Jack’s Jottings: Special Olympics Recap

My dear readers, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I keep thinking about all the activists who have fought to have their struggles acknowledged. In this humble journalist’s mind, there is one group that needs more representation, and that’s the disability group. We need help accepting ourselves, too. Now, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with horseback riding? Well, I found that from my own experience, nothing makes me feel more represented or prouder to be who I am than riding a horse. The horses do not judge, and the volunteers help to accommodate us. When I think about therapeutic riding, I think about how represented I feel. I think about how proud I feel. But everyone eventually feels some self-shame in one way or another.

Before my first Special Olympics competition, I was thinking to myself: Do I deserve to be here? What if the other riders’ support needs don’t align with mine? What if they have too high of support needs or too low, and I feel like an outsider? So, then I started writing*, which always makes me feel better, and I had an epiphany: none of us would be who we are without our disabilities. So, whichever stage you are in life, whether it be acceptance or shame, all of those are completely natural feelings. It makes us who we are.

As a kid, I was really into superheroes. I still am. My favorite team of heroes was the X-Men. They were all judged for having special powers. A few of them grew to resent the world. A few of them realized that they were special and that the world just might not be ready to openly accept that yet. I always identified with the X-Men. I belong with some people. I don’t belong with others. Some people will accept me. Some people won’t. But it is easy to say that when you are with a horse, none of that matters. You just focus on what is ahead of you. See, the X-Men are fictional. Life is not like a comic book, open and shut, or like a movie where the beginning and end are preordained. In life, you have to decide if you are going to accept that it is part of who you are or soak into self-pity, and there is no better way to accept yourself than to go to a barn, befriend a bunch of horses, learn to ride, and make friends.

When the day of the Special Olympics came, was I nervous? Sure, but I had no reason to be. I was in my natural element. I was in the barn. But nobody helped me feel more accepted than Ms. Mary, Mr. Greg, and the horses.

Would I Be Me? (*written the night before Special Olympics)

Would I be me with no disability?

For what you see is built on life,

And life is built on not just experience, but strife.

Nobody here is looking for a cure,

All the trauma, all the strife,

It formed and molded my personality.

So I ask you, would I be me with no disability?

If life is built on strife, if who you are is built on experience,

Than without it, I might as well be another Joe or Moe or Mike or Steve.

So no, I would not be me.

It may not be perfect but it helped form me, Jackson Vaughan-Lee.

Life is complex.

Without strife, there is no life.

There are many factors to what makes me me, you see.

One of them being my disability and for that I thank it for helping me become me.