This year on the 18th of November I turn 18 which is both so exciting and absolutely terrifying at the same time. I thought to mark this I would share 18 lessons I’ve learned growing up that have shaped me into the person I am today while also telling you a little more about my childhood and my life experiences. I originally wanted to do this chronically however I can’t actually remember being a baby so we’ll just go off what I can remember.
#1: Things just happen & that’s ok
For anyone who doesn’t know, my cerebral palsy is a result of a medical error. Growing up, I always thought my disability was just a thing I was randomly born with so when I was old enough to fully process that I had my condition as a result of human error I was obviously pretty upset about it. Looking back on that now though I don’t really feel any particular way towards it – my life would be completely different without my disability to a point that it wouldn’t have been mine. Every detail down to the friends I have to the house I live in would be different and there would never be an able-bodied version of Melissa that could’ve achieved the things I have (writing a book, blogging, etc).
#2: Going to a special nursery was right for me despite moving to mainstream education
My parents had a limited knowledge of disability before I came along so upon professional advice they decided to send me to a nursery for children with disabilities. While I did end up in mainstream school, I think that nursery was a great fit for me and allowed me to develop without even being aware I was any “different” from anyone else. I also want to say well done to anyone who had the pleasure of working with me at that age because I was extremely full-on. Some of my favourite memories from nursery are when I refused to play a mouse on the day we were performing the nativity and as a result of this the nativity that year had a Star of the north and a star of the south. I also wrote my first book at nursery about my favourite Teddy Emma being eaten by a Lion and my dad and my nursery teacher having to save her (looking back the fact she was saved by two men isn’t the most feminist but I was 3 so I’ll let it slide). Nursery was a brilliant time in my life and I’m so glad that my parents chose to send me there.
#3: Taking a leap of faith is often worth it
After my first year of special primary school my parents decided that I should attend mainstream. We had already moved from a house with stairs to a bungalow nearer my older sister’s primary school and after Christmas time of primary 1, I was still on the same reading book I’d been on since August – knowing I had no intellectual difficulties, my parents took the leap of deciding I would restart Primary 1 at the mainstream school my sister attended. While I was gutted to leave that school and didn’t fully understand the reasons for my parents decisions I’m so glad that they did because mainstream education changed my life for the better.
#4: Getting carers allowed me to socially develop so much
I’ve never really discussed it on my blog before but from a very young age my parents used a care agency and this meant I would be taken out for lunch or dinner or go to soft play with a carer. I had carers from a really young age and only recently I switched from using an agency to having one PA that only works for me. I’ve had so many carers throughout my life – some of them I’d have for a few months, some of them I’d have for years – and I would always have a few favourites that when they eventually got new jobs and left I would be really upset. As I got older, I was more able to get to know my carers and the relationships I had with them was always something really valuable and meant I was way more confident when meeting new people because I was used to it.
#5: Gymnastics changed my life and is such a huge part of my childhood
I started gymnastics at age 4 and it’s probably one of the biggest constants in my life. My parents sent me to a recreational disability gymnastics class because I couldn’t walk yet and the floor was bouncy enough that I could fall over without hurting myself. I originally had a one-to-one helper in the recreational class as well which really helped me to feel included in all the activities even though I couldn’t walk. Once I got older I started training with the Rythmic Gymnastics squad which is hilarious because Rythmic Gymnastics is all about balance and coordination which I had neither of but I’ve always had the most supportive coaches who were always adapting things to suit me. I’ve even been able to compete on national levels as well which despite never really having anyone to compete with gave me so much confidence. My squad has always been mostly people with Down Syndrome which has been really interesting because we have all bonded over the years despite having very different conditions and they constantly challenge my perception of people with learning difficulties which I’m so grateful for. Gymnastics has given me a place to grow up and express myself and if you’re following my blog you’ll know I have recently trained as a Rythmic coach which has actually reignited my love for the sport.
#6: Feeling a disconnect from your identity is ok!
Imagine being 6 years old at primary school, looking around, and suddenly realising you are the only person that uses a special chair or a walking frame in the entire school. Up to that point I didn’t really have any self-awareness so when I started to notice that I was different it made me feel incredibly upset and angry. I don’t really think I had grasped the concept of being disabled because at my nursery everyone was disabled so it wasn’t really a thing that made me any different to anyone else. After the realisation that I was different and I was always going to be different, I took a while to accept that rather than being angry about it.
#7: My first friendships
Although I did have friends at my special school, I would say my first real friends were the ones I made in my first few years of primary school. I was a fairly outgoing kid and I was lucky to be in a school where people were initially like “OMG she’s disabled!!!” And then they would just accept it and we would chat and I was never really made to feel different. My luck with the friends I chose wasn’t great; my first best friend moved away in Primary 4 and we never really stayed in touch, my next one who became attached to me by the hip moved away in Primary 7 which destroyed me (we still keep in touch but the friendship we had obviously changed as we did) but I was fortunate enough to also have a best friend who has stuck with me from Primary 3 right through to now and her total acceptance of my disability has taught me so much and even helped me accept myself.
I always liked having just the one girl best-friend in Primary because I found one-on-one communication much easier.
#8: Therapy is great
Around the time I’d started mainstream, I also started getting private therapy at CP Scotland which was a life-changing experience for me. I had a community OT and Physiotherapist who I had worked with since birth but starting intensive blocks of therapy really changed the game for me. While I wasn’t initially keen on physiotherapy the therapists always made things fun and as a result of that I learned to walk at age 5. I’d always enjoyed occupational therapy though as it usually involved toys or fun games to try and get me using my hands properly. I know a lot of people who didn’t enjoy therapy when they were younger but I always enjoyed it and liked the challenges I’d be given. I didn’t receive as much speech therapy aside from the speech therapist at nursery who didn’t really help me speak and told me not to eat jelly or I’d choke to death (I didn’t follow her advice and have had no jelly related trauma thus far). I had a few blocks of speech therapy at CP Scotland but it was always really difficult to get referred for speech. As well as all this, I’d done some hippotherapy (the horse one) and hydrotherapy at nursery but once I’d left the special school everything was up to us.
#9: Disability education matters
In primary 5 when I was around 9 years old, I decided I wanted to do a talk to my primary school about cerebral palsy. I knew that despite everyone getting on with me people didn’t really understand my CP so I spoke to some of the teachers and they helped me put together an assembly for the older kids to talk about my disability. Looking back on it, I’m so proud of my primary school for supporting me to do that because not only did it mean I could educate my peers from my own experiences but it gave me so much confidence to speak for myself and be proud of having a disability. The best bit by far of this assembly was when I had my best friend at the time role-playing as a peer who patronised me during a fictional lunchtime by saying “yummy yummy brussel sprouts!” to demonstrate how not to speak to disabled people.
#10: The end of an era – things change!
In the summer of 2018, I finished primary school. I knew that I was on the cusp of great change and this absolutely terrified me. One of my best friend’s had left a few months to the end of the year to go to a different secondary school and her absence hit me really hard. As well as grieving the loss of my friend I was also heartbroken to leave primary school as it was such a positive time in my life and I wasn’t prepared for the immense transition into secondary school.
#11: Fighting for what you believe in is always worth it
The Secondary School my primary school fed into didn’t have a lift so once the council realised that I was planning to go to Secondary School with the rest of my peers, they tried everything to convince my parents to send me elsewhere. My older sister had started at the local Secondary School two years before I was set to go and she was absolutely loving her time there which further convinced us it was the place for me. After many tense meetings with the education department it was decided I could attend the school but I would need an electric wheelchair and my classes would have to be downstairs. This was such a difficult time for my parents and I can’t express the amount of gratitude I have that they fought for me to be able to attend Secondary school with everyone else in my year.
#12: growing up is hard.
I have never been more anxious than the night before starting Secondary School. It’s like I knew exactly how difficult the following six years would be even though I was just a twelve year old. The first year of Secondary I spent being so insecure that I was disabled that I avoided speaking in front of my peers most days, I was awful to the assistants because I saw them as something that deterred people from speaking to me and I essentially became a completely diluted version of myself. I have a lot of regrets from back then because I do believe if I had the confidence then that I have now I might’ve really enjoyed it but I don’t think anyone can honestly say they wouldn’t change anything about their twelve year old self. Although I became much more confident as I got older and I decided to embrace having assistants and developed close relationships relationships with them; my experience at Secondary School never really became enjoyable. I struggled a lot socially (and still do) which resulted in me being pretty excluded from my year group.
#13: Doodle!
Let’s take a brief intermission from the traumatic experience that was 4th year in secondary school and talk about one of my biggest accomplishments. It all started with a conversation with one of the support workers at school, I was talking about the lack of minority representation in children’s media when my assistant out of the blue suggested writing a children’s book. Now, it’s very dangerous for people to suggest things like this in passing to me because I will just do it. Almost immediately after she suggested it I had gotten my iPad out and began drafting the story. There was a member of staff who worked at the learning resource centre for pupils with autism who had coincidentally written a children’s book a few years before me, so I asked her all about the process and she was very helpful in showing me how things could happen. I applied for a grant from YoungScot and received £1000 and from there, Doodle the Poodle came into being. The school was even kind enough to let me hold a book launch in their assembly hall and many of the teachers came along to support me. Writing that book changed my life, not because I was selling it, not because I could tell people I was an author but because I felt like I had done something that proved to me that I could and would be able to have a career. I was being ground down by the difficulties I had at school and this reminded me that school was not a true measure of my abilities.
#14: Exams
To bring me right back down from the high that was becoming an author, exams came along. Now, I love my older sister tremendously but as someone with a sibling that got straight As and went on to study medicine – the pressure was on. To clarify, my parents couldn’t care less about my exam results and this “pressure” was entirely from myself. I wanted desperately to be some kind of academic genius when in reality I was a writer/acting kid who whether I was disabled or not wouldn’t have been a straight A student in any universe. The exam board was also not a fan of me – I needed separate accommodation, a scribe (at various points depending on exhaustion levels) and worst of all, extra time. I’m an incredibly slow person so when I needed over 50% extra time the qualification authority were not impressed. After many discussions with teachers and the exam board I was allowed extra adjustments but the process of getting these things really knocked my self-confidence as it was often implied that I just needed to try harder which as someone on the verge of a depression due to exhaustion, I didn’t take the implication well. Ultimately though my exams were adjusted (originally the adjustments for my first set of exams wasn’t great but the second set was the best environment it could’ve been).
#15: Becoming a writer (or trying to)
After my exams I decided I needed to focus less on external pressures and more on what I wanted to do in life, who I wanted to become. I’d really enjoyed blogging but my mum had always said I should try and get myself a column in a magazine – I emailed every disability magazine you’ve heard of. I had written a pitch for a column about being a disabled teenager (this was probably the first time I’d ever used the persuasive writing techniques they made us do at school). When I get it in my head that I want to do something, nothing stands in my way and luckily for me, the editor of Able Magazine thought that my sixteen-year-old anecdotes were good enough to get a regular spot in their magazines. I am beyond grateful for that, as a writer I was able to grow so much but also I had my first job! While most of the kids my age were getting part-time jobs in McDonalds, I could say that I also worked which was something I always feared I could never do.
#16: My Diana Award
If you’ve been following my social media for the past few months, you’re probably sick of hearing about this but in July of this year, I received a Diana Awards. I have spoken numerous times about the actual award so I thought I could share how it felt actually receiving the award at school. As discussed, I put an unhealthy amount of academic pressure on myself because I’m a perfectionist. In saying that, I’ve never been the perfect student (unrelated to my disability, I’m just kind of disorganised) and I’ve never really felt like I had a place at school. I don’t have any proper friends at my school and I’m not really part of any of the extracurricular stuff. So this year at the awards night when I received my Diana Award and they read out all of my achievements within writing, I felt this overwhelming acceptance and appreciation from my school that I never expected to feel. My school are genuinely very supportive of me (I’m not just saying that in case they’re reading this) but to have my work acknowledged alongside all these academic accomplishments that I just wouldn’t be able to achieve was really special.
17: My assistant
In April of 2022, after years of my mother suggesting I employ a personal assistant and me being terrified that it would mean giving up my independence, I employed a my assistant. There was something so perfect about the fact that she was only 19-years-old and I was 16 that meant we could really relate to each other and have this really beautiful friendship. My assistant is more like an older sister to me than an associate as when my real sister moved out to go to university, I relied on my assistant a lot for company. My assistant is also studying to become an occupational therapist which means we’re always teaching each other things and experimenting with ways for me to become more independent together. I’m so glad I listened to my mum on this one.
#18: Here we are!
If you’ve made it all the way through this blog post well done (and I hope you aren’t too traumatised). If you are reading this on the day it comes out then I have just turned eighteen. Who’s ready for the adult Melissa to wreak even more havoc on the world?
To be serious though, I’m extremely grateful for the life that I’ve lead up to now. Things haven’t been straightforward but I have always had an incredible support system around me which has allowed me to grow into the person I am today. Thank you to everyone that has ever read one of my blog posts, thank you for the voice that this platform gives me. For my 18th, I decided to raise some money for Cerebral Palsy Scotland so if you want to donate, there’s a link below:
Buttons and Ramps 