“We never touch people so lightly that we do not leave a trace” (Peggy Tabor Millin). I know this to be true because everyone I’ve met growing-up  labelled me –  ‘the poor disabled girl’ – and because I so trusted the adults in my life I chose to believe what they said about me and live up to my label but yesterday every time I wrote down my name on that piece of paper it was like I was erasing every negative thing that people had ever said about me – it felt pretty darn good 🙂     

It is 11: 07 AM on day 3 of my journey towards independence and I’ve already eaten my All-Bran Flakes – I can’t believe that I’m actually starting to like the taste of it  – and I’ve typed using both my hands (I usually only use my left) – another thing that was on my list. It took me fifteen minutes to type my first tweet – every time I intended to key the backspace key I would hit the bracket key instead – I thought about throwing in the towel but I powered through and I’m telling you words cannot express the pride I felt when I was finally able to send the tweet.      

People will always say things about you and  try to label you but the moment you stop believing in them and start believing in yourself  everything everybody else says will no longer have the same power over you as it used to. I want everybody to try a little exercise that I call I don’t believe you – the next time somebody says something negative about you that you know to be untrue just say “I don’t believe you” and walk away.