By Beth Livingston
In 1989, I had arrived. I had recently completed my undergraduate studies at Parsons School of Design in New York City and had moved across the country to start a new adventure. My husband George and I were married 3 years earlier. We were committed to living in the Rocky Mountains, and Bozeman, Montana, was our chosen destination.
After settling into town, finding a place to live, and securing employment, life began to settle into normalcy. We made a few new friends, got to know our neighbors, and began making our rented turn-of-the-century farmhouse comfortable.
Things were going my way, going just as I had scripted them. Yet, I had an uneasy feeling that there was something dreadful looming on the horizon. Something that I could not elicit in any rational fashion, yet a palpable feeling that my unfettered “salad days” were numbered.
On August 7 that summer, I awoke from a frightening dream. My father was mountain climbing in Switzerland at the time, and I dreamed that he fell, landed on his back and was seriously injured. Concerned, I phoned my mother to see if she had any word from my father and brother. “A few days ago,” she assured me, “and they were fine. If anything had happened, I’m sure we would know immediately.”
My mother and I spoke of current events and I ended the conversation saying I would phone again soon. I had a few errands in town to do, I said, and had to run.
I loaded my two dogs into the back of my Isuzu Trooper, jumped in and started heading down the driveway. Turning onto the road in front of my house I began to buckle up. Struggling to engage my seatbelt I took my foot off the gas pedal and looked down to find the other end of the seatbelt. In doing so, I inadvertently began drifting into the irrigation ditch on the side of the road. I felt a dip, and as I looked up, I was headed down a steep embankment. My instincts told me to turn the wheel and drive out of the ditch. Within seconds of my decision to do so, my life, and that of those whom I loved dearly, would be changed forever.
My car flipped one and a half times. As I was being ejected from the front windshield, I broke my back on the steering wheel. The car came to rest on it’s side, and I was lying next to it’s underbelly, my feet practically touching the front wheels, still rolling. The miracle was that the car didn’t roll right over me. I knew immediately that I was paralyzed, although, I had no grasp of what that really meant. I had no concept that it would be forever, that I would not go back to my job as a waitress, and that I would no longer stand and walk with out adaptive technology. I had no way of grasping the gravity of my situation nor that I was entering into the greatest challenge of my life.
I was injured almost 17 years ago, when I was 24 years old. Paralysis has followed me through the birth of three beautiful children, and the death of one. It has become a second skin, and a ball and chain. I have struggled to join mainstream America in the pursuit of motherhood, largely, with no road map. I’ve had to teach myself how to care for an infant from a chair, how to set boundaries for toddlers when you can’t chase them down and how to keep moving forward through grief, frustration, and a sense of isolation, finding joy at the end. I have struggled as a young woman to define how I see myself as attractive and desirable in a world filled with images of women impossible to duplicate without an airbrush and cosmetic surgery. I have learned to be resourceful, and to be self-reliant. I continue to learn acceptance for being in a chair.
It is an ongoing process.
Beth Livingston, who is currently training in Nordic skiing for the 2006 Paralympics in Torino, Italy, is the mother of two children. She lives in Bozeman, Montana.
Meet Our Members
Beth Livingston of Bozeman, Montana, has been a United Spinal member since May 2005. She is mother of son Parker, 14, and daughter Lila, 9.
Beth is employed by Home Depot in the Olympic Job Opportunities Program. She is also an Ambassador for Patagonia, the outdoor clothing retailer, where she provides product testing and development.
Beth teaches skiing to other individuals with disabilities through her local disabled outdoor recreation center, EagleMount (www.eaglemount.org or 406-586-1781). She competed in the 2002 Paralympic Games in Salt Lake in Nordic skiing and is currently training to compete in the 2006 Paralympic Games in Torino, Italy.
“I have enjoyed being a member of United Spinal and receiving the monthly magazine,” she says. “It has given me a renewed interest in advocacy by keeping me abreast of current issues and legislation relating to SCI.” Beth is also author of a new column for Action, “Growing Pains.”
it is fair to say tht the vast majority of people go through struggles in life. I cannot understand why the struggles of “disabled athletes” are somehow more valid and thus, more publishable than just a regular person with a non-glamerous life. There is an awful lot of disabled people who are tired of the “para celebrities” tales of their heroism. These people think they have some sort of franchise on virtue and insight. In reality, they are just ego freaks that happen to be in chairs.
Marie,
I don’t read Beth’s story as a self-glorification, or I wouldn’t have asked her to write it. In fact, it’s her whole life story that interested me. She is not “just” an athlete. She’s a single mom of two children (who became a mother after her injury), a career woman, a divorcee, and an athlete. In short, she is an ordinary person. Not a hero–and certainly not an ego freak.
I hope you’ll give her story a chance, and maybe you’ll be interested in telling your own story.
Chris
Hi Marie,
I’m just itching to get in on this one. It would seem logical to assume that there are proportionately as many inflated egos riding in wheelchairs as there are pounding shoe leather. They seem to come in all sizes regardless of how their owners move about. Over the years I have been acquainted with a large number of public or self proclaimed “para celebritiesâ€, “wheeled wonders”, “rolling royalty”, or whichever tag you may prefer. My experiences with these individuals has been as follows:
They are amongst the first to step up and deal with the issues at hand. Most give freely of their time and knowledge as peers to the newbies and wannabes, imparting skills and knowledge that your therapist cannot begin to teach you. They elevate the standard and set the mark in public view. They have helped to put a new and much more positive public face on disability.
Whether the “para celebrities†be wheelchair athletes, disabilities advocates, or any of the Annie Averages who are just trying to deal with the daily grind, they have all by their efforts made a positive contribution. When any person with a disability wins the public misperceptions lose. We all set our own personal standards. The prize when we think we have met or exceeded those standards is a couple of self induced cranks on the ego inflater. Your so called “para celebrities†have met their own standards and those of the public. Therefore, they get a couple of extra inflation boosters on the house. In most cases it’s well deserved.
As for Beth and her story- Do I consider Beth a para-celebrity? No, not really. Just one more person who had the desire to set their personal standards higher than the seat of their wheelchair. So if Beth hits the mark in public then misperceptions regarding disabilities takes a hit. That’s the point you may be missing in all of this. This isn’t really about ego prowess or self aggrandizement. It’s about an interesting story with a very poignant message. The message being- Disability is not the great deterent that many think it is or that some let it become. Everyone, with or without a disability has potential and inherent worth. You set how high you want to fly and you go for it. That works for me, and it seems like it’s working out for Beth.
Hand me the crank, this one is on me Beth.
Well said, Ziggi!
[...] Just months before I was injured in a car accident (see Growing Pains, “Chronicles of a Young Woman Coping with Paralysis,†in the January Action), I had relocated to Bozeman, Montana, from the East Coast. I was still settling in, so to speak, when I caught a Med-Jet to the trauma center in Chicago in August 1989. Returning home to Bozeman in November was bittersweet. [...]