Disability, ability and skill development???

Disability, what does this word actually mean? What is its’ raw definition when stripped back? Is it ‘lacking in ability’? Not being able to do what everyone else is able to?

From my position, I’ve always found it funny when I think of the rawness of this term. I feel that this is because, for me, having a life long disability has meant that I refer to myself as ‘being disabled’ on a daily basis. However, in my case I use this term in a totally different context to what it actually means. Whether it’s describing to someone online why I can’t ring them, or why I am slow at replying to their messages,or even describing to a child why I have wheels just like them, or when I am making a joke … I feel that I use the term ‘disability’ to describe something that is part of me, not something that shows restrictions or even lacking in skills.

Interestingly, I am finding that my personal idea of this term is slowly starting to be reflected back to me by most of our community. Although this intrigues me, I am also unbelievably amazed and excited that our society is turning to, and increasingly operating on, this new concept of ‘disability’.

As some of you may remember, I touched on this in one of my blogs (How society’s ever changing attitudes have impacted on my personal life…) a few months ago, where I talked about similar concepts in terms of general community acceptance and access. As I am continuing to notice this more and more, I am also starting to notice how much so many parts of our society are now promoting and encouraging us to develop our skills, no matter how limited our abilities might be.

As someone who has seen my abilities in this light, I am extremely excited that my personal vision about my disability is now reflected back to me from my own community. I do have to acknowledge, though, that I am yet to discover many organisations who really treasure and acknowledge these ideas although there are three organisations that I have dealt with recently that do recognise them – iFLY Indoor Skydiving, Riding for the Disabled and Disabled Wintersports Australia.

As I started to think about how lucky I have been to have these three organisations pop up into my life (all at various stages and in various forms) the more I have found myself starting to appreciate how much these companies share exactly the same vision and attitudes towards my abilities as I do.

The most recent company that I have dealt with is ‘iFLY Indoor Skydiving‘ at Penrith. I came into contact with IFly as a result of one of my awesome carer’s (Sara) suggestions that we go and watch what happens there, as part of an Hireup shift one day. It was after visiting this facility that I thought of having a go at flying myself. I remember at the time thinking “If I take the chance then at least I can say that I have tried it once. Then if it’s not for me at least I will know”.

Just like a lot of risks I have taken in my life, I soon became extremely pleased that I took this one. Once I got chatting to all of the instructors and managers at iFLY, my concerns eased. They were absolutely lovely and what’s more, helped me with my flight as much as possible in the form of utilising and strengthening all of my abilities. The combination of these three factors and this complete acceptance impressed me so much that I have been so excited to rebook, learn to fly independently and increasingly emerge into this community ever since.

Another place that I recently visited and had the exact same feeling about is the ‘Riding for the Disabled‘ (RDA) in Richmond, NSW. I originally attended RDA when I was little as I was very fortunate to have my parents take me there three times a week. Looking back now I feel that it was because of these days that I became obsessed with horses, and to this day, I always have been one to love patting a horse and listening to stories about a good trail ride. I was again reminded of this love as soon as I got back on the horse this time around. What I most loved about returning to RDA was being able to connect with a horse again and becoming part of a new community. Similar to my iFLY experiences, this ‘community feel’ was more enhanced as staff focussed on giving me the opportunity to develop my skills while I attended these classes. Since then, the prospect of me being able to independently horse back ride has excited me so much as I feel that this is yet again something I can finally do using the abilities that I have, instead of being restricted by my disability.

There is another organisation that I have been involved with for 19 years, which was really the first to reflect my own vision about disability back to me. This organisation is called ‘Disabled Wintersport Australia‘ (DWA). As a child, my family – along with one of my best friends, Storm, and her family – made it a tradition to go skiing each year. I feel that, for both Storm and I, this tradition almost became a necessity for us as we entered our teenage years as the team at DWA, especially our favourite first guide Simon, were just amazing and so extremely encouraging of us using our abilities as much as we could while we were skiing. Personally, this surprised me and honestly built up my confidence so much that I soon built up part of my identity as an ‘enthusiastic skier’. To this date, I still identify myself as being in this role and always ‘make it a must’ to go down and ski each year to practice my skiing skills, still with the amazing team at DWA, while knowing all too well that although both Simon and Storm have now unfortunately passed away, they’re with me as I continue skiing down those black runs.

In terms of the word ‘disability’, in our day and age we are very fortunate now to have this term ‘positioned’ in whatever form we want it in. So why not explore the ways you can define this in your life? I can guarantee that you will learn some new skills and interests which will be tailored just for you along your way!

Last Year’s Ski Trip