Laughing

It's strange to me that there's one innate action that can bring either the most joy or the most pain. Laughing can make awkward situations comfortable, unhappy people happy, and empty hearts full again. But laughing when in a context where others have found a situation hilarious that isn't funny to you at all, can reverse all of the joy that should be laughing's only purpose.

I always kid around, always try and make people laugh, always enjoy being told a good joke. One of my favorite things in the world is seeing someone smile and knowing that I'm the one who put it there. But laughing also has a dark side. Or maybe I should say cackling...or sneering or snickering or smirking. When people laugh at someone. That hurts. And, though I wish it weren't true, I think everyone has been in a situation where they were that someone.

I guess growing up with a brachial plexus injury put me in a lot of those situations. Most of them, people didn't realize they were laughing at me. I had never let on the difficulty of living with BPI or my embarassment because of it or how much I wished I could've just been normal like them and because I didn't show any of that, people didn't think they were laughing at me because they thought I thought it was funny too. They didn't think about living every day with such limitations like I did. I don't think a lot of them even knew the extent of my limitations because I didn't really talk about it and I tried to hide it as much as possible. But for me it felt a lot like being laughed at and it did hurt sometimes. In those situations I think you have two good options.

Option one: You stay serious and explain to them why it's not funny. You can show them that having a life-long injury isn't a joke at all no matter how weird it looks when you run or how funny they think it is that you can't play Pattycake. If you don't think it's funny, it's not and that means they have no right to laugh and you have every right to show them reason to stop. I'm not saying everyone will understand because they won't but if you stand up for yourself, that should give you enough strength inside to stop caring that they're still laughing. Because then it becomes their problem, not yours. This is the brave option and I'd be lying if I told you I was brave most of the time.

Option two (the road I usually took): You laugh with them. I know it sounds bad but if the situation is one a lot like the ones I often faced, the laughers aren't trying to be mean. They honestly don't understand and that's okay because this is a really difficult concept to wrap one's head around. And because of that, I often thought laughing with them was alright because if I was honest with myself, I really did look funny when I ran and my arm just hung by my side and it's kinda funny that I can't snap with my left hand. Those are things that I can live with. Being able to laugh at yourself is an ability I took a long time to learn but it's one that I attribute to gaining through my growth with my BPI.

Everyone has their own theories of deflection and dealing with certain situations like these and I hope you all can find what works for you so that ignorant people don't get to you for silly reasons. Let's keep laughing for joy :)

Family

I was lucky enough to be able to spend this weekend with a lot of family that I rarely get to see. Though it was incredibly full of chaos and accompanied by too many hours of driving and almost nonstop, it was a great few days. I was reminded how fortunate we are to have families who care for us no matter what. Families who, even if we totally embarrass ourselves or completely mess something up, will still love us even more tomorrow. So many people come in and out of our lives and it too often feels like there's no one to count on but I think we still underestimate the power of our families. I am so lucky to have a brother who brings out the wierdest version of me, a sister who brags about me to all her friends, an uncle who does nothing but try and make me laugh, a grandmother who always thinks of the littlest things to make everyone happy, a cousin who makes me feel like we're little kids all over again, a mother who puts up with my teenage angst, a grandfather who I know will never lose his personality that I know and love, an aunt who could get me excited about anything, and a father who makes me proud to be his daughter every day (among many others who I love just as dearly). Each and every one of them has in some way inspired me to be myself through my injury and help all of you reading this in addition. Though I'm sure your families are much different, I know you all have someone to appreciate like I do.

(if this seems cheesy or irrelevant...I'm sorry, it's late)

Motivation

Today I had a session with a student-athlete leadership program that I am a part of and I thought I'd share some of the knowledge I obtained about theories of motivation.

Motivating people is hard (if you haven't already learned that)...You can manipulate people and you can bribe them and you can blackmail them into doing pretty much anything but that's not really motivation (at least how I'm defining it). Motivation is about getting someone to really enjoy what they're doing and to want to do it. Intrinsic reasons, not extrinsic. But before you think about how to motivate someone, you need to understand what you're even motivating them to do. That's when you'll understand exactly how. If I want my child to attend physical therapy like she should, I could say I'll buy her ice cream for every time she goes or I could tell her we're going to Disneyland just so she'll get in the car but that's not motivation! I'm motivating her to get an ice cream or to go to freaking Disneyland which is obviously not the objective. Even if you're motivating yourself to go to physical therapy, you have to remind yourself what you're going to get out of it. That should motivate you. The comfort you will gain. The pain you will be saved from. The ability to accomplish something they said you might not be able to! I could get myself to physical therapy or to do a lot of things in a number of ways but I won't really care about it, really be motivated to work hard at it, unless I find it in myself to see the greater good that I'm achieving. I challenge you guys to find it :)

Regrets?

This week someone asked me what my biggest regret is from when I was younger, regarding my injury. Is there anything I would do differently? I was stumped. I mean first of all I'm not sure how qualified I am to answer this question since my championships on the monkey bars weren't really all that long ago. I'm still just a kid who 10 years from now will probably worry more about the regrets than I can right now. But for now, I'm pretty happy with how I ended up and what I did to get here. I know I've said it a million times but I can't stress enough how important your attitude is from a very young age. It's actually terrifying how much it can change you and being born with BPI doesn't exactly make the task easy on us. But I think I did alright in that department. I was never one to let it stop me and I should really thank my parents for that because they were the ones who made sure every day I was myself and not just a brachial plexus injury. And my 30-year-old-self might point and laugh at the me right now and my fixation on attitude because I'll realize there was many bigger decisions and mistakes and missed opportunities that did or didn't or could have helped me out much more than the perfect "attitude" ever would have but I stand by it. If you're happy, then whether you got that one surgery or went to PT that one day or didn't play that one sport shouldn't really change all that much.

P.S. Reminding yourself what you're proud of or what you've done well every once in a while like I just did is a really great idea to keep that positive attitude :)  Have a great week everyone!

Monkey Bars

When they tell your parents you have a brachial plexus injury, they also tell them a long list of everything you won't be able to do because of it. I didn't crawl, I scooted around on my butt. I couldn't grasp things with my left hand or straighten my elbow. When I ran, it would hang limp at my side instead of pumping like my right arm.

But they also told me I wouldn't ever be able to do a lot of things that I ended up doing.

The monkey bars was one of those.

In elementary school, that was one of the big playground activities. We had a few sets of monkey bars and there were always competitions and tricks and races. It's not that I remember the first time trying the monkey bars but I remember becoming one of the best at them at my school and what I don't remember is ever thinking about my BPI when I was playing on them. Sometimes my arm would cramp up or it would hurt a little and I definitely had to work harder than most to get from bar to bar and still be fast and do tricks but I was just another kid on the monkey bars when I was on that playground. It was a childish game but if I had let the doctors stop me and just sat in defeat telling myself I couldn't do it because of my arm, I honestly think I would have a lot different of an attitude about my BPI and even myself.

It might have been incredibly stupid of me to even try the monkey bars, let alone get so into them and I'm not encouraging anyone to go against doctor's orders but the risk my 5 year-old self took (or just the plain ignorance I had) by climbing all over those monkey bars ultimately payed off.

When you're that young, habits form. How you view yourself from the perspective of your peers shapes who you grow up to be. I wasn't stuck sitting on the sidelines watching all my friends have fun because I wasn't going to let myself become that. I didn't let my BPI determine my participation, fun, self-worth, attitude, or anything beyond that. Of course I know that none of these thoughts were really swarming inside a five year-old's head pushing me to make that decision...I was a smart kid but maybe not that smart. Like I said, I don't even remember the first time I got on those monkey bars but I like to think that something like all of that was what caused me to get up out of the sandbox and jump up there.

I'm not saying don't listen to your doctors. I'm not saying do something you shouldn't just so you're not the outsider. That's not why I played on the monkey bars. All I'm saying is that your BPI doesn't have control over your life and it doesn't define you. Sure you're special but you're also just another kid on the playground.