SERVING CHILDREN AND ADULTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
A Place Just to Be Me
Going away to summer camp for the first time could give any 9-year-old a few butterflies. For a 9-year-old in a wheelchair due to severe cerebral palsy, the prospect of leaving the security of home for the great outdoors was downright unsettling.Fast-forward 13 years. Michael Griggs, once that frightened little 9-year-old, is now 22 and a seasoned veteran of AbilityFirst’s Camp Paivika summer program for adults and children with disabilities.
He has been making annual trips to the camp’s location ever since, experiencing a sense of freedom there inspired not only by the stunning vistas of mountains, sky, majestic trees and valley views, he says, but by the fact that at Camp Paivika, “I can just be me.”
“That’s a welcome change,” Michael observes. “Sometimes I try so hard to overcompensate for my disability that I don’t let people see the real me. But at camp that is not an issue. Everybody there gets to see the real Michael.”
That was a revelation that Michael felt at the very beginning of his Camp Paivika experience.
“When I first went there, it was the first time that I actually saw myself in a positive light. I was like, maybe I don’t have to always focus on my disability. Maybe I have a lot to offer people in spite of my disability.”
“It was the first time,” he says, “that I learned that your disability only defines you if you let it.”
The opportunity to socialize and converse with peers is another draw for many campers like Michael. Gregarious, with a philosophical bent, a head full of ideas and a gift for writing, he has made long-term friends at camp, particularly among Paivika staff.
People with disabilities, Michael notes, “just want to be accepted for who we are, and we don’t always get that from regular society. Camp Paivika is a place where we know that we are valued and that we matter.”
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