. I see this site as a burial site. Perhaps this is an interesting comparison. I do not know. What I do know is I am able to love the woman staring back at me in the mirror. I am able to drink Slim Fast shakes every morning and at noon and eat a light, sensible dinner. I am not a flight risk anymore. I do not feel the need to close up anymore. The core of my heart is out in the open.

One thing I hope does not happen is my attitude changing after I reach my weight goal of 125 pounds. I have watched so many people’s attitude change as the weight changes. The people begin to act better than everybody else and pretty soon I lose the desire to be around them. Soon I begin to miss the old person when the person realized everyone’s good in this world. One friend assured me this would never happen to me. I have trusted her judgment of my character.

Two Oklahoma institutions for people with physical disabilities were recently closed. I read comments posted on the subject. The workers being let go were their main concern. The main concern should have been on the families and the patients of these institutions. Where will these adult patients live now? Will families begin to take responsibility for the adults they produced and have them live close by instead of depend on the state to raise them?

One of the oldest institutions for people with mental and physical disabilities was closed in Tulsa County years ago. Hissom School was the institution. Families would drop their children off to live. Some families moved on with their lives. The children grew up in this school. In fact, there is a documentary about this school along with former students. Some former students speak up about the abuse they experienced while others do not. Some can only cry and apologize. Others do not know how to identify abuse.

As a woman with a physical disability, I am strongly against institutions, or anti-institution to be politically correct. The administrators can sit down with a family in the beginning and talk a good game the way a politician can. The meeting usually takes place in a big room with a fancy wooden table. There are days when you wish Superman would have come to the rescue and saved you from this place.

That romantic image of Superman begins to block your image of reality. For me, that has been a blessing. There have been parts about my stay that I do not wish to come flooding back. I have made my peace with the truth and buried somebody in my journal. I have learned how to become like Superwoman. I do not hold worldly powers the way Tolstoy did during his lifetime. I do trust God and the Gospel to free me of the pain I experienced as a child.

I do not agree with a small child staying in a place specifically designed for children with special needs without a parent or legal guardian. I may take criticism for this. However, I do not wish to apologize. This does not allow room for potential abuse to not be documented or reported. This does not allow another patient of the same gender to come into a small patient’s room at night. This allows a parent to tell a therapist to stop for the day so the child can live a normal childhood. This allows a parent to not watch the child fall asleep at the dinner table. This allows a parent to physically sleep in the same room as the child at night. There are no feelings of sadness or abandonment on either part. There is a stronger bond that will remain for a lifetime.

When I was living in Norman, my husband and I met an older couple. The couple had Cerebral Palsy. The woman was in an electric wheelchair like me. The woman grown up in the Cerebral Palsy Center in Oklahoma City and possibly stayed at the old J.D. McCarty Center in Norman. This woman suffered from several forms of abuse while institutionalized. Her boyfriend took this woman out of the Center to save her.

This story had a profound impact on me. This couple was a modern day version of Bonnie and Clyde. The sad part of this story is that many people who are in this situation do not have loved ones who are willing to take such a risk nor do they have personal advocates. Either that or the impact of the abuse is not completely understood and brushed off as the person needing psychological help. This woman has become an independent advocate in the Norman area.

This couple would take the city bus to an event that was happening at a local hotel for a disability get-together. My husband and I would see this couple several places as we went out. Nothing stopped this couple from creating a normal life. This woman inspired me to want to do better in my own life. At the time we met, I had battled with the first round of blood clots. This was not really a pleasant time. We shared a sense of pain. I did not tell her about my stay in the old J.D. McCarty Center as we sat in the Burger King. The Burger King overlooks the field of the old J.D. McCarty Center.

Every time I visited the site, I felt stronger as I left. The building had been torn down years ago. I was not a child anymore. I was not a starry eyed child whose entire memory had been blocked. I was able to see the Center for what it meant to me on a personal level. I am not completely an insensitive woman where the Center is concerned. The Center was originally started with a Father asking for donations on the streets of Norman for his son to be able to have a loving place to go. The son lived with Cerebral Palsy and the Father wanted a better life for him. This is completely understandable and also admirable.

What does the old Center represent to me in modern times? I have often thought of this question. I definitely gained strength every time I visited the grave site. While I sat there, I paid my respect to those children, men, and women who passed on too soon. I did not remember anybody my age from twenty-five years. I was not proud of this fact. As I sat there, I was able to see old images of events and people from the Center who changed my life. I remembered our Christmas party and sharing the experience with staff and friends. I remembered dressing in a blue bathing to go swimming. I remembered my beloved nurse. I remembered the two casts I wore on my legs after surgery. I remember the little maroon and white Amanda doll I held tight. I remembered the faces of the therapists and 

administration.

Three years have passed since I have visited the grave site. From modern disability advocates, I have heard patients were put in cages in the old Center before my time. in several of the newsletters I have read on the new Center, I have read about appreciation events taking place for the staff members and administration. There is also big emphasis placed that the patients should be grateful to the Center. I do not read about the staff and administration being grateful for the parents and patients of the past and present for making the Center what it is today. This is the missing link.

I am able to create the missing links to this in my own world. I am appreciative that therapists devoted their time and dedication to working with me to become a better child. I am grateful to my beloved swimming pool that helped my body become stronger. I am grateful to have had the experience of wanting to become a better person. I am grateful this place created the woman I am today. I probably will never visit this site again before I pass away. I was able to pay my respect to the old building, the old property, and walk the ground I walked as a child. Since the ground was smooth and did not have floors, I felt the tender natural peace of the place that once existed. I did not write anything in the soil. In fact, that warm fuzzy feeling can be left for an older teenager who found love at the Center. My eyes to this place were seen through those of a child that had been found as an adult.

This all goes back to the theme of Thomas Saint Cloud’s “Blue Winds Dancing” of what the narrator was. The same can be said for the life of Leo Tolstoy. Who am I in this world? Am I a woman with a physical disability or am I a non-disabled woman? This is a theme I have struggled with throughout my life. At age five, I became molded to fill the shoes of a girl without a disability. I was a girl with a physical disability walking around better than I had before surgery. However, the Cerebral Palsy remained. So did the speech impediment. There were still boundaries that did not cross when it came to differences in the world. As much as I wanted to please everybody by changing, I was still me. I believe this has been a disappointment to some and rightly so.

For years I was unable to accept myself as a woman with a physical disability. I battled with self-pity at the death of another person. When I was born at Grady Memorial Hospital, there were no abnormal signs in my body. For three months, I was able to be non-disabled. Since I was too young to know what being non-disabled felt like, something became lost throughout the years. I wanted to be like my non-disabled friends who drove cars and be rebellious. I wanted to experience the realism of being a non-disabled person.

For years, I grieved the death of the image with whom I could never see in the mirror. My critics can say I suffered from self-pity. These people do not understand and probably never will. When a person is worked with each day to be like somebody without a physical disability, there is going to be confusion with the self. Unless I push myself to become better, I believed I was never going to love myself or amount to anything in this world. This was something I learned at the early age of five. It took me twenty nine years to accept myself as a woman with a physical disability.

Today I realize that I am worthy of being loved fully whether or not I am disabled. I am able to wear conservative clothes that show self-respect. I am to write each morning I can to show other women (and men) they have self-worth. I am able to look at myself with a sense of love. I still strive to become a better person in this world, and I have also learned that I deserve to rest at times. I am able to take care of my health. I am able to look at the memories at the old Center with empathy instead of pity. I am able to look at the former students of institutions with love and hope for their futures.

One place I am unable to fully go back to is the year of 1984 when I stayed inside the old Center. I never could do this when I sat at the foot of the grave site in 2010. Why do I refer to the old Center as a grave site? My body changed at this place. I entered the Center as a child. I went back as a teenager when puberty hit. I then re-visited the Center after it was torn down. At the age of thirty, I learned how to forgive. Being able to forgive helped me be able to move on and become successful in college. This was somewhere I needed to be at in order to find closure and let go.

Even though I do remember being pushed during therapy, I can leave this writing today with a sense of peace. During the time period, the therapists meant well. I was five years old. I am now thirty-three years old. When I see commercials of Jillian Michaels on The Biggest Loser, I feel memories from the old Center return. This is not a person I want to be like. I do not want to scream and cuss at people who need an inspiration. I do not want to work another person to the point of breaking. Real love and acceptance is nothing like this.

When I think about institutions that have housed several children and adults with mental and physical disabilities, I do not see a change. I do not see administration stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility. I do not see a public hearing for families and staff members to meet and figure out a solution to change situations. Taking responsibility for abuse or covering it up is what families and victims want to hear. This makes people lose a great deal of respect for authority figures. So, institutions are shut down as a result. Families must figure out what to do with their children.

It’s probably easy for me to put myself in the family’s role of a child or adult with a physical disability. The truth is, I really do not know what that role would be like. From living the life as a woman with a physical disability, I do know this role. What helped me become a social butterfly in the past was the desire to be around people. I do encourage parents to be aware of who their child is hanging around along with the person’s history. In modern times, questionable people seem to be everywhere. Being informed of a child’s friend will let a person and child feel more comfortable. This will also prevent the wrong type of person being around a child.

If I was to visit the old Center today, I would probably reveal the knowledge of modernism. When Tolstoy read literature, he felt liberated from the authority figures in his life. In literature, no one made him submit to cruel punishments. If I was at the old Center this morning, my heart would clothe the grass with flowers of my pain. Drops of red blood would drip from my fingertips as the feeling of a thorn would prick the palms of my flesh. Every bright rose in a field has a thorn. I am no different nor are my internal roses. My heart bleeds shades of the darkest red for those children and adults who have passed away too soon. I am unable to see a wall with their names engraved on it the way of national military memorials. Those who died did so with lost hopes, dreams, and selves. Were these fallen stars born with mental and physical disabilities or were they subjected to pain and suffering the way I was? Their names will never be known to me but I pray for each of them. 

Someday we will meet in an open field wearing sparkling white dresses with white flowers in our hair. There will be no Center, only an open field that is filled with open hands that love each of us the way we need. This will be God’s promise to each of us as we treat the kingdom of God like true children. We will no longer have to pretend to be something else in a world that was not meant for us. We will be the children God designed us to be. Nothing will ever be greater. In God, we must trust.

The remains of old J.D. McCarty Center 

1948-July 2001

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, 1920

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, 1920

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

       

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

       

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

       

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Amanda-Leigh's personal note: I have decided to take the road not taken. This is a decision I do not regret!

Story of the morning:

http://news.yahoo.com/20-years-katie-beers-says-kidnapping-saved-her-080144010.html

Amanda-Leigh's Quote of the Day:

http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html:

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

Amanda's Youtube Pick of the Day: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpgY5S3AcSw

Joe Cocker's "You Are So Beautiful"

Web Links that may be beneficial to my valued readers with physical disabilities or mental illnesses, family members of people with disabilities, or my able-bodied readers:

Hissom Memorial School Revisited
 http://www.abandonedok.com/hissom-memorial-center/

Living in the Freedom World (a documentary on Hissom)
http://vimeo.com/19155090

OKDHS Standards for Reporting Facilitated Abuse
http://www.okdhs.org/library/policy/oac340/002/03/0033000.htm

 Oklahoma Suicide Support Groups
 http://www.suicide.org/support-groups/oklahoma-suicide-support-groups.html

Oklahoma Support Groups
 http://oklahoma.supportgroups.com/

Autism Center of Tulsa
 http://www.autismtulsa.org/index.cfm?id=132

Office of Disability Concerns
 http://www.ok.gov/odc/

NAMI
 http://nami.org/MSTemplate.cfm?Site=NAMI_Oklahoma

Women with Disabilities (recommendation of literature)

 http://thechp.syr.edu/abwomen.htm

March 2013's Advisory Committee on Services to Persons with Developmental Disabilities 


http://www.okdhs.org/library/cal/ddsd/




 http://www.okdhs.org/library/cal/ddsd/