by LaTicia Jeffers, intern in the Texas Legislative Study Group
In my previous blog, I shared a piece of my internal journey with you. After it was published, I went back and forth, overanalyzing it and breaking down where people could take things wrong or what I should have said instead to make things flow better.
Then.
I had to stop.
Take a breath.
At that very moment, I realized I was doing it again. The same thing that this experience bounced me back in to… I was letting my rigorous expectations I have for myself sneak back in. I had consciously been working on letting go of having unrelenting high standards for myself throughout the last several years. But I accepted UH GCSW’s Austin Legislative Internship Program even though I was not in my prime.
Unfortunately, I started this experience with the bare minimum of energy. I was hopeful that it would improve at the right time.
So let me backtrack a bit. See, one thing I did not share with you all in my last post was that I stepped into this internship not on the right foot. Literally, I started our class in Houston to prepare for the Austin Legislative Internship Program meeting alums, Chairman Walle, and former Representative Coleman, only being five days post-operation. This was my first-ever surgery and I got a ‘twofer,’ having surgery on both my ankle and knee.
With the injury happening prior to even moving to Texas, I had endured several months of trying to navigate multiple hurdles with this injury. After accepting the internship and becoming ecstatic about this opportunity, I then had a lengthy discussion with both my orthopedics. We decided to go forward with surgery with the expectation I would be on crutches only for six weeks….
Or, so, I thought…
Unfortunately, after my surgery, the plan was to roughly be max, six additional weeks on crutches. By that point, I had been on crutches for seven months prior and I was COMPLETELY OVER IT! I figured, what’s six more weeks? Then I would have a complete experience in Austin and return to my ‘norm.’ The ankle surgery went great! Unfortunately, as my doctor explained, the knee was a worst-case scenario…a step down from almost a complete knee replacement.
Unfortunately, being my first surgery and impacting not one, but two body parts on the same leg, my muscles went to sleep in self-preservation mode a week after class as I was working on moving to Austin. Sadly, this wasn’t the last of my hurdles, I had additional ones with my rehab process throughout my time in Austin, including – but not limited to – being in a car wreck with two other cohort members the first week in Austin and even contracting Covid.
The idea I had of healing and then getting back to my prime and kicking ass at this internship slowly began to crack. One day after another during my time there, as much as I would love to stay positive and share the positivity, I would be dishonest with you all by not sharing my experience at the capitol as a temporarily disabled individual.
To start with, I was deeply grateful to my fantastic cohort for helping me throughout my first few months of the Austin Legislative Internship Program and the session. It was emotional and stressful working through accepting help, as I am used to being the one offering to help, not being on the receiving end. I struggled with trying to work through asking for rides or figuring out additional funds to pay for Uber, bus rides to make post operation appointments back in Houston (if they were approved), getting up early to get to physical therapy before our day began, and battling post PT exhaustion. From helping get my food and coffee to walking slowly and taking breaks, I could not have done the beginning of this internship without my cohort members’ help and support.
I’ve always been independent, and this took on a whole new level of things I couldn’t control. As someone that is a sexual assault survivor, being out of control of my own body and unable to have complete control of choices and my body and my independence, it was a struggle accepting support and help from people I just met.
Even knowing I was resilient and could work through this, my cohort members quickly learned alongside me that the capital was less ADA-friendly than we expected. From long ‘accessible’ sidewalks to random steps, holes in the concrete, narrow and steep ramps, to even no ramp at all due to construction, along with little to no handicapped-accessible doors. I struggled to stand and wait 45+ mins in a narrow doorway along with several other individuals in order to catch a ride on the elevator down just one floor. Once I was cleared to use stairs, I encountered uneven and sketchy steps, and worried about slipping yet again on the marble floor with my crutch.
Being known as the girl on crutches was nice in some ways, when certain representatives and staff remembered me. They would help me onto the elevator or take time to check in and ask how I was doing. Those unique conversations were a big positive part of the experience. Nevertheless, I had to learn how to navigate the physical challenges of this space while additionally learning how to write policy analysis like my cohort counterparts. I was also learning about my body and learning slowly again how to walk—learning how to accept support when I was physically incapable.
When others were able to engage in their known self-care routines, I was searching for what my new normal was as my usual self-care strategies of engaging in nature, hiking, kayaking, yoga, being in a horse barn, and even a bubble bath, were all out of the question.
Now, even after two months without crutches, I still have scars on my armpits from crutching around the capitol. When I think about it, I can feel the pain and burning from my crutches rubbing my raw armpit open wounds through my Band-Aids. That was a result of walking back and forth so much from our office at WeWork to the capitol for meetings. My leg was often so swollen at the end of every day that I struggled to get out of bed that evening just to get ice, go to the bathroom or even grab dinner. It took me multiple weeks and different ways of finding padding to get my arms healed up and feel good to go again. The struggles I faced in learning how to navigate a space that a governor that is disabled was supposed to be able navigate, but was barely accessible, to this day boggles my mind. Repeatedly, I heard from seasoned professionals at the capitol, ‘I am unsure how you are navigating this experience on crutches. I had one small experience with ____ and it was rough for just a few days of that.’
Hearing this you would think it would help ease my worry but unfortunately, I also began to feel ashamed for being injured. After attempted discussions or brief comments in various way from staffers, I would often think. “ok, time to fight harder to prove your worth. You have to prove why you are here.” Throughout the experience, I felt like I was seen primarily as an individual that is disabled. I felt almost like I was seen as a burden, accepted, but viewed as additional stress to work around. Or that working with me granted people a visual prize for ‘being inclusive’ and ‘understanding,’ but that they did not genuinely want me to be seen or heard.
I would often reflect on how permanently disabled individuals must feel in these very spaces. How do they constantly deal with the additional hurdles with lack of ADA compliance and accessibility at the legislature? Or in work spaces that provide excellent lip service of saying they are ‘welcoming’, but lack effective supportive actions?
I came to the legislature from a position of helping run a business and being a communication director, making things happen, including helping get suicide prevention programming into several school districts. I had worked on community collaborations, met with CEOs and top executives of organizations, and presented with other professionals that are in the top of their industry; but as an intern with a temporary disability, I found myself treated as someone that was inept and incompetent. I had never previously had my competency and ability questioned, nor had others in a professional setting decide for me what I was capable of.
I’ve never been one to give up, but truthfully a part of me is deteriorated by the end of this internship. Not from the legislative experience, nor from the stark reality of our problematic systems, and not even from the hard discussions or conversations. But from a fostered unhealthy, demoralizing, and inaccessible work culture that was presented and propitiated as ‘tradition’. As I find my balance, myself, and my strength again, just as I had walked out of those capital doors on the last day of session without a crutch or brace in hand, I am deeply reminded of how proud my cohort members and myself should be. Because just as Theodore Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts: not the [person] who points out how the strong [individual] stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the [person] who is actually in the arena…”
As much as our cohort endured various struggles individually and as a group, we all were in the arena together. Knowing that even though we have things to process and to work through after this experience, we all will come back stronger because, y’all, we did that thing!