It was something like twenty five years ago when I started to think about putting pen to paper in the matter of relating my experiences in overcoming many difficulties as a result of a birth defect (severe and extensive double hare-lip and cleft palate). The correction to this took many operations and over twenty years to remedy to the extent that I could live a normal life in relation to others.
I relate in the account how I survived the early years of my life, my experiences of early school days and thereafter in junior and senior schools, and how I had to cope with my peers - further, how I had to get over the question of my loss of education due to my stays in hospital for operations.
As I approached the time of leaving school, a real problem began to show its head. What was I to do after I had left school? I was 13, two years before I was to leave school (then you had to leave school at age 15 unless you went to grammar school), which for obvious reasons I did not.
I explain in the account how I met people along the way who helped and gave me advice as to how I might deal with this problem of finding work after I had left school, read chapter 4 for the details of how this became the turning point in my experience. I was to face the teens and twenties with new challenges both in work experience and in my dealing with others. At this time I was still learning how to speak and make myself understood by my hearers, a very difficult task due to the particular operations I was undergoing (palate formation and structure). I explain how I coped with the possibility of marriage and making progress in my jobs and communication generally. Chapter 8 deals with this along with my experiences in family life and moving to another part of the country and the challenge of finding work in chapter 9.
After so many years working for the electricity company and finding myself redundant I faced the challenge of going back to school, in college, (you are never too old to learn!) I had then to find a job again. Read about it in chapter 10. I was to be involved in many other areas of communication with different groups and situations which I would have thought were not possible for me years before.
What is the point of sharing this story? My intention is to reach people out there who have had to endure difficulties and challenges in their lives caused through circumstances outside of their control, resulting in difficulty in communicating with others in their lives and working experience. To show them that they can overcome the obstacles and barriers that prevent them from living successful and fulfilling lives even though they may be incapacitated in some way.
