Tom's Views

[Emmy] and I recently discussed the extra troubles that the   blind   and   vision-impaired must face daily, particularly when growing up in the US foster care system.  One common hardship happens when the foster parents favor blood (their own biological children) over the foster children they care for.  Foster parents can show consistent and at times, relentless favoritism for their own blood over the foster kids. Add to that the difficult of a foster child being a blind girl, and this can further amplify the difficulty of   blood favoritism, and drive the foster parents away from that foster child and toward their own fully sighted biological children. 

My friend [Emmy] wrote this very heartfelt note on my blog about her hardships playing the dual roles of blind girl and foster child.  Raised in the confines of the foster care system for nearly fifteen years, [Emmy] offered some poignant descriptions of her feelings as a foster child, and how sad she felt at times.  I’ve included this letter below.  For the previous part of this discussion, see here.

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Dear Tom,

I agree with you that the blind need more assistance from the government. I know from personal experience how hard life can be. I was placed into the foster care system at a very young age and found it extremely difficult to fit into my foster parents’ biological family. I felt like an outsider because I was blind as well as not being their [biological] child.  I also felt like they were showing favoritism towards their younger child.

My parents have gone through some tragedies of their own, but that still doesn’t change anything. My parents’ younger daughter suffered a horrific sledding accident which left her in a coma for six weeks. Doctors didn’t think that she would make it, but she did. She’s very different from other people because of the accident. She’ll never be able to live on her own or be one with society. Sure, she has a part time job filing papers and that sort of thing but she’ll never be able to provide for herself which is very sad.

I feel sorry for her that she’s different from others but my parents should not have treated her better than me. Just because my sister’s mental capacity isn’t the same as mine doesn’t give my parents the right to favor her over the rest of the foster children they took care of.  I always felt sad when I observed my sister getting to go everywhere with my parents, where I had to sometimes stay at home and baby sit the foster kids.  This didn’t happen all the time but I didn’t like it any better than she did.  In fact what saddens me the most is that my family has a monthly get together where they all go out to eat and spend quality time with one another.  I never went to these dinners due to not being their own child.  I often felt like I should not have been born because even though my foster parents took me in, I felt like I really could never be part of their family.  It’s not fun growing up in a home where you don’t feel like you’re equal with everyone else.  It’s almost like they keep you at a distance from them and their family.  Yes they take care of you and yes they show affection to you but you know that you’ll never be truly theirs as a fourth child that they never had.  Nothing will ever take this pain away from me. 

I would like to be given a chance to be part of someone’s family not because they feel obligated to but because they truly want to.  I believe that my foster family had their heart in the right place in taking me in but how they showed their love and affection towards their kids and to the foster kids were totally different. How I felt towards my sister while growing up is still haunting me to this very day. I know that I will never be able to change what happened to me but how they treated me whether it was a conscious or unconscious decision to put their own kids needs ahead of the foster kids is down right hurtful. 

I’m not trying to make it sound like my parents didn’t care at all about me because that’s not true.  They gave me more than my biological parents would have ever done for me.  I guess I have a lot of resentment for not just my foster parents but for my biological parents as well.  I just feel as though their children were more valuable than the foster kids.  Yes, my mom would express her love to me and showed this by giving me hugs.  I did get rewarded for getting good grades and being a somewhat good kid.  I just wish that I didn’t have to prove myself that I too was a good person despite not being part of their special bond.  It doesn’t matter how much people care about you and offer to add you to their family. Somehow you still feel like you’re not part of the family.  I believe that blood is thicker than water, and it saddens me to say that I will never have a family to call my very own and whom which I can totally feel at peace with and that they can truly except me for me and not to compare me with others.  Even though I was loved by my parents, it never took the insecure feelings away but somehow I managed to move on. That doesn’t mean I’ve actually embraced this pain and insecurity but I’m seeking professional help for it.  It wasn’t my fault that I ended up in the foster care system and it wasn’t their fault for having a good family.  Even though these facts are true, it doesn’t make it right for people to be treated better than yourself just because of a brain injury.  I’m not trying to sound insensitive but talking to my parents about what ales me won’t change anything.  I will just have to accept this.

Fighting to just fit into normal society is bad enough but when you add a visual impairment to the mix, it makes it just as hard to fit in with society. Even getting good medical care has been difficult for me. I suffered with GI problems for quite some time and when I finally got settled in my current apartment, I tried seeing a GI specialist to see if they could run additional tests on me to figure out what was going on with my body. The doctor looked at me as if I was crazy because she asked me if that was really necessary. After hearing that, I never saw that doctor again. She was no help whatsoever because she wanted me to take prescription drugs for the rest of my life.

I decided to be my own doctor and slowly got off the medications. With time and some patience my body resumed to its normal routine. About four months ago I saw an oral surgeon to remove my wisdom teeth. He did this in such a short amount of time, I felt like he rushed the procedure.

The problem with being on some government programs is that not everyone takes your health insurance. You’re very limited in your selection in order to get good quality healthcare. I feel as though they just want your money and that they don’t really want to help you. It’s bad enough that the co payments can be quite expensive. That’s not always the case but it does happen.

Seeking psychotherapy is difficult too because a lot of therapists ask you to pay more than what you can afford. Sandra was very fortunate in getting help for obtaining psychotherapy. Not all blind and visually impaired individuals are that fortunate. It would be nice if the government would step up to help the blind and visually impaired individuals by having funds or just setting up programs that would actually help these people become equal with their sighted counter parts.

Being blind or visually impaired makes it hard to be competitive in the job market. Sure, the ADA has helped a lot with having equal treatment but I believe that we have a long way to go  before we can be equal to others. If we just had more services offered to us in order to better ourselves, we would be a lot better off. 

Also, sighted people have to be educated with the blind and visually impaired.  Yes there are trained professionals who come into the schools and teach the children Braille and mobility skills so that you can learn how to be independent someday.  We could improve this by expanding adults to learning more about the blind and visually impaired and how they can assist us.  We as blind and visually impaired people want to be just like everyone else but most people don’t give us a chance.  They just see our handicap and don’t wish to be bothered with us. I hope that we can turn this around in the future.

[Emmy]

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• More Help for the Blind, Please

Well, I will probably never be convinced that depriving a   drug addict   of   public assistance   money to obtain food and shelter is good policy.  That’s inhumane.  Just consider all those homeless drug addicts living perpetually on the street.  Many have been addicts for two decades or more, left by society to languish and flounder. No one loves them, except in the harsh, neglectful ways of   tough love.  Yet their   drug addictions   persist.  Many will live their whole lives in neglect without ever breaking their addictions.  So, except for a few highly unusual cases, it’s apparent that tough love fails the drug addict.

Proponents of the tough love tactic of denying public assistance to drug addicts, say that depriving food stamps from these addicts would not harm their children any more than they already are, because the children benefit very little from the aid anyhow.  The drug-addicted parents spend virtually all of their welfare check each month on drugs, and very little if any, on caring for their offspring.  But there are degrees of neglect.  Not every addicts totally neglects his children. So, not ALL addicts spend ALL their money on drugs. Some actually do apply some of it to supporting their children.  I’ve known some welfare moms who were also addicts who were not totally neglectful.  For these cases, if the government’s going to take that money away, then they should also assure that the children are taken care of.

12-step programs aren’t available in all areas.  Even in places where such meetings are very close by, many addicts can’t reach them due to lack of transportation funds.  They cannot even afford to take a public bus, and that’s true even for those who receive public assistance.  Plus, the effectiveness of these addiction recovery programs is by no means a hundred percent.  In fact, many addicts do attend them but without good results; some have been going for years.  Yet their addictions persist.  The more expensive programs generally work better but again, they suffer significant failure rates. So, insisting that an addict involve himself in said programs will likely not cure him.  Thus, 12-step programs can by no means substitute for the daily sustaining public funds given to drug addicts.  As these programs often require months or years of work before the addict recovers, how would the addict survive in the interim?  Send the addict to all the recovery programs you wish.  But none of them works quickly.  But if you take away their living funds, the addicts may die before completing said programs.

Also, Jesus Christ doesn’t “save” everyone either.  Religion only works if one has a belief system that supports it.  Such a system develops very early in life if properly nurtured.  However, not all addicts share a religion-based cause & effect beliefs (if you pray to God, he will set you free).  So, it would be inappropriate to make a drug addict’s public assistance contingent upon his following someone’s religious doctrine.  In fact, from what I know of Christ, I don’t believe he would have advocated using tough love against the downtrodden folks he became so famous by helping them.  Could you imagine Christ telling someone who had come to him for help, “Gee, I don’t know.  I think I’ll deny your request because you need tough love.”

Some tough love advocates insist that a drug addict’s persistence in obtaining illegal drugs with their welfare money is another good reason to practice tough love. and withhold these funds.  My response: Yes, addicts often buy illicit drugs with their food stamps.  But this is still no excuse to leave them high and dry, without any public assistance at all.  True, addiction drives them to do destructive things including spending the only money they have for food, on drugs instead.  For these, the state should implement another way to feed them besides giving the stamps (soup kitchens, home-delivered meals, free food programs at fast-food joints, and such).  But since it’s unlikely that you could talk the food industry into subsidizing the drug addict, the answer is therefore not to pull their stamps totally.  Again, that’s pretty heartless.  That’s tough love.

A recovering addict would be well-off compared to most other drug addicts, since he or she has beaten an addiction where the still-suffering have not. But insisting that the tough love solution can (and should) be done by all addicts is reckless, lacks compassion, and is thoughtless.  Just because one methodology works for one person does not imply that it would (or should) work for all.  That’s the basic problem with the tough love argument that supports cutting addicts off from receiving public assistance funds.  I’m truly glad for those addicts who succeed at kicking their drug habits.  But oftentimes, their success leave them lacking in pity and empathy for those whom fortune has yet to endow.  Recovering addicts often advocate the toughest love of all, which is surprising.  How quickly they forget how hard it was for them to beat their own addictions.  But forcing drug addicts to break their addiction via tough love generally fails them, and thus, I oppose this easy-way-out idea.

Tom Hesley

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• Drug Testing For Food Stamps
• Tough Love For Addicts?