A disability is not always disabling, sometimes a disability is empowering, in the case of Christina Lau her disability, or my friend Claire who lives like everyone else but with the slight difference of not having a hand.

If you have ever met a person with a disability, their disability always seems like the elephant in the room; it is a taboo subject with an extensive grey area of when you are offending, and when you are sufficing curiosity. According to the World Health Organization,  ver a billion people, about 15% of the world’s population, have some form of disability and yet most people feel ‘awkward’ or feel the need to stare when they see a person with a disability.  I was one of those people until I met my friend Claire and Christina Lau.

Claire was born with one hand; the other arm did not completely develop which left her with a full arm with only one finger and is therefore classified as disabled. Claire grew up the same as you and me. Normal. She barely noticed her hand. “It was just a hand to me,” She said when asked how different life was for her.  The older she was, the more questions she got. To the point that the most common question she was asked aside from “What’s your name?” was, “What happened to your hand?” At some point, she remembers getting bored of telling the same story and eventually she started telling people crazy stories like that she lost it in a freak accident, or even that she ate it in the womb.

Her life progressed normally, but there was always bad experiences. “I was never hurt by it [her hand] until kindergarten when a boy called my hand disgusting, which caused me to come home crying. He apologized a few weeks later and gave me a flower. And afterward, we became great friends.”

As a child, she didn’t initially understand that she was different from the other boys and girls. Her parents did their best to make her hand seem normal too. They called it a cute hand; they taught her left and right by calling the left one her ‘little left.’

Claire considers herself lucky. “I had people around me who supported and accepted me.”

“… not everyone is as lucky as me, and receives the support that i get and others just can’t afford it, and some just don’t have the right people around them.”

Claire claims that now she is used to her hand being as it is, and even claims the idea of suddenly gaining a hand seems terrifying; She has no idea how to perform tasks with two hands that others would assume is normal. “You learn to do things with your wrists and your elbows,” She says when asked about doing actions that tend to involve two hands.

Claire started off being very shy, about her hand, but now her hand has become a source of confidence. People stare, but now she doesn’t take it as a sign of rudeness, but a sign of curiosity. Children especially, she now expects the pointing, and occasionally whispering, and it doesn’t bother her. She doesn’t take bad comments to heart. Being disabled has given thick skin after getting comments like:

 

“Hah, stump.”

 

“Her mum had a child with one hand.”

 

“Her hand creeps me out.”

 

Claire admits that her only failure was not accepting herself sooner.

 

A fine line that people are confused on is when they are friendly/helpful, and when they are condescending. Claire being an avid rugby player still get comments from people like: “Oh you still play rugby? You deserve a trophy for that!”, Although they come from a right place, it highlights to herself and others how different she is. This stigma is what many disabled people try to combat. The opinion of handicapped people being in a different category of person from non-disabled people is entirely inaccurate.

The next person to discuss is Christina Lau. Christina was in an almost fatal car crash in Malaysia and was left paralyzed on her spine and her fingers. After dealing with depression she is now ‘better than ever’, and has picked up new sports such as ping pong. She is even hoping to represent Singapore in the next paraolympics.

Overall people with disabilities want to live the same life as everyone else, and the stigma is the only thing that stops them from that. Together as a wider Singaporean community we can overcome that.

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