Download On the Whole: A Story of Mothering and Disability AudioBook Free
Ona Gritz has had cerebral palsy all her life, but until she offered labor and birth to her son she didn't really know very well what it meant to be handicapped. Her cerebral palsy influences her coordination and balance however, not enough to obtain ever truly hindered her. "Generally, I considered my impairment a aesthetic issue", she instructs us in Overall. "Precisely how obvious is it? Do people see me as quite despite the limp?" But now she's got a new baby to look after, and no-one has warned her what a physical job she's considered on. She can't bathe her son by herself or hold him up or down a flight of stairs. Nor can she nourish herself or even open a refrigerator with a baby in her biceps and triceps. And her baby will accept nothing significantly less than being in her biceps and triceps. With lyricism and candor, poet Ona Gritz shares her son's first years around, a time when she desired only what most of us want - to be the perfect mom, only her flaws kept getting back in just how. Ona Gritz is a columnist for the web journal Literary Mama. Her essays have came out in More, the Utne Reader, New York Family Magazine, Brain Child, the Bellingham Review, and in other places. She is the writer of two children's catalogs, Starfish Summer (Harper Collins, 1998) and Tangerines & Tea, My Grandparents & Me (Harry N. Abrams, 2005) and a full-length assortment of poems, Geode, that was a finalist for the primary Streets Rag Poetry Reserve Award. Ona is currently at work over a memoir.
