When Mary Jane Owen became blind, she learned to read Braille with her right hand. When she lost the feeling in her right hand because of a spinal-cord injury, she learned to use her left hand.
When that hand was injured, Owen said she "wasn't going to learn to read Braille with my nose," so she learned to use adapted computers.Owen describes her life as a kaleidoscopic journey and herself as a "partially hearing, blind, wheelchair user."
"I do have assorted disabilities. I didn't set out to acquire them. There is not an experience I have had that I would trade away," she said.
Friday morning, Owen, who is the executive director of the National Catholic Office for Persons With Disabilities, told participants at the annual Women and Disability Issues Conference to remember three important concepts: "spit 'n' grit," "tell it like it is" and "can do, make do."
"They epitomize the way our nation was created. The disabled community fails to recognize the power of those three phrases."
"Spit 'n' grit" happens when two things are held closely together and begin to be part of "each other's experience." Humans who adhere to each other do the same thing. And disabled people need to be advocates for themselves and for each other, Owen said.
It is important to find your heroes and recognize their accomplishments, she said, and to encourage people to be part of one united community.
The second concept revolves around truth. "How many times have you seen a press release that did anything but list positives?" she asked. "Where are the facts? I think a lot of us don't ask the tough questions. Like, why is the unemployment rate higher than it was?"
News stories and even disabled people don't talk about the high unemployment rate among the disabled, she said. And because they don't discuss reality, they don't call for change.
"You can advocate. You can tell it like it is. You can advocate for each other."
America is founded on a "can do, make do philosophy." People with disabilities have learned to improvise, she said.
"Every rehabilitation is a rebirth. Every rehabilitation is a reincarnation. And every time someone, whether he's 6 months old or 90 years old, learns to do what is needed. . . . It is truly a miracle.
"There's a cultural value in having the experience of being able to make do and to learn to do things differently. We should always ask, "How can we make do and do better?"