Amazing Grace
Thirteen-year-old Grace Cogan is a fighter. After going through a difficult childhood plagued with a battery of tests and surgeries, she is now leading a life similar to her peers. Even though she hates math, Grace loves reading and writing stories on her typewriter. Every Tuesday, her aunt takes her on adventures, which may someday help her aspire to be a historical fiction writer in the near future.
Produced during the Missouri Photo Workshop 66
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I highly suspect that many of us actually feel like I do when I meet someone with special needs; someone who differs from societal norms and expectations of functionality and beauty. How should I behave around them? Should I do/not do something lest it offends them? Where is that fine line between being sensitive to their limitations yet not be so presumptuous and treat them as subhumans? I struggle with that a lot.
But meeting Grace has opened my eyes.
Shadowing and interacting with her in the past week has definitely helped me get a better sense of how she's like - actually much like who I (and probably many of us) was very many years ago. She loathes Maths, I never liked Science; she gets touchy when her mother disturbs her, I did too! Grace loveeees to read. Quiz her anything about American history and she will share with you everything you want to know. I was, and still am, quite the bookworm too.
Gracie is a fighter. She really is. And I've so much respect for her indomitable spirit and resilience for life. She's gone through surgeries after surgeries, tons of visits to the doctor, lived through and is still living through pain from her condition. But she's not let it eat at her. I'm not sure I can be half the person she is, had I been born to the same circumstances as her.