Why we shouldn't be ashamed of handicap
By Laetitia Hatem
Disability is a scary word for a lot of people. But do people really know what disability is? 1 out of 8 people on this planet, which equates to almost one billion people, have a kind of disability. It can range from hearing or visual impairments, to physical mobility limitations, to mental challenges. You can have it by birth, because of an accident, because of aging or else. What people don’t necessarily know is that disability can be just as much invisible as it is visible. If you don’t see it, it doesn’t mean that the handicap doesn’t exist.
But what people are usually most afraid of is that disability can happen to anyone. There are no rules. A child can be born with genetic problems, a teenager can be in a car accident, an adult can lose a limb in a war or an elderly can start developing Alzheimer’s.
In the Arab world, disability is a big taboo, something to be ashamed of and to hide. But it’s much more common than you think. We live in a region where war was and still is predominant and so injuries are quite common. People in some regions still marry within their own family, causing genetic abnormalities in children. Chemical bombs have led women to give birth to disabled children because of what they were inhaling while pregnant. In some cultures, disabilities are seen as a punishment on the family because of sins that might have been committed by some of its members.
And for some reason, people don’t care about learning about it or understanding what disability really is, what causes it and what can make the life of a disabled person easier. Whether you’re the one suffering from it or your sibling is or your child, there’s this tendency to stay out of the public eye.
But really, what is there to be ashamed of? A cane? A wheelchair? The inability to express oneself properly? Not understanding what’s happening around? Not being able to hear or see one’s surroundings? NO, these are not things people should be ashamed of. EVER. Having ONE disability doesn’t mean having ZERO ability. On the contrary, having a disability helps you develop so many abilities and skills to adapt and deal with your environment. You also learn how to be more compassionate, sensitive and understanding with others.
But most importantly, disabled people have persistence, determination and perseverance. They work so hard on getting better as soon as they get the opportunity. They fight the hardest battle every single day, which is a battle against one’s self. Can you imagine asking your body to do the most basic things like seeing, standing up, walking, scratching your face and not having it being able to do that? That’s their reality, but they face it every single second of their existence. Don’t make it harder on them by discriminating, mocking or judging them.
For a healthy fully functional person, getting up in the morning and living through a whole day can be challenging, so imagine having to do that with an additional challenge. Don’t these people deserve respect just because of that? Add to that the fact that there are so many outside limitations to their lives, such as the infrastructure that is definitely not adapted to assistive devices like wheelchairs for instance.
Regardless of all that, almost all of the disabled people I have met with just very few exceptions have the most beautiful ability of all. The ability to smile. Nowadays, it’s so hard to find people who genuinely have the ability to smile at simple things. But they do, the smallest most basic things can draw the most beautiful smiles on their faces.
So really, what is there to be ashamed of?
Laetitia Hatem is a Board Member of the Happy Childhood Foundation. She led the creation of the Laetitia Hatem rehabilitation center, one of the most advanced in the Arab world, that provides care to the general public as well as to children in need, free of charge. You can follow her on instagram.
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