Lovestruck and Labeled

My heart goes out to these boys and men in Armenia. What is wrong with the families of these youngsters. Just from the interviews in this article, they show such openness and capacity for love along with a willingness to work at becoming good husbands and fathers. Armenia especially needs to get over discrimination about young people with physical challenges. Let me put it more realistically, there are far more women and girls in Armenia than men, as a lot of men have gone to other countries for work. I’m sure if the parents of these boys and young men with physical challenges were open to the possibilities of happiness for their sons, brothers, and nephews young women would indeed accept them. SHOW SOME LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE, ARMENIANS!

We have evolved in many ways into a more naturalistic, survival of the fittest almost animal-like society in how we treat each other and our differences, whether they be physical, intellectual, religious, ethnic, income related, etc. As Armenians, our history can attest to this as well. Even in family life, we can see this played out where a parent’s constant criticism can break a child’s spirit to the point where he or she thinks they’re no good; will never amount to anything which can “disable” them as well. I even heard a true story of how one Armenian woman got into a “disagreement” with another Armenian women who said something to the effect that if one does not speak Armenian they are not Armenian enough. I wonder if the other woman might have thought that her children were “disabled” for not speaking Armenian! And then there is this story that my mother told me. My grandmother died of ALS while my mother was very young. This was a tremendous blow to her. To add insult to injury, at a house party with her girlfriends she overheard a mother telling another mother something like ” I would not want my child to marry into a family that had an illness.” You can only imagine how hearing that did not make the loss of her mother any easier.
I understand that circumstances will determine the outcome of how we treat people, even our own family members. There are times when we wish we could do more. But this article has prompted me to at least become more sensitive and aware of people that I may or may not know (a neighbor perhaps) who are disabled and ask myself what can I do to make that person’s life a little bit easier and more enjoyable.