We found many compelling ideas in this New York Times interview with Chloe Cooper Jones about her new book Easy Beauty and the disconnect between “our real self and the way that self is perceived”. We’ve been trying out the remarkable technique she learned that she found provides unexpected “agency and peace and power”.
Read MoreOpulent Mobility Antidotes What We All Fear
When a friend of artist Laura Brody had a stroke, Laura began to take notice of assistive devices that are ‘almost insultingly ugly’ and impersonal. She set out to understand why AND transform them into objects of personal expression.
Read MoreWhat You Can Do When You Are Too Challenged To Do Anything
Last week I was supposed to write some articles for Improvised Life and couldn’t do it. I am a few weeks post-op from a serious surgery. Healing at am unexpectedly glacial place is wearing away at my normally very high optimism, physical energy and focus. I’ve talked openly on Improvised Life before about “being myself in a…
Read MoreFreedom Means Letting Go of Shame
From very early on in my life as an amputee, I’ve loathed using crutches or a wheelchair. I am a very autonomous person. I have blue hair and tattoos. I don’t think too much about the opinions or stares of others, but put me in a wheelchair and all that rebel-heartedness melted into shy shameful…
Read MoreLife Practice: Cultivating an Adaptive Worldview
A year ago, we clipped the compelling excerpt, below, from Tom Shakespeare’s BBC article about research indicating that people with disabilities paradoxically tend to display a positive worldview and enjoy a good quality of life because of it (often better than the obviously-abled). Upon reflection, we have found this to be true with friends who have experienced…
Read MoreWhy Noah Galloway Trains Like a Machine
(Watch video HERE.) While compiling our post about Men Wearing Skirts, we stumbled on a picture of athlete Noah Galloway, missing both an arm and part of his leg, embarking on a grueling physical competition while wearing a skirt. Who is this guy, we wondered? So we went to his website to find out. On December…
Read Moresue austin’s wheelchair: ‘re-envisioning the familiar’
(Video link here.) When Sue Austin got a power chair 16 years ago after an extended illness, she felt a tremendous sense of freedom — yet others looked at her as though she had lost something. ‘Limitation’, ‘fear’, ‘pity’, ‘restriction’ were the words people used when they tried to imagine using a power chair. I was…
Read Moreblind, a photographer reinvents himself
(Video link here.) When commercial photographer John Dugdale lost most of his sight almost twenty years ago, he did not give up photography as one would have imagined. Instead, he started photographing in a new way, using a huge view camera and employing 19th century forms and processes. Life forced him to “see in a…
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