{"id":2389,"date":"2024-01-09T23:28:56","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T03:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unemploymentville.com\/blog\/?p=2389"},"modified":"2024-01-18T01:16:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T05:16:27","slug":"employment-and-disability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unemploymentville.com\/blog\/employment-and-disability\/","title":{"rendered":"Employment and Disability: Navigating the Obstacles"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was not your typical little kid.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t crawl.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t walk.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t hold my head up very well.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t dress myself or go to the bathroom without significant help from someone else.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, my parents set a pattern for my life by focusing on the things I did well.\u00a0 I was interested in everything.\u00a0 I enjoyed doing crafts, especially drawing, knitting and crocheting.\u00a0 I loved reading and thought I might become a writer someday.<\/p>\n

Before I was five I knew I was headed for college.\u00a0 I assumed that after earning my degree, I would get a full-time job and become financially self-sufficient.\u00a0 There are people with severe disabilities who are able to make that work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me, however, graduating from college was like running into a brick wall.\u00a0 All the success of school\u2014the praise of professors, the good grades, the awards \u2014seemed to mean nothing in the real world.<\/p>\n

\"\"
President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law in 1990<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before the Americans with Disabilities Act made discrimination illegal, interviewers appeared less interested in whether I could do the job than whether I could reach files that were kept up high<\/strong> and out of my reach.<\/p>\n

\"\"To further complicate things, my disability made a 9-5 workday seem impossible.\u00a0 Eating lunch and going to the bathroom were far more time-consuming for me than they would be for a nondisabled person.\u00a0 I am talking hours, not minutes.\u00a0 Again, there are people who work full-time in spite of obstacles like this, but I have never been able to figure it out. \u00a0insert photo<\/p>\n

After being stuck for a couple of years, I met some people who were like my parents: focused on what I could do instead of on what got in the way.<\/strong>\u00a0 They gave me writing assignments and opportunities to speak.<\/strong>\u00a0 Other people liked my approach and offered me more work.\u00a0 I learned to facilitate groups, and to mentor individuals and families around independent living, personal supports, and self-advocacy.<\/p>\n

These activities soon turned into a consulting business.\u00a0 Entrepreneurship seemed to be the answer to my scheduling problems.\u00a0 I still could not squeeze 40 hours of employment into my week.\u00a0 There were days when I could not work at all or could only do a couple of hours.\u00a0 Nevertheless, I was able to create products that were unique and of high quality.\u00a0 I never got rich, but I was able to pay my bills.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Expectations are great things, but\u2026growing up believing that I would be enormously successful had its downside.\u00a0 No matter how often people told me they loved my work, I did not feel at ease.\u00a0 Inside, I was beating myself up for not working full time and not earning enough to get off of Social Security Disability.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So when I was offered a full-time job with almost infinite flexibility, I jumped at it. \u00a0This opportunity came through a five-year grant with a focus on removing barriers to employment.\u00a0 It was a worthwhile project, but I was uncomfortable being cast as a role model of how to be gainfully employed while severely disabled.\u00a0 I was expected to share this knowledge with others when I did not have a full grasp of it myself.<\/p>\n

Although I felt like a fraud, I did my best to satisfy the requirements of the job.\u00a0 No one ever said anything negative about my work, but I could not continue to accept a full-time salary when the realities of my life prevented me from working more than 10-15 hours a week.\u00a0 So I renegotiated my contract to work less hours.\u00a0 This felt better to me.\u00a0 I was no longer expected to get out there and show them how working and disability fit together.\u00a0 Instead, I was assigned several major writing projects which I still take pride in.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was spared the brunt of the 2008 recession because I was in the middle of this five-year grant.\u00a0 When my contract ended, however, I discovered that many of the nonprofit organizations I had frequently worked with had closed.\u00a0 Others had merged or rebranded themselves, and the services I had provided them in the past were no longer needed.\u00a0 Similarly, the state was in trouble financially and there were no longer the disability training and mentoring dollars upon which I had built my career.<\/p>\n

For seven years I wandered around trying to figure out how to get my business back to how it was before.<\/strong>\u00a0 Although I had occasional speaking or facilitating gigs, they were one-day commitments and did not lead to other work.<\/p>\n

I had lived a can-do kind of life, and now I started to hear something in my head that I had never heard before: I CAN\u2019T.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then last March, one of my personal assistants started playing YouTube videos of motivational speakers while she was getting me up.\u00a0 I was reminded that people do all sorts of extraordinary things in spite of great obstacles.\u00a0 The difficulties are real, but they can be surmounted when faced head-on with creativity, determination, and confidence.<\/p>\n

As a disabled worker, I am challenged daily to navigate these obstacles:<\/p>\n