(Hosted & Produced by Marlon “Shymar” Molinos)

The View From Chair Level is a talk show that discusses various topics from the viewpoint of Marlon Molinos an individual living with Cerebral Palsy since birth. The goal of this show is to inspire everyone to look past your limitations and find creative ways to accomplish your daily goals. A free mind is limitless and you are the only one that sets your own limits. 

Feature Song: Coldplay – Up & up

The stages of grief are exactly the same as getting to the point of accepting the fact that you have a disability. Whether you are born with or acquire a disability, getting to the stage of acceptance is a journey of its own. No one can really truly know what life they are expected to have. The Lord is the only one that has the roadmap of your life and is the only one who knows where you'll end up.

Denial

When you first realize you have a disability, the first thing that goes to your mind is "no, no, why me. This can't be real. What am I going to do now? In regards to the family, parents might feel overwhelmed and unsure of what to do next. Those who have a strong sense of self worth and a never give up attitude will most likely put their thinking cap on and figure out alternative ways to overcome their current situation. Others will just completely shut down and not want to interact with anyone for a while. It's always great to have a strong support system whether it be family, friends, etc. to help get that person off this stage. Their goal is to help the person realize there is more to life than just sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself. To the support system, never allow them to push you around and give themselves a pity party. Eventually once they realize that they have this strong support system, they will end up moving to the next stage.

 Anger

In this stage, once the person realizes they have a disability they tend to get into a frenzy and kind of have a hair trigger because they're starting to realize that they can't do things the way they normally did before acquiring this disability. In this situation as friends, and family you need to give them a bit of tough love and help them realize that you're not going to always be around for them and they would have to learn how to do things differently than they used to do. In other words change your floor plan. As a recent person with a disability, you might need to find some form of assistive technology that will help give you a sense of normalcy. Assistive technology have improved so much in recent years that it blows one's mind. In

Bargaining

In this stage, a disabled person might say "if you do this for me I promise I will not give you a hard time." Of course that is unrealistic because at this stage the person is still trying to figure out how they're going to do things now that they have a disability. The one thing that will happen for sure is they tend to ask God why me? If only I did this I wouldn't have been disabled.” The family members might feel responsible and say "I wish it was me in that chair and not you. Possibly the person who was driving if a person became disabled due to an accident might also say “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that should have been me." All these things that you do at this stage as far as bargaining goes, is pretty much promising unrealistic things and goals that you will for sure not be able to complete. As a support system, the only thing you can do if you feel at fault is to try and find a way to come to terms with the idea that this was God's plan. As I mentioned before only he has the roadmap to our lives and whether we caused the disability are not, this stage is going to always be something that a disabled person and their support system will go through, so please stop giving yourself such a hard time because you will eventually come to understand that obtaining a disability at this stage of your life was meant to be.

Depression

As with death, depression in regards to disability is pretty much the same. The person with a disability may not want to get out of the house, or do anything because they are still in the state of shock and as I mentioned before, they are still getting to the point of accepting the fact that they have a disability. For the support system, all you can do is try and stay positive for them and try to see them as they were because if you tend to put a spotlight on the fact that they have a disability, then a lot of self-doubt will arise. As with everybody else self-doubt for a person with a disability is pretty strong because they have something that for the most part cannot be covered up. So for sure, insecurities and self-doubt will definitely be an ongoing struggle.

Acceptance

As the final stage of grief, accepting the fact that you have a disability and realizing that this situation will never change is pretty much the only thing you can and should do at this point. When you learn to accept your disability and learn a different way to do everyday things, it's the one thing that helps you feel so empowered because you start to see that having a disability as with everybody else makes you a unique person and trust me you tend to create and develop a different perspective of everything life throws at you at this point. The good thing about it is if you were a person who was able to walk, you have that experience of how it felt to be that kind of person who was able to drive, go where you need to go, and do anything at any given moment. And now that assistive technology has grown to the point that vehicles are now accessible enough that a quadriplegic is able to drive themselves around makes having a disability a lot easier to accept.

You never know as medicine improves and more assistive technology gets developed, having the ability to walk when you're born to not be able to walk will now be a thing of the past. Like my mom always says "Keep the faith and pray to God because he will keep you strong.”  Keep a positive attitude and try to see the silver lining with every situation you come across because dwelling on the negativity of the situation will only bring you down. Being disabled is hard

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