Hello Dina, nice to meet you. :)  I agree with you.... People
become strong, resilient, humorous, adaptive etc through life
experience.  By simply HAVING CP we are fighters- we have to be,
we live with pain, prejudice etc.  Even if we passed through
life without experiencing poverty/abuse/other
illness/discrimination etc we would still be the strong people
that we are today, because as you say we have fought to survive.
The fact is, though, that many of those things
(abuse/discrimination etc) are almost secondary effects of
having a disability, so it's a bit of a double whammy, if you
like.  We become desensitised to a certain extent, it's a
survival mechanism.

As well as having CP, I've experienced various forms of abuse,
physical and emotional.  The other day a friend rang me in
tears, saying "something awful has happened."  My experiences
have defined my understanding of "awful" so a moment of panic
gripped me where I thought to myself  "Oh my god, she's been
raped, or she's been in a car accident, or her family have
disowned her......"  When she told me that she only got 65% for
history, I could only laugh at her and say "So you mean
nothing's actually WRONG?"!!!  I think everybody on this list
has a fantastic sense of perspective on things, and that
wonderful humour which can get us through, esp. if we go through
it together, rather than falling into that trap of thinking
we're all alone, nobody knows what it's like, etc etcc....

Cheers,
emma

>Hey, Joanne,
>
>This is the same story many of us share. Rayna, thank you for
putting it so
>eloquently into words. Many of our families just don't know how
to appreciate
>our "special side." This is one of the reasons why we have so
much pain and
>anger in general inside of us. We fought to survive from day
one and have
>accomplished so much despite the fact that many of our parents
were told the
>same thing over and over again: "Don't hope so much, or s/he
will be a
>vegetable or put them into an institute, and, etc." Or the
opposite is also
>true. They may have been told that there was no damage and that
we would be
>fine and it wasn't so.
>
>In any event, it's good to have parents like yourself who know
how to
>appreciate their little ones and make their lives different
from ours right
>from the beginning. :-)
>
>Many of us have grown up with verbal and emotional abuse, and
that's why we
>have to have our great sense of humor and our wits about us so
that we can
>survive and continue to fight in addition to living with
physical pain when
>it affects us as well. :-)
>
>Having CP means that we are fighters and determined to make the
best of life,
>no matter what happens and yeah, we have our good moments, and
our good
>jokes. :-)
>That's what makes this list so special. We know we have our
friends that we
>can share our feelings and hopes with and vent with when we
nee