Jaclyn Witt is a 27-year-old single woman who was diagnosed with central core disease at age 2. Jaclyn graduated from high school in 2002 and went on to attain a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing from Chapman University in 2007. Currently, Jaclyn lives in Orange, Calif., where she works as an editor and lives with her two roommates. In her spare time, Jaclyn loves reading, writing and all things music and movie related. If you want to get to know Jaclyn or ask questions, contact her through her blog and on Facebook.
Jaclyn Witt
Friday, May 10, 2013
When I look back on my life thus far, it’s almost baffling how much of how I’ve felt about myself and the problems I’ve had can be linked to one thing: my limp. Not the muscular dystrophy itself but rather a symptom of it. In fact, sometimes I wonder if I still had MD but didn’t have a limp if I would have spent so many years in tears, so many years referring to myself as “ugly.” Chances are I would have because I’d still see myself as “different.” Falling in public in sometimes the most humiliating ways still would have happened too and that’s never easy on the ol’ ego and self-esteem.
It...
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
My first blog for MDA was about keeping the dating faith — something I wrote after finding out someone I was interested in didn’t want to date me. A few months ago, I signed up for online dating and the first person I was interested in meeting didn’t want to date me because I have a disability. Yes, he actually said that (and he was the first one to ever actually admit that he couldn’t handle it).
From this experience, I realized that it’s easy to write a blog about things and write about how you want to feel or plan to feel when something happens. The truth is that I was crushed that day...
Friday, February 22, 2013
Growing up in Southern California, Disneyland is one of those staples of being in the area it seems, and I was lucky enough to be broken into the aptly named “Happiest Place on Earth” at the ripe old age of 6 months old. Up until college, I went every year with either my family or a friend. We have video of me meeting Mickey with my crutches and leg braces, and being sung to during the parade. I even performed there with my high school choir.
It is for these reasons that it’s always held a special place in my heart. Yes, I realize it single handedly brings out the worst and the best in...
Friday, January 18, 2013
I've been thinking a lot lately about the word “disabled.” Obviously, we've come a long way from using some of the cruel and unflattering terms of the past, but lately, every time I hear the word “disabled,” it just rubs me the wrong way.
For the majority of my life, I never thought twice about it. I was disabled and that was pretty much it. But as I get older and start to embrace my muscular dystrophy more and more, I like the word less and less. If you break it down, “disabled” basically means not fully able. If you look it up in the dictionary, this is what you’ll see:
dis-a-bled
adj...
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea of perfection lately, both in terms of the pressure society puts on us and in terms of my own self. A good friend of mine said something to me about a month ago that really struck me, and ever since, I’ve been thinking about the role perfection or perfectionism plays in my life. She said, “Jackie, you try too hard to be perfect.” At first I thought, “No I don’t.” But the more and more I thought about various situations in my life, the more I realized how right she was. Whether it be in my appearance, or the way I act or at work, I really do try to be...
Friday, October 19, 2012
For someone with a physical disability, the word independence can be very interesting and can mean a lot of different things.
For me personally, independence is a word that's really only been a part of my life for about four years or so. I went straight from living at home (and being an only child at that) to college, back home and then to moving in with my boyfriend at the time. I was very used to people helping me with things or just having people around in general. I love my parents, and I know it couldn't have been easy raising a disabled child. There's definitely no manual for it,...
Friday, August 17, 2012
Agoraphobia literally translates as "fear of the market," which actually sounds quite silly. Why would someone be scared of Ralphs or Albertsons? In actuality, the "market" refers to crowds and the fear of being around a lot of people at one time. For a large portion of my life, I had what I like to call self-induced agoraphobia. I hated being in, around or near crowds. This fear was heightened when I started college. I had a lot of classes in one building that often had large numbers of students gathered outside of it, especially when class was just starting or had just gotten out. I was so...
Friday, June 29, 2012
Normal — a word that holds its own interesting back story. As a girl living with a disability, growing up in sunny Southern California, all I wanted to be was “normal.” I wanted to look and walk just like my classmates. I wanted to be invisible; to blend in with those around me so no one would notice my limp or notice when I fell in the middle of the hallway (even though people often noticed this and just walked right by me). Whenever I had a choir concert, I wasn’t thinking about how we were going to sound, and I wasn’t nervous about my voice. I was nervous about having to step up onto the...
Thursday, April 12, 2012
I recently met a guy I was interested in dating through a friend, only to find out a few weeks later that he wasn’t interested in dating me. A year ago, this would have absolutely crushed me. Crushed me because I had put all my eggs in this guy’s theoretical basket. Crushed me because I dared to ask myself, “Will anyone else want to date me if this guy doesn’t?” Up until a few months ago, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that just because one guy didn’t want to date me, it didn’t mean I was totally undateable and it didn’t mean that there weren’t still plenty after him that would...
Friday, March 30, 2012
A 27-year-old female living in Orange County, Calif., blonde hair, blue eyes, slender, central core myopathy. That probably sounds just like the beginnings of a dating profile, and in actuality, some of my online dating profile info has read just that way, except perhaps for the last three words. I was diagnosed with the central core myopathy form of muscular dystrophy at the age of 2. My mom noticed that I wasn’t trying to pick myself up or even attempt to walk, something most kids at the age of 2 are trying to do. I wore braces on my legs for many years and then progressed to crutches. With...
