Title: Born Too Soon

By: Shayne Holzman

People who are disabled due to being born preterm are some of the strongest individuals. They have had it hard from the start, fighting for their lives and trying to survive, given the unfortunate circumstances of their birth. It’s all about living with what you have and making the best of your life no matter what. Life is very precious; every moment is a blessing. 

How do we explore life’s purpose given our challenges? What would you say could help us live our best lives? What does a good life mean to you? It starts with being grateful to be alive; however, learning how to survive is the real struggle. 

First, we need to cultivate resilience. But how do we do that, you ask? For most people, it’s hard to embrace resilience in the mind. The body is very resilient, but not as much as the mind. The body can heal itself, so why can’t the mind heal itself? The truth is, we can, through learning to, be resilient. When people are born prematurely, resilience is all they know; otherwise, it would be hard for them to make it to the other side to survive. 

Doctors once thought that premature infants couldn’t feel pain. Over the years, this theory has changed. Infants who are born early feel a lot of pain when they are born, and they continue to experience hypersensitivity to pain throughout their whole lives. The hypersensitivity is because their brain develops while experiencing extreme medical treatments to keep the babies alive. It is a struggle, but to experience something, whether traumatic or not, in life is better than not living at all. 

The reason I brought up that premature infants experience pain in adulthood is because even though people born too soon are fighters, every day is challenging. It only looks easy on the outside because people born too quickly are experts at being resilient in any situation because they were resilient from day one. Still, inside, it is tough and can be very dark because of their disability. Now that we understand more about what being born too soon looks like in terms of disability, we can consider their tremendous amount of strength because the whole disability world has an enormous amount of strength; we must figure out how to cultivate our strengths and use them for the better.

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