Lina

“As already suggested, when the individual first learns who it is that he must now accept a his own, he is likely, at the very least, to feel some ambivalence; for these others will not only be patently stigmatized, and thus not like the normal person he knows himself to be, but ma also have other attributes with which he finds it difficult to associate himself. What may end up as a freemasonry may begin with a shudder. A newly blind girl on a visit to The Lighthouse [probably the Chicago Lighthouse, one of the oldest social service agencies in Chicago serving the blind or visually impaired] directly from leaving the hospital provides an illustration:

„My questions about a guide dog were politely turned aside. Another sighted worker took me in tow to show me around. We visited the Braille library; the classrooms; the clubrooms where the blind members of the music and dramatic groups meet; the recreation hall where on festive occasion the blind play together; the cafeteria, where all the blind gather to eat together; the huge workshops where the blind earn a subsistence income by making mops and brooms, weaving rugs, caning chairs. As we moved from room to room, I could hear the shuffling of feet, the muted voices, the tap-tap-tapping of canes. Here was the safe, segregated world of the sightless — a completely different world, I was assured by the social worker, from the one I had just left….

I was expected to join this world. To give up my profession and to earn my living making mops. The Lighthouse would be happy to teach me how to make mops. I was to spend the rest of my life making mops with other blind people, eating with other blind people, dancing with other blind people. I became nauseated with fear, as the picture grew in my mind. Never had I come upon such destructive segregation.“ (p.37)”
― Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity

“"The love that you receive is equal to the love you give... And for those rare souls who give with no thought of receipt... only they are worthy of the eternal love; the force that breaks bonds of brotherhood, that transcends the vagaries of pride and ego, a binding of souls that endures across the Ages" - Tyrphosa, Priestess of Aphrodite”
― Aria Cunningham, The Princess of Sparta

“See yourself through your mind’s eye being who you want to be, having what you want to have, and doing what you want to do.”
― Mensah Oteh

“I am frightened at the prospect of how much I might love you, because I know the price it brings, and just thinking of you has begun the investment process within my heart. It would be easier to never invest at all, to hold all vulnerability close to my chest, not allowing anyone to enter my safe. But what a cruel thing it would be, to deny an opportunity to love a soul as beautiful as yours. I’m going to hope, and hope, and hope, until one day I do something. Maybe then, we’ll be able to find that place that we have both wanted for so long. Maybe then, we’ll have each other. I’m not reaching for stars anymore. I’m reaching for you, and honestly, that’s far more beautiful than a night full of dancing flames. I am not good with words, but still my words dance out of chaos, forming something beautiful.”
― Todd LaBerge, Unwritten Letters to You