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Thank you so much for sharing your story. Although not disabled myself, it has helped me look through the different hardships I've gone through over the years.

"I was advantaged in never knowing any other way to be."

I love this quote and completely agree. Reminds me of the quote "It's better to not have, then have, and then get it taken away" (or something to that extent). Sometimes I fall down the rabbit hole of having and not having, but pull myself out before I begin to despair on the subject. This thought process had helped me with that. Thank you.

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Teri, I’m so honored to have inspired this excellent post. You have a way of telling a story so tightly and concisely that I find very challenging for myself. Brevity is not my strong suit, lol.

There’s much to digest here - the perspective of never having known a different life, the misguided behaviors of those who influenced you early on, the wondering that “would these adults have done better by you if you were being raised in today’s world?” (maybe in some ways and most likely not in others).

I love your deep candor when said you probably would have been an asshole if you did not have your disability. That you didn’t become one is definitely something to be thankful for 😁

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Amy, I am glad you liked the post. And I appreciate your comments about the “tightness” of my writing. Over all of these years, that seems to be a consistent trait of mine.

I think one thing that happens for me is that while I do want to write about these topics, part of me feels as though it is madness to go down the “what if this hadn't happened” road.

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Yeah, that’s definitely a road to tread carefully, if at all.

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