Sublime

Her identity was based on pleasing others and the fear of not being liked if she didn’t. In her experience, she was not a real person who deserved respect and who, without any fabrication or effort, was lovable.

“We spend our whole lives becoming worthy. Of ourselves. Our mysteries, our solutions, the fruits of our quests.”

morphine

children.

Throughout college, my monastic, scholarly study of human meaning would conflict with my urge to forge and strengthen the human relationships that formed that meaning.

Falsity. Betrayal.

I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on its own terms, without endlessly prosecuting old grievances, without weighing his sins against mine. Without thinking of my father at all. I learned to accept my decision for my own sake, because of me, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it.

Above all things, my life goal is to live a life of love and service.

We need to do more than simply accept ourselves as disabled in order to survive. We have to construct a radically new and proudly disabled way of living—and that is where this book begins.