What Life is like Having a Disability
There are many ups and downs to having a disability. For
one, I automatically have something that sets me apart. My clubfoot helps make
me one in 7 billion! But other things like self-image and insecurity have been
huge obstacles in my life. Today I will share what some of those obstacles have
been and how I have overcome them. Today I will show you the joys and
not-so-joyous moments of having a disability. I hope that you can learn a
little bit more about me and what it’s like to live with a disability.
When I was born, my parents had absolutely no idea that I
had a disability. It was a surprise to them and the doctors! I immediately had
doctors and nurses all over me and they decided that I had a clubfoot! My parents
told me that they were scared but they trusted God’s plan and knew everything
would be okay. From here, I had corrective surgery twice and was in a different
cast every 2-4 weeks. Therapy, casts, braces, an 8cm screw, you name it and
I’ve been through it.
My mom always knew that God had a plan for me, though.
Almost every night before bed she would read me the story of the crippled
little lamb. This is a story about a lamb who was born crippled and couldn’t
leave the stable. It seemed like life was over for the little lamb but one day
a man and a pregnant woman on a donkey showed up to the stable. While the other
lambs were out with the shepherds, the crippled little lamb got to be at Mary’s
side while she delivered baby Jesus. Although the crippled lamb did not have a
life like the others, God had a different plan for it. My mom always believed
that God had big plans for me and that he wouldn’t have given me a disability
if he didn’t know that I could handle it.
Pre-School and Elementary, I never knew anything was
different about me. I laughed and played just like the other kids did. In 4th
grade, that changed. Kids weren’t so nice anymore. Because of my disability, I
have a HUGE gap in the sizes of my feet. My left foot is a size 6 and my right
foot is a size 9. I have an atrophied calf, and a leg discrepancy of about an
inch and a half. Anytime I see a new doctor, they’re always super surprised
about that information, especially the leg discrepancy. Anyway, I digress!
Since kids knew about my disability, they used it against me. I remember
specifically in 6th grade I was wearing flip-flops (which I had
never done before in middle school) and someone came up to me and said, “what
the heck is wrong with your foot.” I cried, went home, cried some more, and
never wore open toed shoes to school in Middle School again. That was a real
low point to me.
Along with emotional pain, as sad as that sounds, I also go
through quite a bit of physical pain. I'm not trying to complain; I just want
to give you an idea of what having a disability is really like. Because of my
leg discrepancy, my hips are always out of place which causes lower back pain.
Because of my surgeries, I have an extremely tight Achilles tendon which causes
soreness when I stand for more than an hour. Sometimes after a long day of work
and being on my feet all day I'll go to sleep and when I wake up and try to get
up, my foot will not bend so I cannot walk. I must stretch it out and wait for
the pain to go away before I can even leave my bed. I also have very little
range of motion on my left foot so dorsi flexion and plantar flexion is
basically impossible for me. I can only move my toes.
In 7th grade we had an English project where we
had to make a presentation on something that impacted a large group of people.
I chose who present on the Clubfoot and this is where I really opened-up about
my disability and started to be comfortable in my own skin. I realized that
this is something that I can’t change so I may as well make the best of it.
Now, being in pageantry is a huge reason why I'm confident
about my disability but I struggled for a long time with accepting that I am
not a ‘typical’ competitor. The hardest part about having a disability in
general, but specifically in pageantry, is that I can say the word Clubfoot as
eloquently and beautifully as I possibly can, but I can’t change how people
perceive that word. That’s why in pageantry I OWN my disability and talk about
it confidently! If I can be happy about it, I can show other people that being
different isn’t so bad!
MacKenzie Johnson
Miss Teen North Dakota International 2019
