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                                                     It’s all About Me!                                                              

The purpose of this section is to tell you about me. You will learn about how my career choice was influenced by my own experiences with disability.   I am a practicing Christian that tries to consciously help others whether they share my beliefs or not. I spent all my childhood as a Catholic once I became an adult I began practicing Christianity as an African Methodist Episcopal. I have been a member of the same church for more than ten years. I love to pray and firmly believe that prayer works to de-stress troubles and to lift a person’s emotional spirit.  

 

I am a mother, sister, aunt, cousin and a daughter to a mother that left her earthly form on June 25, 2009.   My mother lost her life to uterine cancer at the age of 69. Uterine cancer is a very aggressive disease and leads to death for women of color. The survival rate for postmenopausal Black women in their 60-70 is 15%. It can be asymptomatic until stage II or III. My mother’s cancer was stage IV. We were with her every step of the way. She chose to have in-home hospice services. She passed away in her own home with her loved ones by her side.  

 

My Family:

 

My parents separated when we were little, being Catholic they never divorced. Years later  my mother met a great man who became her life partner. He became the head of our household in 1970 and we call him Papa and as siblings we have always respected him for stepping in and stepping up as a father figure for us. My mother and he were together for more than 30 years before she ascended in to heaven. He is still alive and he is eighty nine years, young, go Papa!  He helped my mother realize her dreams. Before my mom passed away she was a retired licensed teacher with a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from CUNY’s City College of New York. My mother taught 3rd and 4th graders for over twenty years. She began working for the DOE as a school aid, then para professional and lastly as a teacher.  She was respected by her fellow teachers, her kids and the administration.  

                                                                                                                                   

My mother worked hard to bring her low performing student’s up to grade level and her higher performing student’s excelled grades above. We grew up in the Bronx and I am the second oldest of eight children. We are what social workers refer to as stair-steps children.  What that means is, more than one of us is the same age for an average of one month or more. I love my siblings. We are friends as well as family members. My parents did an excellent job with us as we are all law abiding, hardworking women and men.  Although, I suspect we lived below the poverty line (for some time) it was not noticeable to us. We never missed a meal or went to bed hungry. We always had new clothes for each season. Summers were spent on day trips to City Island, The Bronx Zoo, day and sleep away camp, visits to The Statue of Liberty and picnics in Crotona Park located in the Bronx. My mother made her own bread and baked her own pies for Sunday dinner. She was serious about raising her family; we had chores and went to church as a family. 

 

There was law and order in the Buford household. There were also plenty of mishaps that interrupted the family dynamics too. She was always running, anyone one of us, to the emergency room or health clinic due tovarious accidents and illnesses. I think that I am in this field largely, due to the childhood mishaps of myself and siblings.  My mother rushed us to the emergency room more times than she could count on her ten fingers and ten toes. With eight children and all at one time or another visiting emergency rooms for stitches, broken bones, server burns as well as various illnesses it is no wonder why a person learns to be compassionate and tolerant of others.

 

My Career the Beginning:

 

So, how did I turn all this adventure into a career?  First, people with disabilities have not been kept behind closed doors in my family. My brother Darryll was diagnosis with a severe hearing lost. From the time he was six or seven he wore a hearing aid in his left ear. Before we knew about his hearing impairment we always had to speak to him face to face. When he spoke to us his sentences were jumbled together. I was one of his personal interpreters because I knew what he was saying. It was because I always asked him to slow his words when he spoke. I had an uncle name Dowd who was born blind. He was my biological father’s brother.  

 

He was the first person to educate me on how to guide a visually impaired person. He taught me that people should not assume that people with impairments need help from others. It is polite to ask, however, it may be insulting as well because people with impairments have been navigating environments without assistance for years. We use to play a game while walking the street where we would count the amount of steps between each building.  He told me that the most annoying thing about people with sight, is that they see you using a guiding stick and will not move to the left so that a person without sight can have the space to walk. He would say “one of us has to step to the side or be bumped into so, what it is gonna be”.  That was his way of alerting members of the public that is guide stick gives him the right away in street traffic.  I enjoyed our time together, it was fun, yet brief.  He knew how to read braille and read books all the time.  Uncle Dowd died in 1971 due to smoke inhalation. His body was found lying on the floor inside his apartment by the front door. He panicked tripped and fell became disoriented and succumbed to the smoke.

 

Now that I am a disability studies student I often wondered what could have been done to prevent his death. Perhaps a live-in residential supportive assistance could have helped him exit his apartment safely. Uncle Dowd lived alone and family, friends and his neighbors checked on him daily. At night he was always alone and the fire occurred in the middle of the night when he was alone.  There is a hymn we sing in church services; called “May the work I’ve done Speak for Me”, written by The Counselors, I pray that as you are reading this section you are realizing that my experiences have led me to become a professional in the field of disabilities. I strongly believe that I can make a difference in the lives of others by giving back to others through the services I provide to people with disabilities.  

 

My Education and Career Path:

 

In the summer of 1981 I registered for classes at Bronx Community College.  After completing my Associate’s in Psychology I transferred to Lehman and earned my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology in 1989.  While attending BCC I found a job and began working as a Home Attendant, today my title would be a certified Home Health Aid. I assisted a lady with a serious illness. My responsibilities were to cook for her, clean her house, and monitor her when she took her medication. She was a wheelchair user and never liked to go outside.  I tried to encourage her to go outside but she lived on the top floor and would say by the time she would get dress to go outside she was sure her energy would be gone. I tried to pray with her but she would say,  "me and Jesus stop getting along years ago.” 

 

I believe that God puts people in our lives for a reason. The reasons are to teach us humility, patience, kindness towards others as well as to help us understand that hardships do not have to break a person’s spirits.  The differences are what we choose to do with lessons learned from trials and tribulations. The question is, are we the type of people who will assist a mother upstairs with a stroller or would we allow her to struggle?  Helping others is the hallmark of people who truly do not mind being of service to other human beings.

                                                                                                                                    It is my life experiences that have led me to work in the field that allows me to be of service to people who are marginalized in society.  In 1988 I began working for FEGS first as a per-demi Direct Care Worker in an Intermediate Care Facility also known as a group home, in the Bronx. My responsibilities were to cook their meals and teach them to prepare meals, help them with activities of daily living and encourage independence in their lives. My career in FEGS has taken me from per-demi status to currently where I help to operate a Day Habilitation Program. Together with the director and two peers we operate a Day Habilitation Program for more than one hundred people. I have been working in the field of Developmental Disabilities for 26 years or more. I literally, go to work to have fun!

 

The people I work with are adults with intellectual disabilities. People with ID’s can think, often outside the box, have relationship platonic and sexual, go to parties, attend movies and plays, are actors and some enjoy travelling.  The best part of my job is that I have made friendships with people whom I have learned to love and respect. The challenges today are how to involve them in society in a meaningful manner. My knowledge as a disability studies student has helped me to find community inclusion opportunities. For the first time individuals in my program swam in a community pool in the Bronx right alongside abled bodied people.  To sum up my “About Me” section I invite you to read but mostly absorb the message in the poem below.

 

 

                                  Not About Me!

 

 

  

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.