INTRODUCTION

I was born with severe bilateral hip dysplasia in 1965. This skeletal deformity caused me to walk with an exaggerated limp and prevented me from participating in physical activities that required running and jumping, but I’ve never considered myself disabled. Many people wanted to assign me that label over the years, but I genuinely believe that I am still walking to this day because I refused to be put in a category that would, by its name, deter me from trying to rise above it. While it’s clear that I am ‘physically challenged,’ that label also carries with it a sense of defeat and an acceptance of victimhood, neither of which encourages anyone to strive for healing.

​

I grew up in a home with a high level of codependency and behavioural dysfunction that had a severe negative impact on my and my siblings’ mental health. My sister was an addict before her nineteenth birthday, and my brother tried to commit suicide when he was eighteen. He lived through the first attempt but succeeded on January 8, 2011, two weeks before his 52nd birthday and only a few hours after I told him I was moving to a new city.

​

My first orthopedic surgery at nine years old caused severe and life-altering physiological and emotional trauma. Then, at ten years of age, a family member began sexually molesting me. The sexual abuse continued for several years and had lasting negative emotional health consequences that created various issues in every relationship I entered – work and personal - and took decades to resolve. I was raped twice by two different adult men before my fifteenth birthday. One rapist was a friend of my molester – big surprise there, I know, and the other was an off-duty policeman for whom one of my friends babysat.