Celebrating Unicorns for Limb Loss Awareness Month
This is the Amputee Coalition’s eighth year celebrating limb loss and limb difference during the month of April. We acknowledge it every year, but this year we thought it would be a great time to bring back our ongoing conversation about how limb differences and limb loss are a chance to celebrate our community of unicorns.
About four years ago, Jordan had a bad experience with staring and it brought up a great round of conversations here on the Born Just Right website and on Facebook. That’s when one of the Born Just Right families mentioned how she helps her kids deal with staring. She tells her girls “If you saw a unicorn in a field of ordinary horses you would stare too.”
That sentence stirred something pretty wonderful in Jordan and me. We love the concept of how a person with a limb difference of any type is a unicorn in a field of horses. We loved it so much, Born Just Right friends helped us create a t-shirt!
All of this talk about unicorns played a role in Jordan’s Project Unicorn work. Her love of unicorns inspired her inventions with her glitter blasting arm. Before it was the shape of a unicorn horn, she had already called it Project Unicorn. That’s because she believes unicorns are special and full of glitter. Not every person with limb loss or limb difference is full of glitter, but we do consider each one of you special. We also encourage you to check out the Amputee Coalition’s work this month. The organization uses April as a chance to not only unite the limb loss and limb difference communities but also to raise awareness about the importance of healthcare reform so everyone has more access to prosthetics and other care that help encourage long-term healthy and active lives. We are lucky to have health care plan that supports most of Jordan’s needs. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t had to fight a few times to get our insurance company to pay. We’re lucky. Not every person has that kind of access to health care. The Amputee Coalition is working to encourage lawmakers to pay more attention to the needs of people with limb loss and limb differences. I hope you have a chance to check out their work! And enjoy celebrating the unicorns in our lives!