Blog

Archive for April, 2008

How I Prevailed and Progressed Forward

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 by Karen Lynn

How I Prevailed and Progressed Forward

By Karen Lynn

April 2008

Dear Professor Frare, colleagues, friends, family, and students of the Kean University Historical Society. It is an honor, and a privilege, to stand before you this afternoon. Thank you for asking me to be your guest speaker and to be here today.

It would have hardly seemed possible when I began this quest, for me to stand up before you today and express everything I have worked so hard to overcome throughout my entire live. I am not one to idly sit back on my duff, waiting for others to take action for me, to think for me, or to decide my entire life for me! It has been a long journey. The stakes, very high! But I have survived this path despite all its jagged roads and turns, and more challenge’s than most people could ever imagine. I have almost reached the mountain top and all its glory.

And even thought my shuffle bal-changes were not like Sammy Davis Jr.’s, my taps were like music to my soul. My achievements in dance not only set me free in body and mind, but empowered my sense of worth to move against barriers and odds that seemed impossible to the “normal” person’s eye. This dichotomy between what I knew I could do, and what other people wanted to limit me to, would happen again, and again, and again in every aspect of my life. The image that society has about people inflicted with Cerebral Palsy, or C.P. as the insiders call it; is an image of a C.P young boy or girl staying eternally cute and helpless forever- but in all truth and reality- we C.P.ers grow up to be adult’s, in adult bodies, with the same outer systems we had when we were children. The only difference is that now, our outer manifestation has changed. Puberty has arrived, and we have grown up and matured. We are like everyone else internally, with the same wants, needs, and desires, although, our outer envelopes are very different, externally, in that we are disabled.

We aren’t so cute anymore. It repulses people to see us wrinkling; in hammy down clothes, drooling from the face, and needing help from other’s to accomplish our daily living tasks. To society, it’s not so appealing any longer, it is a turn off, and thus, we are tucked away quietly and conveniently in guild edges detention homes, not wanting to be looked at or visited except for those experts! Thank goodness, I made a decision not to end up in this way. And, thank God, I had the wits and ability before me. I not only had a mother, who shared the same visions and desires as me, but she worked tirelessly to give me that independence even when no one else believed it was possible.

Fortunately for me, my mother had a lot of courage and internal strength. She was a very, very progressive and pro-active person. She had a very special way about her. And though she was very serious about my care and the way she cared for me, she also had a presence and foresight about the things that I was going through throughout my life. She also had a warm, gentle, caring, and most loving manner about herself. I could not imagine having anyone else but her to call my Mama! She nurtured me with words from my ethnic tradition, understanding that I needed the encouragement and room to develop as a person in order to grow and accomplish those things in my life, that were so essential to my being. She prepared me to fit into the landscape of society.

It wasn’t that easy, though, as I am still climbing the ladder to my success. But, I have kept going! I have done to the naked eye, things that have looked impossible. I have learned to hop, skip, jump, and run, in a full length leg brace, when all the “experts” looked at me with their tongue’s hanging out with amazement. My mother knew when to listen and when to stand up for me. One time during my clinic evaluation, my mother insisted that my leg brace be unlocked so that I could walk normally instead of with a locked leg. I learned to dance, while the experts at school would not allow my dance teacher, Al Gilbert to come and teach others, because he did not have a degree, yet, he knew more then the doctor’s or therapist knew! I even got a job, with my mother’s help; as a sales girl. Shortly there after, I was promoted as a PBX switchboard operator, rather then settling for the label of being “Mentally Retarded”, or working in a workshop amongst people who had more severe disability folding boxes.

The very people who should have been cheering me on, and looking outside the box- actually made things worse for me, and hindered my life. I understood all to well about the way the bureaucratic system worked and how unfair, rigid, and out-moded it was. But, I was not going to go away quietly. I kicked, and scream in my own tasteful manner, and let them know that I had a right to an education, even though I had a disability, and needed an alterative approach. The system, its processes, the counselors, along with the tools, methods, and methodologies didn’t work, and they didn’t measure my ability correctly. Regrettably, this is an area where great improvement and research still needs to be made. But the greatest improvement that needs to be made is in people’s understanding.

The fact that I am here standing before you today shows that idea’s are changing.

This university has been a pioneer in accepting disabled people on all levels. It has taken well over 30 years – step by step to get here where we are today. So let us vow to ourselves and the community to do everything possible we can to open our hearts, minds, and spirits to end all discrimination.

In spite of all my kicking and fighting, I made every effort to work though channels, by going along with the “experts,” and having an open-mind, but it did me no good what-so-ever. They just wouldn’t and couldn’t see that I was going to fly despite their authoritative decisions. With all the determination within my gut, I had to do something to turn this around. I had to be positive, and I had to have faith in my own ability to change my circumstances, the system, and how they treated the disabled. I had had all that I could take. I had decided that I was going to be treated with dignity and respect. Thus, I had to be strong-minded and listen to my own heartbeat. I couldn’t be swayed, and I had to have a will of iron in order to face the perilous journey before me. I would have to file a law suit which no one ever filed before. And I would have to spend countless hours writing letter after letter, and phone call after phone call. My dance lessons were simple and easy compared to this mission. Once I sat down with the lawyer who was going to represent me, I felt as though I was dancing without a disability at all. Doing a soft shoe, and using my left foot and toes in the graceful way that I was taught, was like a piece of cake compared to this.

The lawyer mentioned to me that I could either win this presidential Civil Right Case and open the doors for all disabled people, or lose it completely. So, with batted breath, I waited for three and ½ long years, to get the verdict. And, I had won! Six years, from that day, I earned the A.A. degree which was the foundation for everything else I worked so hard to achieve. I would become an adaptive dance and fitness instructor, mastered the art of cooking, and being a responsible, independent, and productive human being. I even perfected my writing skills and publish my autobiographical story, “The Broken Hoof,” which, in its infancy won second prize in the Kaleidoscope Literary Pose fiction Art Award of 1983.

I even was elected to sit on the Executive Board of Protection and Advocacy Inc, developed my own website at: www.whispersofhope.org, and have written many articles as I continue the fight to speak out and make this a kinder and gentle place for everyone to live in. I have given to others without thinking twice about myself in a selfless way.

In closing I will leave you with a few very important thoughts before I answer any questions that you may have for me.… Search your hearts and souls and see how you can made a difference to pay it forward to change our world and someone else life- How can you personally change the course of someone else’s life that needs a helping hand? How can you as a professional personally make a difference? How can you find ways to break down the walls of discrimination that bind individuals from moving up the career ladder of opportunity while looking out side the box? How can you truly mentor and inspire other’s and help them achieve their dreams and choices? How have you personally done something today to value and respect a particular individual’s goals and dreams without judgments or conclusions? And how can you take an active role to help someone who wants and needs the path and way made straight? Can you dig deep to look beyond yourself to mentor and take an active role to make this strangers dreams come true? Can you really value the lives of others by valuing there human rights? Can you honestly turn your backs from competition and competing with those who need it the most? And finally how can we all take an active role in winning the war against discrimination?

A Long time ago, I found a poem by a famous British amputee; William E. Henley. He lost both his legs at the age of 12. When I first read these words in college, these words from Maya Angelou sung sweetly in my spirit. Angelou first sees this as a mark of paternalistic contempt. She is held by a white superintendent in school who has just told her class, to be content to be athletes and cotton pickers. She turns it into an anthem or song of praises for our people and hers. It goes like this… “It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll. I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.

I leave you with these sweet empowering words- take them home with you today to digest! Think of ways deep within your own consciousness on how you personally can make a positive mark on this world and leave a path behind you that no one else has ever left before.

Thank you for having me here today and for allowing me to share a little piece of my life with all of you. I will now answer any questions or thoughts that may cross your mind. Again, thank you for having me.

Posted in Published Articles | No Comments »

Between Reality and Mythos

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 by Karen Lynn

Between Reality and Mythos

by Sean Dineen

April 2008 – Volume 4, Issue 4

It is a well understood truth that storytelling is an effective way of explaining how the world works. It does so by distilling large concepts into a manageable and palatable framework of understanding. These concepts transcend race, class, gender, time and age.

The saga we all love was created for a generation growing up, as George Lucas said, "without fairy tales" and the lessons they teach.1 This paper will thoroughly examine a modern fairy tale, finding the similarities it has with the Star Wars saga and the lessons it has to teach the world.

Karen Lynn’s fictionalized autobiography, "The Broken Hoof," is the enchanting quest for a young girl to find the mental, physical, and spiritual power within herself. With that knowledge, she finds she can take on the universe and restore peace and harmony to herself, her world and the people around her.

Our tale begins with Kitten, our story’s heroine, being struck down with a bad reaction from a shot and put in a deep sleep. This is common in earlier fairy tales, that the hero or heroine must be taken out of the ordinary universe to transcend an earthly reality. As Joseph Campbell, noted myth expert, declares: "We cannot experience our new life, in the middle of our old one. We must be called out upon our quest."2 The sleep ends with Kitten awakening to find she has a twisted left side, cerebral palsy serving here as a version of the mark of the quest. Kitten’s quest here is to live a life like everybody else and to be treated as everybody else, without the scorn of peers whose eyes cannot see the inner glow beneath the twisted body and facade of a broken outer shell.

Kitten is therefore a parallel to young Anakin Skywalker when he is near-fatally maimed in his dual with Obi-Wan Kenobi. He awakens to find himself encased in armor, but where he required the armor to survive, Kitten must shed hers to thrive in a world of non-supportive, self-absorbed people with no light. Her next step is finding her mentor. Just as young Anakin must race for his freedom and Luke Skywalker must travel in search of Obi Wan, so Kitten must go to her carnival to find Pegasus, the broken carousal horse who became much more. "Suddenly without realizing what she was doing, she found herself strutting towards the crimson booth of the carousel ride."3

Because of her deep willingness to be open to herself and her own spiritual energy, Kitten is the only person who can hear Pegasus speak. "This was a very thrilling moment for Kitten. Within a few minutes he began to talk to her. My name is Pegusas, what’s yours? He whinnied. He began to utter words."4 He serves as this tale’s version of the midiclorians. As Qui-Gon explains, "They constantly speak to us, telling us the will of the Force."5

Kitten’s openness, her willingness to listen, links her with her new steed. When he is assaulted, her heart bleeds, and she is the only one to bother to rescue him when the carnival closes and these blessed horses are left to rot. "Oh, how dreadful the silence sounded. Something has to be done to save Pegasus and the other horses." He was washed in shadows from the darkest room, buried in a cold hallway. It looked like the horses were tossed into one huge pile."6

Kitten’s dedication to her development and the healing of those around her enables Pegasus to demonstrate his true identity. He drops his painted on essence and becomes his true spiritual self, as a reward for her faithfulness and selfless love. Just as Yoda, the greatest of all Jedi Masters, appears at first as a childlike gnome, so Pegasus can begin his teaching work unencumbered by the plastic coating hiding his true powers. For he is an angelic figure here, who shakes the world with his glory. "She looked, and looked, hoping Pegasus would be there, but he was not. Behind her she heard a sound building. It was Pegasus. The rainbow stallion trotted up to her."7 "Just then Pegasus awoke, he bent his neck, a neigh came forth. You are real, Pegasus, you are a real horse."8

He goes to work on Kitten’s courage, developing within her a sense of her role as a messenger, showing her that a physical limitation doesn’t have to mean loss of control over one’s own destiny. Just as the Jedi use transcendence of matter and so called physical realities to teach spiritual awareness and connection with energy, so Pegasus creates physical strength in Kitten through running, as well as an inner peace to help Kitten face the world unafraid. The faith shown to her gives her a desire to make the rest of the world more in harmony. She too begins to stretch out her viewpoint to help others. "It’s hard for me to believe it, but you have been transformed.”9

Kitten slowly begins to explore her world. These new undertakings don’t become the same kind of negative attachment for her that Padmé was for Anakin because they are not the only source of stability in her world. Kitten’s awareness of her self is improving. She is now wise and patient, to paraphrase a disabled writers play. "She has value as a child of God."10 During the first Death Star battle, Luke is able to switch off his targeting computer because he has found faith in The Force. Kitten must undergo her own trial by fire in the form of discouraging white coated experts. Like Admiral Motti, who berates Vader for his reliance on the Force, these experts regard faith in anything they cannot touch and quantify and see as less than pointless.

Many medical experts are limited to what is earthly visible. Kitten’s awareness of her special gift is a spur to overcome fear and self doubt in the classroom, with her self, and with the larger world – particularly those who see her disability as a mark of disgrace rather than the keystone to a broader more profound vision. It is obvious to Kitten that her greatest enemies come from those who cannot see past the body to her inner glory. As Luke was unable to free his X-wing from the swamp on Dagobah, those who are trapped in this "crude matter" often hinder the great. Pegasus has been sent to remind Kitten that the spiritually awake need not be enslaved by physical trauma. "Particularly though, she felt honored, honored to have touched Pegasus, to have become his friend. He was safe and secure from the walls he left behind." Kitten ran and played the any other girl.11 Her physical strength only exists as an outer reminder of the person she is being led to become.

Kitten is Anakin given proper encouragement, without his need to shape the world for his own benefit. Kitten is also very similar to Padmé, in that she has become wise through her own crucible, able to see the long term benefit of her own achievement. The new world she is being guided to create exists from her own heart outward. She no longer need fear her own body, but can harness it to give to those around her. She had redeemed the physical universe, just as Anakin at the very last possible moment came back into the light. Trapped within all that machinery and black will was the last remnant of his better self. His love for his son was the one thing that the dark side couldn’t take from him.

The medical establishment in the real world and the Star Wars universe is overly mechanized. They see a client as someone to be altered, not listened to, just as Vader’s medical droids put him back together without consideration for his pain. The rehab process, also very painful, is perhaps best understood to be a challenging of physical and spiritual energy, just like the force. Kitten has been able to motivate herself to see the eternal truth that relationships matter more than earthly pain and corporeal reality is as nothing compared to spiritual growth and union with the universe. This power within herself is the same essence which led our great Jedi, the Chosen One, to come back at the last possible moment, and in saving his son, save himself and the galaxy.

Sean Dineen is an Adjunct History professor at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, and a DLITT student

at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.

Ms. Karen Lynn is one of the last of the pioneers in the movement for inclusion. She has been a mentor

and adaptive dance instructor for more than thirty years. In 2005, she published her fictionalized

autobiography, "The Broken Hoof". She also fought and won the first civil rights case in California,

under the Rehab Act of 1973.

Works Cited

1 A New Hope commentary.

2 Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth, Doubleday, NY, 1960, p 212

3 Lynn, Karen. The Broken Hoof. PublishAmerica. 2006. p 15

4 Lynn, p 19

5 Brooks, Terry. The Phantom Menace Doubleday, p 57