Disability Awareness Week Event Report

This was the 6th annual Disability Awareness Week in JMU. Throughout this week, JMU hosted a series of speeches, workshops and activities that related to the disability services, advancing the legacy of James Madison. And I joined one of the events, and watched the keynote speech given by Maysoon Zayid on Monday night, which was so inspiring me.

Zayid is a positive people. When Zayid walked to the chair on the stage, no one could ignore her shaking arms, legs, even sometimes and her whole body. I suddenly felt so sorry for her, because this disability would definitely affected her life and her career a lot. But her speech changed my thought.

When she started her speech by making jokes on herself, telling us this was called cerebral palsy and she shakes all the time. She even used Taylor Swift’s “shake it off” to make jokes on her shaking body. However, I totally immersed in her inspiring speech and we laughed so hard on her story of humors.

Also, she mentioned about that once she went to visit Disneyland with friends several years ago. At that time, she entered in all the game programs without waiting in line, because she was sitting in a wheel chair, and those tons of visitors were so admired she had a wheel chair. Later she told us that this was her first time thinking that disabled finally becoming an advantage in her life. But just a few years later, the Disneyland ended that policy for disability people, by saying that disabled won’t have the privilege of getting in the game earlier than others. That made Zayid so sad. But from the description that Zayid gave us, I saw her positive energy and didn’t frustrated by having CP, instead, she felt good about it.

From the following speech, she also said,” I got 99 problems… palsy is just one.” Which was reminding me of thinking if I were a disabled people, what I would think of myself. Will I become that positive for my life? Will I become an influential people to make