There are benefits to meditation. It can help me ignore the spasms.

My counting is a form of meditation. I count so I can work myself through the spasm, through the pain. There are other forms of meditation too.

My writing is one, my art another. Putting my words down on paper or my emotions on to a canvass are a way to channel what is inside me.

Sometimes, though, meditation is not enough. Try as I might, I can’t find a sure fire way to live one day without a spasm, to live one day without a sharp jab of pain in my lower back or my shoulder.

Part of me, that part that imagines Cybill Paulsen, wonders if this is a disease or a curse. Another part of me knows that without the disability, I would not be half the person I am right now.

I find it interesting to think that pain would make me a better person, a more giving one. I find it funny to think that having Cerebral Palsy could give me a better understanding of the fraility of the human body.

But it does. And I meditate on this daily.