What Are You Doing With Your Limitations?

I wish I knew who created this post that I saw on Pinterest. (Let me know if you know the attribution). I’m not sure if they intended for the idea to apply to the limitations of chronic illness and disability, but of course that’s the lens that I live with. 🙂

Grieving and adapting to my “boxes”

Living with chronic illness and disabilities means I have limitations. I have very poor vision, and some hearing loss too. And, in order to safeguard my transplanted kidney, I’m committed for the rest of my life to a regime of immunosuppressants that make me vulnerable to pathogens. These are “boxes” that I can’t get out of.

I’ve been visited by a lot of grief about these boxes over the years. Even recently, the losses related to my vulnerability in being immunosuppressed have been brought back into focus by the Covid-19 pandemic. Everyone else here in South Africa is starting to get on with life again now that the spread is more under control here but, still needing to take stricter precautions, we’re missing out. There is a great sense of loss in having all of these limitations.

And yet, the longer I live with my disabilities, the more deeply I am appreciating that I can do things with my boxes. Wonderful things. Meaningful things. And usually, it’s a lot more and better things than I had imagined.

This here – cathduncan.com – is me, doing things. Not so much in spite of my limitations. I’m doing things WITH my limitations, and because of my limitations. And some of the things I’m doing here are things I couldn’t see myself doing, even as recently as a few months ago. Ha!

What are you doing with your limitations?

We all have limits. Even if you’re healthy and abled, we all have boxes. Limitations. Some of those boxes might be more difficult to get out than others. Some are impossible to get out of. And then maybe it’s about what you do with your impossible boxes?

What are you doing with your limitations? And what else might be possible still?