Get out of the closet and face your fears

My 57-year-old brother and his wife are experiencing a diagnosis of autism spectrum for one of their twins.

When I solicited select feedback from friends and family who are therapists, pharmacists, physicians and the like, I experienced some pushback from family. I wasn’t being “confidential.” The ones resistant to my open discussion (first names only) have never left my hometown area, are self-absorbed and live in safe little enclaves that are provincial and function from the perspective of exclusion and not full inclusion.

They live in fear of those who are “different.” They’ve heard about the “handicapped” (people with disabilities).

I remember initiating a motor development clinic for kids with disabilities at my first job as a faculty member in higher education at Northern Illinois University in 1980. That same year, a story was published in Chicago newspapers about a 9-year-old boy with Down syndrome in Chicago (45 minutes away) being fed through a closet door. He was there all day and night — no schooling, friends, etc. His sister kept talking about him at school for years, but she was put off by teachers saying she didn’t have a brother, until one day …

I had busloads of Hispanic kids and adults with disabilities, some of whom had just been deinstitutionalized, coming in from Chicago to receive instruction from my students at NIU every Saturday morning. We danced, learned motor skills and swam together. It took some of the men with disabilities who were transitioning from an institution to a group home several weeks to just get-off the bus. My NIU students would get on their buses and sit with them, playing simple hand-clapping games and fine-motor activities. The de-institutionalized adults were slowly encouraged to “climb their Denali” and go to their fear — the community.

They were afraid, as for decades their worlds were confined to a bed and small room with few visitors and no friends or family. They lived in the closet and safety of their minds and what they knew.

I still have some family-of-origin sibs today who function as if they are living in an “Ozzie and Harriet” world of the 1950s in their perceptions of people with disabilities and their families. They’re in the closet, if you will. They haven’t been beyond the literal or figurative borders of their tight-knit little minds and worlds, and it shows.

Today, people with different abilities represent a significant voting block. They work, recreate, volunteer and meaningfully participate as caring and competent community members. In many ways, the real people with disabilities are my sibs.

I guess I’m not invited to July 4, Thanksgiving or Christmas celebrations again this year! Another year of skiing my Valley lakes, eating turkey (with Ed’s stuffing) and watching football in front of the woodstove, then a great nap.

Volunteer with a person or group of people whom you don’t know anything about, one hour a month to start. My bet is you’ll get hooked on helping others.

Go to your fears and get out of the closet.

Paul Maguire is a Palmer resident and former professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is the facilitator of the Center for Creating Peaceful Neighborhoods, and advocates for eliminating bullying and fully including all people in community.