Happy Disability Pride Month!

I’ve been writing this post for more than a week and as I pondered, the U.S. Senate and then the House of Representatives passed a spending bill that severely cuts funding for Medicaid and other social service programs that aid our most vulnerable citizens. It is big, but beautiful? I don’t think so. Is there any beauty to be found in a downright mean self-serving bill that will serve to harm those who struggle to make ends meet while providing tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans and increasing the country’s deficit by trillions of dollars? And to do this in our month of pride is just adding insult to injury.

Does this upset me? You bet it does. But I’m trying to stay hopeful — hard as that is.

Many of my friends, family members, fellow creators and colleagues are more than worried. Cortisol-fueled nervous systems make it difficult to focus on artistic or any other endeavor for that matter. The unpredictability of our times only adds to our overtaxed brains. To those of you who are feeling this way I say, I see you, I understand. But I am offering an alternative here to feeling helpless and that is to be helpFUL.

I’ve been busy advocating as best I can despite these untenable, sad and incomprehensible times. It’s one reason I write this newsletter — to provide hope, information and motivation to fight back. We cannot let our voices be silenced — there are too many of us to be ignored.

Recently my friend and fellow Ability Montana board member Liz Ann Kudrna and I presented a grant proposal to our city’s Urban Parks and Forestry Board. After creating a 10-page document including maps and photos, we had the opportunity to pitch it in person to the board members who will make the ultimate decision about which of eight submitted proposals will receive funding.

Here’s the gist of it: Liz Ann is a manual wheelchair user and lives less than half a block away from a lovely park where a weekly farmers market and other events take place throughout the warmer months of the year. The area where some of these events occur is graced with large shade trees, the surface is maintained with loose bark mulch. Vendors arrange themselves along the edges of the sun-shielded area abutted by a road on one side and grass and road on the other. There’s a bit of an incline too. As you’ll see if you watch the video, the terrain is not only a problem for wheelchair users who struggle to maneuver over the too-soft ground. People using a variety of mobility devices are also affected. And as I am wont to bring up universal design as often as possible, creating wheelchair-accessibility will benefit not only people with disabilities but also those pushing strollers or pulling wagons, for example.

As you watch the 2-minute video, you’ll see in the beginning Liz Ann being pushed by a friend in her manual chair along a hard-packed fine gravel trail at the edge of the park. The ease of mobility is evident especially when compared to the difficulty her friend had later in the bark mulch.

Note: Liz Ann was pushed because she’d recently had shoulder surgery. Taking her power chair to the park on another occasion, she told me she was quickly mired in the bark mulch, unable to move without assistance.

Anyway, here’s the video we showed at the city board meeting.

For those of you who are blind or have low-vision, click on the button below to watch the video with audio descriptions.

So, this is what I do when I am feeling disheartened — I seek out ways to make a difference even if it is a small thing like accessible trails in one of my city’s parks. No doubt opportunities exist where you are. Seek them out. Do something, anything. Write to your legislators, volunteer with a nonprofit, serve on a board, make a donation, speak out, create meaningful art, expose the issues in whatever way works for you. Sign up to receive notifications from nonprofits about causes that you care about and then act on those alerts. Most importantly, let’s turn the hand-wringing and use the cortisol running through our veins to fight rather than flee.

All is not lost unless we give up.

So, what are you going to do? Share your thoughts in the comments and let’s be the rising tide that lifts us all.

Thanks for reading, watching, listening. Sending you hugs of gratitude.

And just a reminder, I vow to never put my newsletters behind a paywall. But that doesn’t mean you can’t support me. If you appreciate this work, please consider contributing by clicking on the Buy Me a Tree Button below.

I’ve been struggling to get back to writing this newsletter for a variety of reasons. But the most compelling one has been feeling overwhelmed.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished the first draft of my first novel which I started about five years ago. As I write this, its pages are spitting out of my printer one page at a time. I hate killing so many trees but it is the best way to give it to someone else to read. I am printing it double-sided if that’s any solace. But that’s not why I’m writing this missive today.

As many of you know, I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and if you neurotypicals think you get overwhelmed, well then you haven’t lived in my brain. That’s not to say I’m better or worse than you — it’s just that my speeding brain is sometimes unable to stop and make decisions when I feel like this.

According to myriad sources including Psychology Today, adults can be faced with making thousands, if not tens of thousands (35,000?), of decisions daily. One decision I made over the last few days was to try and track down the source of this 35,000-daily-decision assertion. I spent several hours trying to track it down, to no avail — time I could have spent writing about ADHD and overwhelm instead. So, I’m giving up. If anyone has any insight into this question, I’d love to hear from you.

But it’s clear we do have thousands of thoughts and make many choices in a single day, let alone a week or a month or a year — what to eat, what project to work on next, which emails to answer and which can be ignored, or whether to even get out of bed and face the overwhelm that is adult life with a neurodiverse brain.

So how can we overcome the overwhelm?

One of my favorite sources of tips on handling my ADHD is ADDitude magazine. There are some suggestions from Judith Kolberg (who, by the way, predates Marie Kondo in the field of professional organizing). These tips might be geared toward those with ADHD, but they might help anyone feeling overwhelmed — I mean we all get that way sometimes.

To-do lists are great but there are parameters that one may need to incorporate to really make them effective. Keep your list somewhere that you won’t lose it — ADHDers are notorious for misplacing things — especially little scraps of paper. Write them down in a journal or enter them into a task list on a calendar app. Kolberg says assigning a task to a specific day increases the chances you will complete it by about 70%.

She doesn’t provide a citation but I believe her. I started keeping a bullet journal a few years ago and since then, I’ve finished the first draft of a novel, written a couple of children’s picture books (and workshopped them), written a nonfiction book proposal and reported and photographed several articles — that’s in addition to writing this newsletter and the money-making “day job” that has nothing to do with anything creative but it pays the bills.

I keep a weekly task/appointment list in a journal. I review that list every evening before going to bed and transfer the tasks I think I can and want to accomplish the following day into a daily list. I put little check boxes next to each one because it is so gratifying to enter the little tick marks when I’m finished with something. It soothes my brain and gives it the signal that I can move on to the next thing — albeit another decision to make, ha, ha.

Kolberg suggests that changing one’s environment can optimize attention. If your home office has too many distractions, maybe try going to a coffee shop or, weather permitting, sit outside or go to a park.

The call of distractions, at least for me, is stronger if I need to accomplish something my brain doesn’t relish doing. This is true for a lot of folks with ADHD. I have a secret spot in a public park underneath some shady trees that I love to frequent when the weather is warm. Bonus — there’s no internet connection there. I also enjoy sitting on my back deck or under the buckeye tree in our backyard with an expansive view of the mountains (although I try not to enjoy the view too much or I wouldn’t get any work done).

Enlisting a support team is the last thing Kolberg mentions in her article. Having someone keep you accountable be it a critique group if you are a creative or a deadline (self-imposed or otherwise) or recruiting what she calls a “body double” — someone who is physically present while you do a task but isn’t doing it with you.

With that in mind, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the hundreds of body doubles who are with me regularly on Zoom as I write daily. Writers’ Hours are free Zoom calls during which people from around the globe log in and write together in silence for an hour four times daily five days a week. They were instituted during COVID lockdown by the remarkable duo of Matt Trinetti and Parul Bavishi (aka Ma and Pa) founders of the London Writers’ Salon. I had never been able to establish a regular writing habit until I started attending these sessions. It’s really quite a magical community.

All that being said, know that if you are someone with ADHD, it is important to realize that though it’s worth attempting to use some of these suggestions, they may not work for you. Try one and if it doesn’t work, try something else. Eventually, you will find your bliss, it may take a little time so be patient with and kind to yourself. And if you have tricks that work for you, please share them in the comments. After all, we’re in this together.

Hugs!

It’s an odd experience being on the other side of the interview but that’s exactly what happened a couple of months ago when Ilona Brannen asked me to be a guest on her podcast Still Loading. She asked me to speak about inclusive workplaces in the digital age and specifically about the inclusion of people with disabilities. I guess I could speak about that, I’d said. But I’ll admit, I was wary given my lack of experience being on the other side of the microphone, if you will.

But it’s out today. I listened to it and I’m proud to say, I didn’t wince once in doing so. I hope you find it interesting. It was fun to do and Ilona was beyond lovely and kind.

And just an aside, the interview was done on a Zoom call. With my ADHD and audio processing issues, I’m finding it much easier to have conversations with people when I can see their faces than over the telephone. So, thanks, Ilona, for the opportunity and for your kindness. Wishing you well for your future podcasts.

Late note to correct something I said during the interview: President Franklin Roosevelt was not paralyzed due to an accident. He was paralyzed as a result of polio.

I couldn’t help but give Ruth Spinelli a hard time when she sent me an email. "Check it out on Amazon hearts and souls of special olympics,” she’d written.

I knew she’d been working on the book and, admittedly, it wasn’t hard to find. But clearly, Ruth needed a lesson in marketing. Girl, you need to include a link when you’re sending an email like that, I told her over a Zoom call about a week later.

Ruth and her coach Alean Skinner produced a collection of comments gathered from a survey they distributed at various Special Olympics Montana events. The book was released in late October last year and they were kind enough to come on my radio show, Eclectica on KGLT in November for an interview.

The show is primarily music but being a public radio station, sponsorships and public service announcements are called out about every half hour. I’ve deleted most of the chaff and music in the recording. But I couldn’t help myself when it came to Bill Withers’ “Lean On Me” and “Hit the Road Jack” by Ray Charles the latter of which is a favorite at Special Olympics Montana events.

“The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community.”

And one final note, Ruth and Alean are donating a portion of the proceeds from book sales to Special Olympics Montana.

Have you had experiences with Special Olympics? I’d love to hear about them. Please share in the comments.