This I Believe

This I Believe,

That people should should live one day in the life of a handicap person, to understand. I never knew the difficulties that people with disabilities had to go through until my daughter suffered a traumatic brain injury. She was born with some breathing issues, but otherwise very healthy. Her father took her life away at just 6 weeks old. He shook her until she had took her last breath, but she was revived. She suffered a severe brain bleed. I remember being told to prepare for her death. But my Torrie was a fighter, she fought to live, and she won. What she lost was her right to a normal life. I have taken care of her since then and I have seen and felt her difficulties in just dealing with life in general. She knows no difference in a lot of things that most of us "normal people"take for granted. She had a harder time learning how to eat, walk, sleep, and even play. Most people don't realize how they take such simple tasks for granted. Imagine being in a body and not knowing how to use it. What would you say if you experienced that? What would your reaction be? For example, think about when you lay down for bed, what do you do? Do you know that it is bed time, and that means to go to sleep. Torrie didn't know how to go to sleep. In her mind she was taken to a dark room and left. Her brain didn't know that it was time for bed. I remember another task that was hard to conquer and that was eating. For the longest time like the first three years she ate baby food. I think back now and feel horrible because I wonder if i was starving her. She only related to food by the clinging of the spoon against a glass jar. I was crazy how the mind worked. The last 16 years has been a learning experience for me. Seeing what my daughter goes through on a day to day bases, I think a lot of people would benefit from having the mind of a disabled person for at least one day. I believe that many who experienced the challenges of this kind of life would be last to judge, criticize, and make fun of. I believe these people have enough to deal with that they don't anything else added to it.