Hi everyone! Today I’m going to be talking about the few negative experiences I’ve had because of my disability and how I have learned to overcome them.

This is a post I never thought I’d be able to write because I never imagined I’d have the courage to move on from them and look at them in a different way, but I did!

What Is PFFD?

Proximal femoral focal deficiency (PFFD), also known as Congenital Femoral Deficiency (CFD), is a rare, non-hereditary birth defect that affects the pelvis, particularly the hip bone, and the proximal femur.

The disorder may affect one side or both, with the hip being deformed and the leg shortened.

Because of this condition, I have had to wear a prosthetic leg from birth, and undergone operations to fix the deformed leg including having the foot amputated.

I hope this post may help you or someone you know overcome their own negative experiences, too.

I’ll start off by saying that I was never bullied in my childhood – the questions that other children in my school would ask me were usually always just out of curiosity and they never really meant to do any harm.

That being said, having to answer questions did make me realize that I was different and I did sometimes start to wish that I was just ‘normal’.

One of the few negative experiences I’ve had happened when I was 16 years old.

I was walking around my local towns shopping centre – I was just strolling along minding my own business when a grown man standing outside of a pub (he looked around 40 years of age) just shouted “pegleg” to me.

I felt so shocked and uncomfortable, I couldn’t believe what had just happened and I remember having to bite my lip to hold back the tears. How could someone do that to me? I thought.. I already had self confidence issues and having someone just blatantly shout at me something horrendously insulting like that made me want to hide away forever, and it fed my insecurities like nothing else.

I went home and cried for hours, I felt like I never wanted to leave my house again and in all honesty I didn’t go out for quite a long time because of it.

Of course everyone around me reassured me and tried to make me feel better but I just couldn’t get over the fact that a stranger would notice my leg and insult me like that, I couldn’t stop thinking whether he knew the upset he had caused? but most of all Why? Why would he do it?

I frequently have negative experiences with taxi drivers and I have no idea why this is! I don’t know if it’s because my leg is a little more noticeably a prosthetic when I’m sitting down or what, but so many times things have turned awkward in a taxi journey for me.

Pretty recently I was taking a taxi home from my Nans house, and the conversation went like this..

“What happened to your leg?”

Me:

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about it”

and his response was..

“Oh right because you fell over or something?”

I literally just fell silent.

I’d already told him that I felt uncomfortable talking about something so personal and he’d pushed and made a pretty odd assumption..the worst part was, he seemed quite annoyed and aggressive towards me for the rest of the journey because I hadn’t told him!

Another negative experience I’ve had in a taxi was the taxi driver turned around (I was sitting in the back seat) noticed my prosthetic leg and reached out to touch it!

I was so anxious I didn’t know what to do, but luckily I was really young so I was traveling with my Dad at that time and he did get frustrated with the driver and made a complaint to the taxi company.

I’ve had strangers approach me and ask if I’ve been in a car crash, strangers ask me what happened (which in my opinion is OK at first but becomes rude once I’ve said I don’t feel comfortable talking about it) you’d be surprised how many people try and push the answer out of you even once you’ve said you’re uncomfortable.

I’ve had a grown woman say in an argument with a family member that I was literally only standing next to (I wasn’t involved in the argument at all)

“What’s she going to do! She’s got a wooden leg!”

of course that was just another thing to feed my many insecurities and self confidence issues.

I have a blog post called Self acceptance with a disability HERE if you’d like a read!

Now that I’ve spoken about the negative experiences I’d love to share how I’ve overcome all of this with you!

Even though It’s been really tough at times I think I’m on the right track finally in learning how to overcome negativity.

To overcome these experiences I had to finally listen what everyone else was saying to me. They’d tell me how the people that were cruel towards me were the ones with the problems because it’s so true.

What kind of 40 year old man shouts insults to a 16 year old girl? He is clearly the problem here.. not me. I did nothing wrong and I didn’t deserve to be treated the way I was by him.

Nobody in their right mind would be so rude and cruel towards another human being! I realize that now.. Even though I spent so long torturing myself by replaying the moment and his insult over and over again I’m finally at peace knowing he’s the one with the problems not me.

As for the taxi drivers it’s the same kind of situation – I’ve realized that they’re the ones that have the problem to be so rude and intrusive to a complete stranger!

In every one of these situations I have never done anything wrong to deserve the insults and rudeness that I’ve received even though I was led to believe I was the one in the wrong for not wanting to share my personal story behind my amputation by them.

In order to overcome negativity like this you have to be kind to yourself and try your very best to pay attention to the people that matter in your life, not these mean, cruel people that don’t matter AT ALL.

I’m going to do a blog post about self care soon and will be sure to link this here so that all of you can know in depth what tips help me! 🙂

A lot of the time people who are rude and ignorant are actually uneducated or deeply insecure themselves, and they take this out on others to make themselves feel better. Remember this!

There is absolutely no excuse for bullying behaviour towards ANYONE and that includes disabled people like myself.

I hope you enjoyed this post and If any of you would like to chat about your experiences at all please feel free to message me – I’m always here for all of you! 🙂 ❤

Have a brilliant week and I look forward to hearing from you! 🙂

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