My first real memory of disability came when I was sixteen. I went on a pilgrimage to Rome with a cousin who was severely handicapped. He had a habit of touching people, and it made me deeply uncomfortable.
When I became a mother, raising my daughter to understand disability was not my priority. Honestly, you always hope your own family will be spared. But "love one another" had always been central to how I raised my children. We are all different, and that attention to difference goes beyond disability—and at the same time, includes it.
I believe strongly in the power of example. When a child watches her parents help an elderly neighbor cross the street without being asked, invite a newly divorced friend to lunch, or do the shopping for an aunt who has fallen—that attentiveness stays with them. By the same measure, it's terrible when a child hears someone say at dinner that they can't understand why a certain friend didn't have an abortion after learning she was pregnant with a handicapped child. For two years, I helped an autistic boy in my neighborhood.
Even as a young girl, Ines could see that Yves had difficulties, and she asked me questions. I did my best to answer. But more than anything, she watched her mother show up for a boy some of his classmates mocked during recess. Now, as an adult Guide leader, she has chosen to work with a girl who has severe intellectual disability.
Last summer, at our parish priest's request, she traveled to World Youth Day to accompany a girl her own age with physical disabilities. I was moved to tears watching her put this care into practice.
Laurence, 2016, from O&L No. 213