If you have read my blog since April last year you know I am a junky! Yes I mainline 20 hours a week I am hooked. Don’t call the rehab just yet I am hooked on the euphoric buzz of climbing, Rockwall climbing at Brooklyn Boulders to be exact.

I started with NYC adaptive climbing clinic under the tutelage of the amazing Kareemah batts,

but along the way names like Eric and Reid olmstead the very cool man in the picture below and experienced climber and great guy.

and Doug, a man who will make you laugh till you wet yourself, but at the same time is the most caring person you’ll ever meet. He coaches you like your his own.

and Nadia Bon an amazing young woman who fights on and lets nobody get in her way.

and Emma my little Danish friend and our latest rock monster, one brave kid who just gets it done and her great mum janee.

and Caxmee our gorgeous newest climber who was hooked after her first wall.

Just keep making the possibility of having a family again something more than a dream.

This family doesn’t care whom I love, they don’t care whom I marry and they care what gender I identify as and they sure as hell don’t care whether I have wheels under my ass or shake constantly from seizure disorder. When we get together on Thursdays and Sundays the bottom of the wall looks more like used medical stability aid warehouse than the floor of a rock wall gym.

These people clap when a newbie tops their first wall, we solve the problem of a broken prosthetic so a friend doesn’t have to miss out on climbing and we all call out moves and the next safe hand hold, so our comrades in climbing have the best shot of freeing themselves for as long as possible from the chains on their emotions that a prosthetic or wheelchair or walker can be to someone who lives with them.

When we climb it’s not just our group that cheers us on when one of us makes a gutsy move on a wall or graduates from a 5.6 to a 5.8 route, we find the silence erupts with cheers and applause from people we don’t even know because for those couple of hours were all family because we climb.

One night I heard a woman talking about aikido and she was speaking German to someone, I speak one and love the other so Kristina and I after conversing in German and discussing aikido became firm friends

and she became a climbing mentor who told me she thought I was a climber not just someone who climbs.

https://disabledaccessdenied.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/before-mia-you-were-learning-to-climb-but-today-mia-you-were-a-climber/

I didn’t get it then until she offered to coach me, and one day the idea of the stalactite became a goal, the stalactite as the name suggests is a climbing apparatus that looks like a wall but is suspended from the ceiling and doesn’t meet the floor by about 7 feet.

When she suggested the stalactite I laughed and said “I can’t use my legs so it’s impossible, she said “you don’t need your legs just your mind and nothing is impossible” so we began training towards that goal.

Along the way she had me attempt some of the toughest walls in the room, I didn’t make all of them but one wall in particular became as much as an obsession as the stalactite and that was wall 16.

Well this week became a week of achieving both wall 16 with the amazing help of Reid Olmsted,

and the stalactite became a reality because of Kristina,

I didn’t make the top of the stalactite but we proved my theory and her training work we just need to keep going.

To finish this up what I want you the dis and other wise abled to understand is nothing is impossible and for you to reclaim your life your pride your sense of self you must live by a few creeds first is fear is dead

The next is, I don’t stop when I’m tired I stop when I’m done

and lastly nothing is impossible NOTHING

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