Alphabet Soup

For my first blog, I wanted to talk about all of the letters that are a part of our lives—specifically LD, which to me stands for learning disabilities. No one knows exactly why, but people with CHD are more likely to have learning disabilities. As if life can’t be hard enough sometimes, you add all the labels or acronyms to our lives. Whether we want to be “labeled” or not, we somehow are. We receive labels from our doctors, from our schools and teachers. Eventually friends catch on. Therefore, if you wanted to keep these things private, forget it—because society already has the letters that label us.

If you are lucky, you have doctors who refer to you by your name when standing in the hall consulting instead of by your diagnosis, or Dx for short—more letters to add to the pot of soup. LDs cause all sorts of difficulties: Social problems, scholastic problems and anything in between. LDs may make relating to peers difficult.

Most of our childhood experiences are not ones that our friends can ever imagine, nor would we wish them on our worst enemy. It is sometimes scary to speak up because you might be wrong. I get that feeling that I had in school, “No! Do not call on me, please do not!” I have also found that at times I am not on par with my friends as far as careers, marriage and babies. Obviously, these are insecurities, and everyone in the world may have some.

I thought long and hard about this blog and procrastinated a bit. Is this normal or is it due to my LD? One will never know, because many people are procrastinators. We keep our chins up and support each other, but there are no “letters” to abbreviate humor, strength or bravery. These are letters or abbreviations we need to add to our alphabet soup. If you have any suggestions, please share. Keep the conversation flowing and stay well!