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I feel truly honoured, being presented with the opportunity to share my personal experience enduring a life-changing injury.

Enduring this injury at the age of 20 really turned my world upside down. Reflecting back, it was truly devastating. I was a young girl planning her 21st birthday party and I woke up in a High Dependency Unit (HDU) with no physical control. 

In that moment my mindset automatically shifted, I do not believe this was a conscious shift. From the moment my eyes opened unable to talk, move, feed myself, I knew I needed to fight. 

I was transferred to Goole Nuero Rehab Centre (GNRC) where I began rehabilita-tion. During this time I was so determined, I kept fighting, I wanted my life back and I could see it, I was getting closer and closer, this became my only focus.  

I became the only focus, and I trust that through the automatic barrier erected blocking people who were once key figures in my life has enabled me to locate my internal resources. I remember constantly highlighting to myself, everything I could do, not my limitations.  

Once I was discharged from GNRC, I could live a ‘normal’ life again. Breaching out-side of the walls that I was so desperate to escape, shook me to my very core. It was terrifying! It is a bizarre concept, within GNRC I could be vulnerable, I was ‘normal’ I ‘fitted’ I was ‘accepted’. Yet, as soon as I stepped outside that door, I was not. There is so much prejudice and discrimination. 

I often wonder if diversity is becoming more of a tick-box exercise, which overlooks inclusion, where a whole community, should enhance a sense of belonging and working together in collaboration.  

A stand-out memory, was getting in to the car after taking part in a pub quiz with friends, a couple of men approached me telling me, ‘I should not be driving’. They assumed I had been drinking due to my impaired mobility.  

I felt angry! 

I was scared! 

I wonder how people think this is OK. 

I was deeply hurt! The pain became internalised and progressed into this fierce driv-ing force. I developed a coat of armour to protect myself, no-one was getting in. 

It was around this time I heard that the lady I shared a room with at GNRC, was dead. My inner resources lit up, that fight, drive and motivation. However some people do not always have access to their inner resources, what happens to them? 

From firsthand experience, having your independence stripped, feels incredibly oppressive, diminishing individual power. It can be so challenging to find these inter-nal resources. Guidance and facilitation maybe required to identify these.  

I am disabled. I am left with a lot of surface level presentations of disabilities, for ex-ample my impaired mobility, the way I speak slower or tremor and have poor co-ordination. But! I am also a professional. A registered and accredited Counsellor holding a BA Hons and Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) and qualified Clinical Supervisor currently undertaking a Masters.  

Yet I am constantly judged on what people see, initially. 

I believe my personal experience enables me to encompass a much deeper sense of Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR). I am able to truly see my clients, wholistical-ly, listen and understand. Fully embrace their unique phenomenology, rather than just see what I am being presented with. Providing anti-oppressive practice, where the power balance is felt, in turn creating a grounding environment, where clients do feel safe, they feel secure sharing deep vulnerabilities.  

I personally do not believe in the word disability. I believe the word itself creates stigma, singles a person out from society, creating a divide.  

Aren’t we all different?