Molly's Zone

Jessica Niziolek Freelance Blogger, Founder/Writer of The Abler Blog 9.12.17 Welcome to My Story My name is Jessica. I am 35 years old. I was born with Spastic Hemiplegia Cerebral Palsy which affects the left side of my body. By the age of four, I was put into a wheelchair. I had a major growth spurt which threw off my center of gravity, and I never regained the ability to walk on my own again. In school, I flourished and by the time I graduated from high school in 2001 I had a 4.0 GPA, making high honors all 4 years of high school  was mainstreamed in all but two classes by my senior year. When I graduated high school, I struggled with the reality of how the world and the state in particular treated young adults with disabilities. The assumption that all disabilities are the same was a rude awakening, and the way they abandon ship the moment you’re placed in a job, or position where things are settled for the time being and then that’s it, you’re on your own. It wasn’t ...

“This is it; there's no going back now,” I thought, as I stared at the two words that typically struck fear into my heart. Cerebral palsy. My diagnosis -- the secret to which I had clung for much of my life -- now hovered above a published piece of writing.  A piece of writing centered around my personal experiences living with mild cerebral palsy.  A piece of writing that -- unbeknownst to me at the time -- would transform my perception of my body forever. I, like many other women, have had a fraught relationship with my body for the majority of my life.  From a young age, I internalized messages from the media about the “ideal” woman’s body -- the type of body society prizes. Tall.  Slender.  Symmetrical. Able-bodied. Despite my understanding that one particular body type was perceived as the ideal, I have long found beauty in all bodies -- with the glaring exception of my own.  I have always been tall, long-legged and slender -- outwardly,...

How I'm Moving Forward with Cerebral Palsy One Step at A Time July 18, 2017 | Juliana Ruggiero My name is Juliana Ruggiero; I’m 18 and have spastic cerebral palsy. My story begins in 1999. I was a fragile preemie who weighed only 3.10 pounds. My parents were not able to hold me when I first came out; I was taken away to the NICU as soon as I was born. I was on a breathing machine and closely monitored by a team of doctors until I was stable enough and my lungs were developed enough to function on their own. Not even a few days into being in the world, I had a stroke and my brain bled inside. Doctors thought it was nothing, but the neurologist on call that night didn’t believe it and wanted to do an ultrasound on my head just to be sure. At just 4 days old, I got the ultrasound done, and the results were not what my parents and family wanted to hear. “There’s a black spot and a bleed on your daughter’s brain,” th...