We Are Brothers

Hi, I’m Michael, and I’m a stroke survivor.

This week I taught my first Scout weeknight evening. I have been to various Scout and Venturer camps, but this was my first two-hour weeknight meeting, where we had to demonstrate an exercise and take the youth members through it from start to finish.

Carving spoons

The exercise was carving spoons. We give each of them a piece of pine and the process to turn it into a spoon. They have to learn how to use knives, saws and batons, how to read the grain of the wood as they carve, how to use an ember from the fire to burn out the concave face of the spoon, and how to do all of it without injuring themselves or anyone else. If they can grasp this one exercise, they can go on to make bowls and other tools in a survival situation.

The boy in the long socks

There was one youth member I noticed early. He was a little smaller than the rest, in both height and weight, and he wore long socks of a kind I recognised as possibly health related. As I circled the group giving advice and a hand where it was needed, I watched him doing his absolute best. Great attitude.

When I came back around, I noticed he was carving with his arm muscles instead of his back muscles to hold and drive the knife. I asked if he minded me giving him a few pointers. Before I could kneel down in front of him, one of the unit leaders standing beside me said quietly, “He has cerebral palsy, and his arms aren’t strong enough for the method you showed.”

The mark we share

I knelt down and held out my right arm, with my Hidden Disabilities Sunflower wristband, and asked him if he knew the mark. When he said he did not, I explained what it meant. I finished with, “So, I have a disability superpower like you. We are brothers.” And I put my right fist out for a fist pump.

Exactly as we had taught them, he carefully sheathed the knife he was holding and placed it on the ground before giving me an enthusiastic fist pump. Then I showed him a few tricks for using the knife to carve with the wood rather than against it. He looked taller. More confident, having made that connection.

“Can I have a hug?”

When we came to pack up, I was standing by our box, collecting the hand saws and knives to put away. The young man walked over, handed me his knife, and showed me the progress he had made on his spoon.

Then, quite unexpectedly, after I said something positive about his work, he set the spoon down on top of the storage box and asked, “Can I have a hug?” I knelt down, and this young man came into my arms and gave me a strong hug.

The lesson for those of us who hide it

Here is the part I have been turning over since.

If you are driven, your instinct with a disability is to hide it. To look fine. To push through and never let it show. I have written before about the energy that concealment costs. But in that hall, on that night, the most powerful thing I did was the opposite. I made my disability visible. I held out the band, and I named it out loud.

That is the lesson, and it runs against everything a high performer is wired to do. Your visible disability is not only a thing to be managed. It can be the most useful thing you bring into a room. A big, tall survival instructor with a knife on his belt, who is openly inside the disability tent, told that boy something no words could. That you can be capable and disabled at the same time, and that there is nothing to hide.

That is representation, and representation is a form of leadership. It is just as true at work. When the capable, senior person does not hide their disability, everyone below them learns what is possible. You think you are protecting your standing by concealing it. You may be denying someone else the permission they needed.

We are brothers. Wearing the mark where he could see it was the most important thing I did all night.

I struggled to hold back my tears as I watched him run back inside the hall with the other Scouts. It made an impact on him. It made a bigger one on me.