This photograph was taken a few years ago in a tiny town in Connecticut. I was participating in their annual February event: the Polar Bear 8 miler race. It began snowing soon after I started running the first mile, and it didn't let up. I finished though, with snow caked to my hat and jacket. I like this picture because it embodies something important to me. One might glance at this image and decide that it either conveys fortitude or foolhardiness. Yet I did not choose this photograph to represent me for those reasons. I think it also speaks to another part of my being: that part of me that finds regular delight in unexpected moments. I ran through the falling snow on that cold winter morning and sensed how sublimely wonderful the world could be. This awareness has little to do with material gains or conventional routes to success. It arrives from those sublime pleasures, the ones found that defy expectations or change the way we think about the ordinary.

     This is my starting point to an explanation of why I have worked in the field of disability services for more than twenty years. I started off as a direct care staff in a day program for adults with profound and severe intellectual and physical disabilities. This was certainly a trying initiation. I was regularly derailed by other veteran staff as being unrealistic and foolish. Years later, I look back to those early days in this field, and see how those struggles could have easily diminished my interest in working in this field. They didn't. After working in several direct care positions, I was promoted to an administrative position in a clinical setting.  In my current position as the assistant director of a clinic that serves adults and children with developmental disabilities, I draw from many of my past experiences. Some days I even reach back to those unrealistic and foolish notions to find an answer. I am required to act as an administrator, an advocate for our patients, and as a liaison with families and other agencies. In carrying out these sometimes disparate functions, I will often pay close attention to the power dynamics that define the relations within our community between those people with disabilities and the professionals who seek to help them. As a student of disability studies, I have developed an acute awareness to the systemic oppression inherent between the professional and the person with the disability. In turn, I look to find uncomplicated ways to bring parity to this unequal relationship.  

     I began working in the field of developmental disabilities because of a mixture of idealism and existential turmoil. In that moment where one chooses between selflessness and personal material gain, I wanted to find a niche that would provide for a roof over my head, but also a kind of intellectual and spiritual gratification. The nine semesters of the disability studies has reinforced my values and idealism. To this day, I continue to feel pride that I chose this career. It has enriched me, and transformed me. I continue to find contentment in those snowy mornings; snow stuck on the brim of my hat, enraptured by thought of what might come next.