Occupation
Daughter/Sister/Social Worker
Risk Factor
Cancer/Respiratory Illness/Tracheostomy
“It’s strange to me that ‘perfect health’ is this benchmark or standard because it’s not a real thing; nobody is 100% healthy. But when the notion of perfect health is the standard, people think that anything less than perfect health is not ‘normal’ and is therefore cast aside. It’s baffling to me that some people think that someone’s health or circumstances make them less of a person. The fact is, there are so many different levels of ‘normal’; I don’t have an airway that functions properly and that’s just my ‘normal’. That’s how I’ve always lived. I was born with my airway issues, and had a tracheostomy placed at age 12 as a result. So it’s just been the way that I go through the world. My health issues are part of my ‘normal’. I know what it’s like to feel disrupted and to be aware of how everything around me can influence my health. What this pandemic has made obvious is that some people’s ‘normal’ is that they’ve never experienced disruption, and they’ve never had to be concerned about harm to their health and well-being. They don’t know what it’s like to live with disruption and it’s jarring to them. I hope, at the minimum, we’re all coming out of this understanding that we all are living different lives. We all have different ‘normals’ and that doesn’t make any of us less than anyone else.”
