Families are strange beasts, They love, they hate, they judge, they disown and sometimes all before lunch. Parents were told in the time when I was born to give up disabled children, to throw them away and many did. The blame game is a a waste of time, In some countries Catholics disown a child for marrying a Protestant, in others because white love blacks and in most because they dare to be true and come out as gay, lesbian, transgender or any other color of the rainbow spectrum of the gay world.
Some families never change, They never see that they did any wrong and Some see it too late. Suicide amongst gay and lesbian people and even the seriously diabled is a very real problem and some, but very few, see the light and re-embrace the very family they threw away as though they were trash.
My life was like a merry go-round, The first time around I was born epileptic and my parents were told throw me away then As a teen doctors said throw away the child because I was deemed “out of control.,” Then as a adult I spoke out about abuse and they wrote me off. In my thirties I came out as gay, by 40 I was alone.
I met a woman, an American, and a Jew, she had her own problems with bigotry as a child,so We had a meeting of the hearts, but the bonus for me was her family with open arms acccepted me simply because she did. Her mother Rozalya “Rita” Vayner was a Ukrainian born woman who lost large numbers of her loved ones to the Nazi’s and grew up in Russian oppressed, very anti-Jewish Ukraine of the 50’s and 60’s.
Rita escaped to America with her two children and husband, and then single handedly was responsible for bringing several dozen relatives, their spouses and children to the freedom and safety of New York. She housed them, fed them and found them jobs, She did this sometimes herself working three jobs around the clock.
Like all the the families Rita helped she gave me love, acceptance, a home and a future, She gave me people around me that I could once again call family. Rozalya “Rita” Vayner died in 2007 of an ugly disease that is stealing loved ones by the thousand every day it’s called cancer, Her particular type was Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.
I knew Momma’s love for 9 years, When she was sick she used to joke that my food was so good she was adopting me as her daughter, We would laugh together about it and I would ask her each day had she signed the adoption papers yet. Momma would say every day she couldn’t find a pen, but on her death bed she whispered she had signed the papers, I was her daughter.
To honor her now, I write as Mia G Vayner. I use her name because if she was alive god help any woman or child who didn’t respect someone because of their disability, She would have been and was my greatest champion.
Family isn’t always those born from the same parents, Family is who loves you, who cares and who is there to lift you when your down. If your heart is breaking because your family don’t want you, or found your disability more than they can handle, or they can’t love the one you love, It gets better! There is someone for you and you have to wrap your mind around the concept of what family means.
I’m honoring Rita by pushing my wheelchaired ass from New York to Los Angeles to raise money for cancer research. You can honor the family that loves you by being the best you can, by achieving everything. The world lays before you whether disabled, gay, black or white or like some of us a combination of it all. “So live your life so it demands a question,” and who knows one day your mother, father, brothers and sisters might be the very people to ask that question, If they don’t thats okay because the question will be on the lips of so many others Your worth will be carved on the memory of the universe.
Not everyone can roll across a nation, but as long as your life rolls on you’ll roll across someones life and leave a impression they’ll never shake. Your choice is the kind of impression you choose to leave so choose wisely.
Disabled Access Denied ! 