>> KIM GORGENS: It is my great privilege to introduce our speakers this morning.
My name is Kim Gorgens.
I am proud to be the chair of the Committee on Disability Issues in Psychology and we
are thrilled to have the opportunity to host the diversity training on disability issues
this morning.
It is a tremendous opportunity for our group to bring these issues into the spotlight.
I want to introduce our two rock star speakers this morning, both of whom I love and adore.
But I actually, other than just saying that they are both rock stars, I actually have
a script to tell you what they are all about.
Dr. Julie Williams, clinical associate faculty member at Wright State University, is a board
certified rehabilitation psychologist specializing in disability, sexuality, employment, chronic
pain and death and dying.
Dr. Williams teaches diversity and disability-related causes.
She is the immediate past chair of CDIP and is currently serving her first term on the
Committee on Women's Issues in Psychology.
And to say that she is passionate about disability rights would be a colossal understatement.
Dr. Linda Mona is a clinical psychologist and director of post doctorate training at
the VA Long Beach Health Center System.
She also runs a successful multinational consulting business providing education and training
to corporations and private health care facilities on disability and diversity.
Infusing notions about disability education and training is also one of Dr. Mona's career
passions.
She has worked on challenging traditional medical notions of disability and reframing
this experience from a multicultural lens to further understand the unique experience
that people with disabilities and what they bring to any work and social context.
Dr. Mona has worked with APA on disability issues since 1996 in a variety of roles on
boards, committees and task forces.
She is currently serving on BAPPI.
I don't want to use any more of their time.
Without further ado, please help me welcome Drs.
Williams and Mona.
[audience applause]
>> LINDA MONA: So, people are very comfortable with me as a disabled psychologist, consultant/trainer.
I go.
I do training.
I educate.
People tend to feel really comfortable.
I love this role.
I feel comfortable in this role.
I'm proud of this role.
And people might be challenged because they have never seen somebody in a wheelchair present.
But again, they feel comfortable with it.
People are extremely comfortable with me being a disabled psychologist in a medical setting.
I'm around people who use wheelchairs all day long -- people with variety types of conditions
and limitations.
I'm behind the nurses' station.
Unless sometimes of course, there is new staff.
Somebody will ask if they can help me because they assume that I am a patient.
But aside from that, most days in and days out people are quite comfortable and I love
this role as well.
Now a little bit more challenging, and rightly so, is this picture of me in New York with
my two sons, Kyle and Ryan.
And I also just make a shameless attempt to put them in every single presentation that
I do.
So, my babies right?
Not so big babies - 6 and 8.
This challenges people, right?
Are those your kids, are you, you know, how did you acquire your children, is a common
question.
They don't know where they came from.
So it brings up a lot for people.
I love this role.
I love this role; I love being with my kids.
But it's difficult for other people.
They don't know quite what to do with it.
I'm an advocate in APA year after year.
Frustration, pain, joy, progress -- all of those things, the whole continuum of experiences.
I love working with my community.
I don't feel alive unless I'm doing work with my community, and many of us that do social
justice work feel that calling in some way.
And so, I feel comfortable and people feel very comfortable seeing me in this role.
By far this might be the most complex slide that's here.
I'm a woman who lives with significant chronic health issues.
I'm pulled out of my life with regularity, in the hospital, out of the hospital, not
feeling well.
My bed becomes the most central place where everything happens.
This is my son Kyle, who, yes, is reading a WWE book.
I let him do that.
He loves to read.
He's of course thinking that, three days post-surgery, that it's what I really want to hear.
But this bed becomes everything.
I can get up to eight people in this bed -- talking family members.
I've written manuscript after manuscript lying down, so this is difficult.
This is difficult for people to think of me.
Very difficult for my trainees in particular to think of me in this way and not feeling
well; and somehow feeding what we medically think of as somebody who is disabled.
But again, it is this and all of the things that you have seen previously.
>> JULIE WILLIAMS: Ok, so part two.
What Dr. Mona did is kind of modeled what we like you all to do at your tables privately.
We would like for you to write your answers down to the following suggestions and questions
on the slide.
If you don't have anything to write with or you are just too into your bagel and your
breakfast, that's fine.
But at least make a note and respond to these questions.
We want this to be about disability today, but we also want to remind everyone that when
we're talking about disability, we are not talking about the other parts of ourselves.
They're like an intersection of all of ourselves and that's important for us to convey today.
So, the first thing that I would like for you to think about and respond to yourself
is your multiple identities -- consider yourself and your important identities.
What's salient to you?
What's important to you?
So important to you that if I came down there and I said to you that you can't be that anymore
and I am taking it, you would fight me for it.
So, if you asked me that, I would say – I am dwarf.
I am woman.
I am a professor.
I would fight you for those.
I am a friend.
I am the best friend you would ever have.
If you take that away, I would fight you for that.
I'd like you to think about what gives you passion, what's the pulse, what keeps you
alive?
Make a mental note or jot those down.
And now, I'm not giving you a lot of time on purpose.
If it's important to you, it will flow.
If you have to think about it, there is something else at play.
Now, what I would like for you to do is consider disability in all of that.
How has your world informed you about disability?
What were you taught?
What were the messages?
Who were your informants?
Was it your family?
Was it the media?
Was it your personal doctor?
Lawyers?
Who was it?
Was it your teachers?
What were those messages, ultimately?
What is your personal relationship to disability?
Are you a person with a disability or not?
Are you a member of this club or not?
If you wrote that down, keep it in front of you.
If you didn't write it down, reflect on those things that you said.
Know that we are going to provide some content.
Why did we ask the yes/no questions at the beginning?
Well, there was a reason for that.
Those questions come from the literature, the attitude in the literature, the conceptual
literature that says, when you ask society anonymously, "What do you really think about
disability?"
they'll still say largely negative things.
The themes tend to be: pity, hero, tragic, burden and asexual.
Those folks with disabilities aren't sexual, are they?
And guess what?
If they are, they shouldn't be.
You know why?
We might hurt ourselves.
We got more important things to worry about, right?
By golly, I'm a dwarf.
How can I make time for sex?
Doesn't take that long.
[audience laughs]
Contrary to our fantasies.
>> LINDA MONA: Well, it depends on that one, right?
Sorry.
>> JULIE WILLIAMS: That's true.
And thirdly, worst yet, they might make more.
And we can't have that.
Hero, why is hero such a problem?
Why is it a problem to be seen as inspirational?
Well, it isn't always a problem.
But it can be a problem.
It can be one of the micro-aggressive statements that you don't quite know.
Why did it hit me wrong?
So, bookstore story, right?
I have a bookstore story.
Dr. Williams is having a Saturday morning with coffee, looking at books, walking around
minding my own business -- enjoying the Saturday.
A man comes over, gets down on one knee.
I could hear the angels chirping in the background.
He says -- and you know, you can feel it.
You get a radar.
You feel them coming.
He says, "It's just so great to see you out.
You are so inspirational to me, and so brave.
This must be so hard."
I don't think it's nearly as hard for me as it is for you.
All right, his response was, "How dare you talk to me that way, I'm just trying to be
nice."
So now we are talking – game on – let's talk!
I appreciate you feeling me on that one.
I get some push back on the hero one and the inspirational one.
Ok.
>> LINDA MONA: Can I go back and talk about inspiration for a moment?
Because we are so inspiring.
I am not, she is.
There is a food chain hierarchy on disability.
Somebody challenged me.
Somebody from the disability community challenged me, because I've always had this -gasp- reaction.
It is those moments that when I meet someone and within two minutes, they state "Wow, you
are here!"
OK.
You know life is hard.
It's not all that easy.
I have lived a day before I get down here in the morning for consolidated meetings.
It feels like a day because it takes a long time.
It takes a long time to get ready.
So, someone challenged me and said, What if they are inspired by the work you do?
Maybe it is that way some times.
Maybe it's not all this feeling about.
They just can't believe you got out of bed and you are being a productive person.
I can take that.
And I can take it, and it does feel good to be acknowledged for our work, as you all feel
acknowledged for your work.
And for those of you from diverse backgrounds, when you have been on committees and you feel
like you are kind of there representing your community, and you are representing so much
that you never get your professional ideas in because you are "representing;" "representing"
– so it's just that balance�