On The Journey Towards Accepting my Disability

Self-acceptance is not a permanent condition of mind or spirit. I know personally a fellow who seems to everybody else to be "rehabilitated" or "well-adjusted". Most of the time, and especially in the presence of others, he maneuvers quite well, and people can forget that he has "anything wrong" with him. He laughs at times when he stumbles or knocks something over. He also grimaces in pride-pain when doing those same things. Others never know the flare-ups of the war within.
Accepting disabilities is similar to accepting limited abilities, which we all have and wish we did not. This friend of mine can do many surprising things; he has abilities. But when the wave of anger or frustration comes, what he cannot do outweighs in his mind all that he can do. The "disability" then seems wrong and ugly, and nobody else seems to have any limitations at all.
Self-acceptance takes patience. Waiting to see how a "disability" will become an "ability" and something to celebrate takes patience. The problem is that patience is not necessarily accompanied by calm acceptance. When the flight attendant thanks you for being patient after you have been seated in the plane on the runway for over an hour, you don't feel patient, but remaining seated is a patient act.
Accepting any limitation takes time, and we occasionally run out of patience, but the celebration is always what we do with what we actually have. Little by little those waves of unacceptance recede, and there are more and more times of doing and being, which are graces and celebrations of God's creative artistry.

- Fr. Larry Gillick, S.J.