The Children's Ability Fund

The pandamonium is something I struggled with last year and I continue to struggle with this year. It's not fundraising. I don't mind asking people for money, although I'm not so good at approaching strangers. It's that no one knows that I'm fundraising until it's over and done. There's no public record of my goals or intentions or of my passion for the difference I'm making in people's lives.

Sifu Brinker challenged us to three acts of engagement a day. So I've been making my efforts. He suggested a long time ago to choose one charity that really speaks to you and stand behind that one for your fundraising. I really struggled with that. I think all the charities we support make great impacts on the communities they serve. I'm (I think) a very compassionate and empathetic person and I want people to see the merits of every charity we support. I mean come on... Sending girls to school in Malawi, rescuing cute lovable animals, educating people about the role of wolves in their own ecosystem and the possible synergy of our species, or helping homeless people in Kathmandu.  But, most people don't want to spend the time to really listen or the energy to really care.

So I spent a lot of time really thinking about the charities and studying them. The Children's Ability Fund is the one that I can really feel the most empathy towards. The past year I went from fully paralyzed, to learning to feed myself again. I distinctly remember the first time my physiotherapist helped me sit up in bed, and I still think it was one of the scariest things I had to go through during my recovery. After I was able to sit up on my own, they used a power lift to get me in and out of my wheelchair because I couldn't yet stand. The wheelchair I had while at the Glenrose gave me so much freedom to really move around on my own, and when I was ready, I moved onto a walker, and moved out of the hospital shortly after. I took my walker home and I had to have a bath seat so I could shower on my own because I couldn't stand for so long and I didn't have great balance.

As much as I was happy to move on from all of these things, I can still appreciate the huge difference it all made to my quality of life. The freedom to go outside on a beautiful day, the freedom to bathe on my own, and the freedom to move through my house and actually do things for myself. I read many of the stories of the clients of the Children's Ability Fund. Many of them are severely disabled and without the help of this charity, they wouldn't be able to have that same quality of life. Some of them would be bedridden, or stuck in their homes with the burden of the cost of equipment left to their families. I know that burden, and it's certainly not one that a child should have to bear.