Showing posts with label top blog entry of the month. Show all posts

End of May & Start of Summer!

By | Published Thursday, May 31, 2012

Somewhere someone should be playing that song, "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end..."

We've covered a lot of ground together including - the blog's first birthday, a letter to the toilet paper, trying to make sense of puberty, divulging some guilty confessions, and navigating transitions of classroom aides. *Phew!* But we did it and as the tradition calls for it, here is this month's most read post:

Dear Continually Breaking Self.

What are my plans for the summer? Well I've got a few things going on including some homeless prevention efforts, creating a mentoring program, this blog, the OI Foundation Conference in July, writing a draft of an eBook, a youth leadership forum... and oh - yeah - HAVING FUN OUTSIDE D'UH..because it is, after all, SUMMER!

As much as I would love to believe that I have all the time in the world to get everything I want done -- the truth is that I probably can't unless something changes. This summer is going to be the ultimate test in time management for me, but I'm determined to do it all! So here is what's going to change:
Perfectly Imperfecta will be going on a summer posting schedule. 

Beginning NEXT WEEK you can expect posts TUES, WED, THURS until September.

Believe me I was not jumping for joy when I forced myself to come to this conclusion but I've decided it's necessary. I love writing entries for this blog, it has become a consistency that I look forward to even on days when I believe I have absolutely nothing to say. But we must all make sacrifices to get those bigger goals accomplished.
The truth is it's summer and I need time for fun. We all do. Especially you, because you deserve it. So get out there and GO For It ALL, cuz WHY NOT?! 

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Most Read Post in April!

By | Published Monday, April 30, 2012

Whoa there. 
It's already the LAST DAY of APRIL?! Do you know what this means?

It means that this is the end of the 11th month of my blogging experience. It means that I almost have 400 fans on Facebook. It means that my twitter followers are still the greatest for listening to my 140 character brain-farts. It also means that I am still learning as we go together.

So as we end this month together and another leg of our journey begins, I'd like to thank my readers old & new - those of you who have messaged me urging me to continue, those of you who have given me ideas & topics to blog about, those of you who have opened yourselves up to me across oceans and state lines... 

Thank you! 
The most read post for the month of April is "Would I Choose to Not Have O.I.?" The night before I published this I was nervous. I thought "this is not the tone the blog is supposed to have. People expect you to be uplifting and hopeful, they are looking for a reason to continue, to know possibility, to understand that someone else has done it before them and everything is wonderful all the time." But after shutting my eyes and going ahead with it I decided it would be okay because one of the most powerful barrier breakers is the truth; and it's important to me that even after hearing the most uncomfortable truths we will still be okay, we can still continue. And by making this the most popular post this month, all of my readers have only proven this as fact!

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January Top Post!

By | Published Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Dear Readers,
Aaaaand there goes another month!! Quite a bit happened in January. For starters I hope everyone rang in 2012 safely with great friends & family! The support that everyone continues to provide translates into energy for me to keep churning out posts, and sharing all the funny, sad, awkward, and confusing barriers in life. So THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for helping me grow as a person, as a writer, a thinker, and a barrier breaker!
Sharing posts with others who are going through similar experiences, and encouraging your family & friends to become fans of the facebook page are a lot more helpful to me than you might think!


Here is how: 

This month's top post was something I initially didn't think was a "big deal." And this so often happens in my blogging experience! The post "I don't hate you, we're still friends" gets the crown for this month for being the most shared blog post in January. The readers chose, the machine did the number crunching, and I am just here to reveal: January's Top Post. 


As always, never hesitate to email me at: oi.perfect@yahoo.com.

Bloggingly yours,
Sandy


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Top Post of the Month: December

By | Published Thursday, December 29, 2011

Pretty soon (if not already!) we'll be inundated with various TOP 10 Lists of 2011 for movies, music, news stories, celebrity break ups etc..
But before you get lost in reminiscing about 2011 here's the top blog post for the month of December:


If you're wondering how I come to find the top post of the month each time then look no farther than in the mirror. It's YOU who decides this. While the computer may do all the number crunching for me, it's YOU who tells me the top blog post for each month through each time you share a blog entry with family & friends. You do a lot more than you think with each click of the mouse!! 

I hope everyone had a safe holiday and have fun ringing in 2012! There'll be fresh entries to read next month and new barriers to break. So, are ya ready?!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

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Top Post for November!

By | Published Wednesday, November 30, 2011

This month for the blog involved a few major waves. First things first though, congratulations on helping me surpass 4,000 visitors this month!! That was really exciting to see and please continue to share this blog with your friends/family/kids etc who have O.I. or are unaffected by O.I.! I'm continually told that I should try to 'break out' from the O.I. community and these days I don't have a ton of time to market & network for the blog, so I'm really relying on my readers to help with that! And so far you guys continue to make great strides and break new records in doing so!!


What a way to mark the blog's 6 month anniversary!!

The second HUGE step for the blog was that I got to meet a giant, and that post also happened to be one of this month's top posts! Check out the time that I met Shaquille O'Neal. Another top post for this month talked about how I learned to advocate for myself in the classroom. Self-Advocacy has proven to be the most useful accommodation that I have acquired over the years. It's not just something that will allow me to show others my strengths, but it's an opportunity to challenge the equality and inclusion that our society continually strives to encourage. And the more consistent we are in this area, the sooner the day will come that we can all be on the same playing field! 

Again, I thank you for joining me for yet another month in my adventures of breaking barriers. Moving forward, let's continue to raise the standards for ourselves and the communities we live in as we challenge others to break barriers too!! 

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October's Top Post!

By | Published Monday, October 31, 2011

Ahh what a month for October! We lost Steve Jobs, snow fell BEFORE Halloween, and we experienced a historical moment for the blog -- there are TWO all-time top posts for the blog this month:



The first top post is a description of what I would consider my ideal aide. But more than that I also talk about my aides of the past: what worked, what didn't work, what was amusing for me, and some things that were less than amusing. Being protected at school as a child with O.I. is important. Learning and school is a place where many of us thrive and ensuring our safety by way of having an aide is of utmost importance! (Check out more information from the OI Foundation here http://www.oif.org/site/DocServer/Plan4Success.pdf?docID=905) 
Writing this post gave me a chance to reflect on how lucky I was to have had the education I got. While my teachers and aides may have had to put up with a lot of my crazy antics, nevertheless they were always supportive of my curiosity and encouraging of my skills and talents. Most importantly of all though they EXPECTED for me to succeed regardless of what bones I broke or physical dependencies I had. It takes a good teacher to teach well, but a courageous one to expect the best from his or her students. So, to my teachers and former aides, I thank you for having always raised that bar for me. 

The second top post was actually really surprising for me! Throughout the time (5 months!) I have kept this blog the main reason for why I keep coming back is YOU. My readers. My supporters. My friends. My community. Sometimes actually.. it's most of the time.. I write blogs and think okay, that was kind of a lame post, no one is going to care. But then you guys always manage to shock me! So that's what happened for this second post, The Fracture Timeline. In this post I take my readers through the entire experience of a fracture by the hours and seconds, from when it first happens to when the cast goes on. I didn't think people would find it terribly interesting or mind boggling... especially given the fact that I'm sure SO MANY of you have gone through similar experiences. But then after I thought about my "reader behavior" and the "stats" behind each post, I began to realize that it's BECAUSE so many of you have had that experience it became a top post of the month. I'm sure many of you were able to relate to it, and that I now realize.. is what makes a good blog post!


I know I said this earlier but truly all of my readers are incredible and are the best part of keeping this blog. You might be a parent of a child with O.I., you might be a kid, you might be a sibling, you may be a friend.. whoever you are I think the one thing that brings us all together is that each of us strive to be unstoppable, creative, and persistent in our day-to-day lives. Let's not lie ALL OF US ARE TOTALLY AWESOME-SAUCE! I hope to harness that energy and motivation in future posts and thank you once again for sharing this adventure with me!  

Yours truly,
Sandy 

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Top Post in September!

By | Published Thursday, September 29, 2011

Seriously? Is September really almost over?! I'm honestly not sure how I've been keeping up with blogging this month but it's been fun pushing out entries for you :-)

This month I plunged into a wide array of topics from the very personal to the more amusing & universal experiences many of us share. Topics have included 'Bucking the Aide' at school, to my struggles with identifying with my disability as a teenager, and even sharing the time I tried to 'Sneak out of the House!' I gave 'Advice to Teens' and even wrote a post that I'm still not quite sure I fully understand myself -- this month seems to reflect the wide breadth of how O.I. has affected my life and the lives of those in my family. Sometimes O.I.'s impact can be hilarious and amusing, sometimes it can be quite the struggle, and still other times it leaves us with more questions unanswered; no matter what happens it will always be in our spirit to carry on with the best of our abilities and find ways to take ownership and initiative of our own lives.

With that in mind I believe that September's Top Post of the Month reflects that spirit particularly well. So much of the time I find myself trying to conform to other people's standards or society's expectations: this is how you should be doing in school, this is how you should be doing at work, this is what it means to be accessible, this is how we will accommodate you, this is how your disability limits you etc. The list just never ends! But this post reminds us all that there are times when it is possible and empowering to define your own expectations, standards, and labels for yourself and others.

September's Top Post of the Month:

p.s. I also wanted to say thank you to my old readers who have been following since day one and I am incredibly grateful for the new readers I've gained. Thanks to all for being with me for another month and I hope you'll stick around for many more months to come!! 


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Top Post in August!

By | Published Thursday, September 1, 2011

It's a bit hard to ignore the fact that summer is over as Back to School Sales harangue us at every corner, and there are even a few ghastly Halloween decors that stand obnoxiously proudly on store shelves. Autumn is one of my favorite seasons and I can't wait for the leaves to burst into an array of colors! Apple cider, yum!

As for me I'm going to be quite busy with my fall schedule as things begin to pick up once more. Blogging will occur far more sparingly than during my freer days of the summer, but I'll do my best to pop in a few times a week at least... before I dive into books and the work though, here's the top post for August:

I'm glad that that was my most visited post for August because it was a tough post to write. You, readers, never fail to support me whenever I have shared an uncertain/vulnerable/or weak moment. For that I thank each and everyone of you for your support!

Aside from the Hurricane this was a great month to end the summer. I surpassed my 100th blog post yesterday, have a total of 250 facebook fans!, found an old entry I wrote as a 10th grader, and survived a week in the woods as an Easter Seals camp counselor.
Stay tuned for more adventures ahead....
- Sandy


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July's Top Post!

By | Published Sunday, July 31, 2011

Whoa! I can't believe that the month of July just flashed by! July was a busy month for me and the blog: my family got back from a trip to Hong Kong & Macau, I shared with you my law school app essay about misusing handicap placards, I reminisced about all the ridiculous shenanigans I got myself into in middle school, wrote a goofy poem for the younger O.I.'ers heading back to elementary school, the facebook page now has 241 fans, and Perfectly Imperfecta was featured in Thriving - the Children's Hospital Boston pediatric blog... phew!

Before we close July officially I'd like to share the top post for this month in case you missed it!

Volunteering to Out-Prove my Disability? 

Me in the 5th gr & my reading buddy, Nina. 
At first I did it because we all had to. I was in the 5th grade and we were each assigned a 'Reading Buddy', a Kindergartner who we would read picture books with and then do some sort of literacy-related activity. I was roughly the same size as my Reading Buddy but I remember reading together all the classic favorites like Corduroy, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, countless Frog and Toad adventures, and Dr. Seuss'Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories. Back then my favorite thing about Reading Buddy Time wasn't the fact that I was helping some six year-old guess at "what might happen next?" It was the fact that I got to read, and then as the year went on I loved the fact that I was helping my Reading Buddy learn to read, and hopefully - love reading as much as I did.
I also enjoyed the fact that although I was a kid who might be the same size as a Kindergartner, and might have still needed to be pushed on the "baby" swings - it was possible to have someone else look up to me. More than that though I was also able to help this other person share in an activity that I loved so dearly. While it's quite some time ago and I can't remember how it exactly all made me feel, I imagine that I felt important, purposeful, and for once - I probably enjoyed the feeling of being able to offer someone else help as opposed to it always being the other way around. For a ten or eleven year old kid who was always the only one in her school in a wheelchair, that last feeling was huge.

And so it began: I grew to want and love helping others. 

As I grew older I volunteered at Special Olympics, sang at retirement homes, and tutored younger students. Though I never really consciously thought about it at the time, I am sure that a part of my drive for volunteering began with wanting to "prove something" to others. I'm not sure if it was ever just one thing I was trying to prove, but here are a few that come to mind:
1. I don't need as much help as some people might think I do
2. That I have something to offer to society
3. I don't expect to always be on the receiving end of assistance in society

In college I became more involved in volunteering on a different level. During this time I actually avoided one-on-one volunteering opportunities (i.e. feeding the homeless, doing a shift at a food pantry, or helping underprivileged girls find the right prom dress). At the time I wasn't sure if I really believed that those efforts "worked" or made any "real" dent in the larger-scale issues like poverty or homelessness. But more importantly I avoided those opportunities because I wasn't sure who I was yet. I still felt that I had something to PROVE about being disabled while being able to help other people, I just wasn't sure what it was! I didn't believe that I could offer anything to people in those situations (because they were so different from my own), and instead focused my student-run club (Students for Social Justice) on spreading awareness on bigger picture topics. We invited guest speakers to campus, had discussions after we watched documentaries, or went to protests. I still loved helping others, and at each club meeting or event I was fired up and motivated by my passion to educate others on the issues.
The months and weeks leading up to graduation I had a lot of big decisions to make. I was swamped with finals, law school scholarship applications, trying to decide whether or not I wanted to go straight into law school, or if I should continue figuring out what it was I wanted to help others with. Because law school is such an expensive and mentally intensive commitment I figured that if I was uncertain about it then I probably shouldn't force myself to go. So instead of going straight into grad school I opted to do a year of service with AmeriCorps. I wanted to figure out how I could best serve, in what areas of society, and with what populations; law school I knew would always be there waiting for me.

After too many AmeriCorps applications and researching programs I decided to go with an AmeriCorps Mass Mentoring program - this is a corp of (mostly) young people who serve in mentoring programs throughout the state of Massachusetts. Why did I choose the area of mentoring? I have been incredibly lucky to have many mentors in my life. Because I was the only one in my family who was disabled and had many different interests from the rest of my family members, I always sought out mentors to help me in things that I was interested in or struggled with. I recognized that I would not have gotten to where I am today without my mentors and also realized that many students fall between the cracks and miss out on meeting that important connection to another adult in their life. So for an entire year I spent developing a mentoring program for 18-24 year olds at a local community college in Boston!
The work was exhausting and I was frequently frustrated but what kept me going was that similarly to my love for reading, I truly believed in the importance and effectiveness of mentoring. I knew that if I could only have ONE student go through the mentoring program having had a positive experience, and understanding the importance of having a mentor in his or her life then I would be successful.

That was last year, and now a year later I have a better sense of the population I know I can best serve and why it is important for me to work in that area. But what I think is most important to me is that I have come to understand that I will always continue offering assistance to others, but it won't be because I have "something to prove" - now it's because there will always be something in my life that I love (whether it's a way of life, an activity, some issue I am passionate about, or a hobby) and want to share this with someone else.


This is the group of AmeriCorps Ambassadors of Mentoring I worked with!

Tips on Volunteering:
  • A common misconception is that many volunteering positions may require a lot of physical labor. This isn't true at all! 
  • I have found that volunteer programs and coordinators are some of the most open-minded and accommodating groups of people that I have ever worked with or come across
  • Many states will allow you to be involved in a volunteer program while receiving a stipend. These stipends usually do not conflict with the disability benefits that you may be currently receiving
  • Whatever your reason for volunteering just remember that you might not get out of the experience what you were expecting. Most of the time when I have been involved in volunteering my perceptions of situations or people have changed, and for the better!
  • Know that during an interview or screening for a volunteer position - you are never required and nor should you ever feel that you have to reveal the specifics of your disability
  • I have come to find that while volunteering the relationship is one of the greatest moments in my life and in society when the playing field is leveled. No one is judging, staring, or making awkward comments about you - it's always only about the service or help that you are providing! 

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Top Post of the Month!

By | Published Sunday, July 3, 2011

Yesterday I re-posted my most visited post of All Time! Today I am re-posting my most popular post of the month so far. Don't worry, after this weekend there is going to be a ton of fresh & new material to feast your heart, mind, and souls on =)  ... & thanks for being patient as I catch-up on my jet lag from my trip to Asia. 
--

Dear Mom & Dad,

I decided to write a letter to my parents. These are the words I would tell them if I could have as they watched me over 20  years ago in the hospital incubator, unable to hold me and terrified of what will happen.


It's not your fault. It's not my fault. It's not anyone's fault, but can I just say this anyway? I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all those hours of worrying, crying, and having the weight of your tiniest child's unknown future constantly on your shoulders. I cannot begin to imagine what it will be like to try and provide everything for me and then watch me get hurt unexpectedly, inevitably, and knowingly - hundreds of times over. What will it be like to take eight steps forwards with me and then watch me get forced into taking ten steps back? I think about that a lot as an adult and sometimes I wonder if I could ever be as strong as you guys and raise another human being in that similar process.

But what I am about to say is probably the most important thing for you to know: You will get through it and I will be fine. 

My body has many deformities and limitations but I wish I could have been aware when you guys realized my brain is "normal." Was it like someone had thrown you a life jacket in the middle of a raging and darkening storm? Such hope! You will raise me to appreciate hope and to pummel every crumb of its existence out of every situation. Thank you for that. And thank you for pushing me in school, not just pushing me but demanding that nothing other than perfect would be acceptable. This would drive me insane in high school, I will push you away, be confused, even be angry with you but I will come to understand why you did it. Education and the advancement in medicine are the two sustaining aspects of my life that I know I will always be able to count on. Those gifts are priceless and literally life changing.

I will learn how to play the piano, walk, jump, swim, read, write, dream, and have empathy. Then I will learn how to help others, listen, respect, admire, envy, comprehend, and problem solve. I'll always learn how to communicate, work together, be patient, love, build stamina, rehab, heal, think critically, and be innovative. These and so much more will be the bones of my life, the skeletal system to my future - the scaffolding that is more iron tight, forever unbreakable and the stuff that my faulty collagen will never be able to affect. Thank you for all of that.

Me, being observant and critically watchful as usual.
The sometimes clumsy dance you would do between caring for me and giving attention to my "normal" brothers is how I understand what it is to be human. No one is perfect and we can only try with our best and most genuine intentions at heart. Don't ever think that I don't know you are trying your damnedest to help each of us discover what we are capable of, pushing us - sometimes to the point of failure - but then always forcing us on-wards. There was always such little time to feel sorry, to take pity, or to stop and dwell in our faults.

Today I am not so great at accepting my limitations and realizing when I need help, but I am learning slowly. I don't regret the decisions you have made for me, medically related or otherwise - I trust that you know what's best, and at times now I will hear your voice in my head when I need to make a decision on my own. I am fortunate and forever thankful to be able to embody all of the successes you have armed me with, able to keep in mind the lessons from failures, and now I do not shy away from taking a stab and discovering more of the potential that you first instilled in me so many days and tireless nights ago.

With love & utmost appreciation,
Sandy

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