Disability Blog Carnival #77 is up NOW!

The question is who inspired you?

in·spire 
1. to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence: His courage inspired his followers.
2. to produce or arouse (a feeling, thought, etc.): to inspire confidence in others.
3. to influence or impel: Competition inspired her to greater efforts.
4. to animate, as an influence, feeling, thought, or the like, does: They were inspired by a belief in a better future.

I am inspired by that person who is worse off than me and who just picks themselves up and gets on with it. The homeless guy selling 'The Big Issue' Magazine on the street corner in Sydney, Mahatma Gandhi who stuck to his ideals even when imprisoned, those who endured physical and mental and spiritual hardship like those at the concentration camps of Auschwitz. I suppose the theme here could be perserverance through adversity. 'Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.' Dennis P. Kimbro

Psychiatrists believe that Who inspires you most suggests not only what you are able to acknowledge within yourself, but also the scope of vision you hold as possible in your own life. From an article by Matt Laughlin.
I suppose the people who inspire me encourage me to perservere and carry on because I realize the difficulties that people endured are much more severe than the physical grumblings of my body.
Disability Studies, Temple U.: Disability Blog Carnival #77 is up NOW!

Coping with disease

Most people would not cope with what I cope with on a daily level. They attend the doctor for a sore ... (Fillin the blank). I am sore all over. My stomach does not ache but that is about the only part. My breasts do not ache but the muscles above them do. Occassionally I feel the anger about my situation bubble to the surface but what does that achieve? I already attend every kind of doctor known to man and have searched for many years for help. I mostly accept this is my lot. It is a sad kind of acceptance.

I'm not alright

Sometimes I get so sick of pretending that everything is alright.
How are you? Good, good, How are you? Good thanks!
Well guess what I am not good. I am in constant pain and living on pain killers and still I feel pain and sometimes I can't even walk up the stairs and my hips ache all the time and the muscles in my upper arm are swollen, my eyes are dry and my tongue is burning, I drop things, I can't chop the veges without difficulty and everything seems like a struggle but I go on pretending that everything is alright.

Why? Because people do not want to know.
Who am I pretending for? My family, especially my kids and my mother.
Hi, how are you? Fine thanks for asking.