by Kris Ann Piazza
As a woman living with a cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) for the past 25 years, I’m finding the age of 37 to be personally fulfilling and professionally satisfying. I love being a woman, but God knows, it was not easy becoming one!
The evolution from girlhood to womanhood is never easy, but sustaining an SCI at the age of 12 made the transition even more difficult for me. Don’t misunderstand me. The injury was not the problem; it was the way people responded to it that made me stumble willynilly through adolescence on my way to becoming a woman. And the scarcity of public information on the subject made it worse.
At age 12, I still thought babies came from the belly button! No one had ever discussed the birds and bees with me, and after my injury I don’t think anyone ever intended to. Initially, I wasn’t interested in sex questions anyway. I just wanted to know if a boy would ever want to kiss me, marry me or think I’m still cute. The responses I got were less than clear, and I soon realized that my loved ones were avoiding my questions because they were worried that I wasn’t going to like the answers they believed to be true. They were as new to SCI as I was, and none of us could really imagine Prince Charming was on his way to slay my dragon.
Even my rehabilitation team was not very helpful on what I could expect from the opposite sex. They argued that it wasn’t important to worry about when getting on my feet (figuratively speaking, anyway) was still so critical. Their shortsightedness was deeply destructive to my young psyche. Human beings naturally crave companionship. They need to be and feel loved. Without the prospect of a mutually satisfying personal relationship, the world just seems too large and lonely—and not worth getting up for every morning.
So there I was, 12 years old and lost in the manic turmoil of pre-teen hormones without hope of ever discovering the mysteries of “doing it.” It was depressing. I passed the next few years learning how to cope with SCI while my body slowly matured into adulthood—and being a female adult is a far cry from being a woman. The mechanics of reproduction and the growth of mammary glands do not signify anything but gender, and womanhood is much more than that.
The art of being a woman comes from within, born of confidence that develops when one feels valued. After SCI, knowing one’s place in the world is easier said than done. Statistically, SCI is a man’s domain.
Much of the information I sought all those years ago spoke to the male with SCI. Even today women account for just 20 percent of SCIs in the United States, so we remain in the minority. I’ve read enough dry articles on “sex and the SCI woman” to choke on their dusty, antiquated perspective of what it takes to make a woman revel in her womanhood. Men with SCI have been scientifically studied from head to toe, with results published far and wide on their sexuality, the psychological impact of SCI on manhood and more. I don’t begrudge them that, but where are the studies on women in similar categories? Yes, of course they are happening, but certainly not at the same level as our counterparts are studied.
Experimentation. Education. Self-awareness. These are the tools that I used to help me carefully step into the role of woman when there was no guidance from role models with my kind of injury. By taking chances, I learned that people were far more receptive to me than I had imagined they would be. My confidence began to grow, and eventually being a woman became effortless. Soon my paralysis took a back seat to the fact that I am a woman, passionate and strong. Most women with SCI are; they just have to be reminded of that after injury.
Kris Ann Piazza, a former Ms. Wheelchair New York, is a writer, motivational speaker and medical editor from Buffalo, New York.
