Latest / Voices for Voices® / Why Human Nature is the Key to Understanding Life | Episode 73

Transcript

Why Human Nature is the Key to Understanding Life | Episode 73 · Voices for Voices®

• 0:00
  Justin Alan Hayes: Welcome to the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast sponsored by Redwood Living.
• 0:06
  Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you for joining us today.
• 0:08
  Justin Alan Hayes: I am Justin Alan Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, host and humanitarian.
• 0:17
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• 0:29
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• 0:30
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• 0:46
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• 1:02
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• 1:17
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• 1:34
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• 2:12
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• 2:32
  Justin Alan Hayes: Today's episode very happy and grateful to have our special guest with us via Zoom.
• 2:40
  Justin Alan Hayes: I was introduced to her through her book that she authored titled it's good to be here a disabled woman's reflections on God in the flesh and sacred wonder of being human.
• 2:56
  Justin Alan Hayes: And, besides the book and the message behind it being absolutely inspirational, it really brought me, as a fellow human being, down down to earth and looking at at life as a human being, as I am and in you are.
• 3:19
  Justin Alan Hayes: So we're gonna have a great conversation.
• 3:22
  Justin Alan Hayes: We're gonna learn more about the book, how she remains so positive and sharing her story with as many people as we can through through this TV show and podcast.
• 3:36
  Justin Alan Hayes: So I want to introduce our special guest.
• 3:39
  Justin Alan Hayes: Her name is Christina Chase.
• 3:42
  Christina Chase: Thank you for joining us thank you, it's good to be here sure is.
• 3:48
  Justin Alan Hayes: So it's good to be here.
• 3:49
  Justin Alan Hayes: Where did the title and the passion come from?
• 3:53
  Christina Chase: the title came from my really lifelong love of life, along with many of my blessed, to find the truth of life and what it is to be human and God and all the big questions.
• 4:14
  Christina Chase: And what I knew through all of that questioning was that you know I'm I'm grateful to be alive with, you know, this disability that I have, progressive disease.
• 4:26
  Christina Chase: It's good to be here.
• 4:29
  Christina Chase: It's still good to be here.
• 4:30
  Christina Chase: I thought it would be a good eye-catching title with, you know, the picture of a wheelchair on the front bike.
• 4:36
  Christina Chase: You know it's good to be here yeah, it sure is, and we can.
• 4:44
  Justin Alan Hayes: We can move on to your disease and how you weren't supposed to be here at this at this age, and all you've overcome.
• 4:57
  Justin Alan Hayes: Can you?
• 4:59
  Justin Alan Hayes: Can you share with the listeners of viewers, people checking out the transcript on how and how you learned that news and and how you just continue to take one day at a time and and as your title, your book and your motto it's good to be here well, yeah, I should start with what my disease is.
• 5:21
  Christina Chase: It's called spinal muscular atrophy, which is a pretty descriptive name, because the muscles along my spine begin to atrophy, weaken and and become pretty useless over time.
• 5:36
  Christina Chase: It's caused by a genetic law, so my parents were both carriers.
• 5:42
  Christina Chase: They had no idea and they both gave me the defective gene and so I had the disease.
• 5:48
  Christina Chase: However, when I was born, I was a very healthy baby.
• 5:54
  Christina Chase: Ironically, I still am healthy.
• 5:56
  Christina Chase: I'm just really disabled, anyhow.
• 5:59
  Christina Chase: But I could I did nothing, look like I had anything wrong with me, you know.
• 6:05
  Christina Chase: And then my mother noticed that my legs were floppy when I was about nine months old and that started this whole long progression series of tests and doctor's visits and hospital stays and procedures until finally, when I was two years old, on my second birthday, my parents received a new doctor's prescription.
• 6:30
  Christina Chase: My mother was just received the new, the diagnosis and also the prognosis, which at that time was that I was just going to get weaker and weaker, including my respiratory muscles, I'd get pneumonia and I would not live to be a teenager, and that was a pretty common prognosis at the time for my disease.
• 6:53
  Christina Chase: They don't give that prognosis anymore because people like me have been moving it wrong?
• 7:01
  Justin Alan Hayes: I don't know.
• 7:02
  Christina Chase: But also, you know, medical science and technology has improved, which helps lengthen life, but there are kids that were younger than me that I know passed away.
• 7:15
  Christina Chase: So it's a pretty serious disease.
• 7:19
  Christina Chase: It affects all my muscles, except my facial muscles, as you can tell, and it's progressive.
• 7:27
  Christina Chase: So I used to be able to hold my head up, which I can't now.
• 7:32
  Christina Chase: For those of your viewers who can see this, my head is flopped over onto my left shoulder those who can't see, that's the best description I can give and I can't raise it.
• 7:46
  Christina Chase: That didn't happen until I was 19.
• 7:48
  Christina Chase: So just little things that I slowly stopped being able to do until I couldn't even feed myself.
• 7:56
  Christina Chase: That was somewhere in my early 20s.
• 7:58
  Christina Chase: So, starting from about that time, I needed care, I needed assistance for every physical action of every day.
• 8:11
  Christina Chase: I mean, just think about the physical things that you need to do each day.
• 8:15
  Christina Chase: I can't do any of that alone.
• 8:18
  Christina Chase: I need assistance, or I can't do any of that at all.
• 8:22
  Christina Chase: So and I don't mind talking about kind of a nitty gritty of my disease, because I think it's important to know that I'm not just oh, it's good to be here, you know, and I think that people are often afraid of what disability means or what it entails, what comes with it, or even disease sickness.
• 8:47
  Christina Chase: You know weakness, so I need to use a bedpan.
• 8:52
  Christina Chase: You know, other people wipe me and clean me.
• 8:55
  Christina Chase: Other people dress me and put food in my mouth.
• 8:59
  Christina Chase: Thankfully, I can chew and swallow.
• 9:02
  Christina Chase: I'm having a real difficulty with swallowing this year, but probably because of my position.
• 9:09
  Christina Chase: The scoliosis progresses, the weakness progresses, so every year has new challenges.
• 9:18
  Christina Chase: That's pretty much my disease.
• 9:22
  Christina Chase: As for when I knew that I had a short lifespan, I don't remember learning that.
• 9:30
  Christina Chase: I just always seem to know it.
• 9:33
  Christina Chase: So I don't know if I overheard a conversation my parents told me just wait blank.
• 9:42
  Christina Chase: I don't think so, but we're all very open in my family.
• 9:46
  Christina Chase: We don't really have a lot of secrets.
• 9:48
  Christina Chase: We don't shy away from things that other people may shy away from.
• 9:52
  Christina Chase: So it's just been part of my life.
• 9:57
  Christina Chase: I always thought, well, I wanna graduate from high school.
• 10:01
  Christina Chase: That was what I wanted.
• 10:03
  Christina Chase: If I could just graduate from high school, then I would be happy.
• 10:07
  Christina Chase: And I was able to do that.
• 10:09
  Christina Chase: And then I kept living and by the time I was 25, I realized I have no idea when death is going to come for me.
• 10:20
  Christina Chase: So I just I stopped living every year as if it were my last, but I still appreciate every year because it could be my last.
• 10:33
  Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah, thank you for being so transparent.
• 10:36
  Justin Alan Hayes: You have a way with words, speaking as well as through writing.
• 10:46
  Justin Alan Hayes: How did you?
• 10:50
  Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe have you always been a good writer, I guess maybe as a good place to start, or was that something that just came through time?
• 11:01
  Christina Chase: Well, I've always been an avid reader.
• 11:05
  Christina Chase: My mother and my sister are avid readers.
• 11:09
  Christina Chase: We like stories.
• 11:11
  Christina Chase: I like hearing people's stories and I remember, even before I could read, I would take a book and make up a story to go with the pictures.
• 11:20
  Christina Chase: So in second and grade I entered a school writing contest.
• 11:25
  Christina Chase: So it's always been something that I just naturally was drawn to, and it wasn't really until high school that I was encouraged to see that I should pursue writing, that I had a talent for or sent instruction and using the right words and conveying meaning and imagery.
• 11:51
  Christina Chase: So in high schools, probably when I really started to take it more seriously, I never really called myself a writer because I mean I wrote all the time.
• 12:05
  Christina Chase: I've got boxes and boxes of things that I wrote longhand, when I could still hold a pen and write.
• 12:13
  Christina Chase: I have boxes of things that I printed out when we used to print out everything that we ever put on a computer, and now I have digital files and backup digital files.
• 12:26
  Christina Chase: So writing always comes easily to me.
• 12:29
  Christina Chase: I never dry up with ideas.
• 12:34
  Christina Chase: I always have things that I want to write down, whether it's poetry or some general entry that's really angry or something more reflective and questioning and searching, and then I think it wasn't until I was maybe 40, though that I seriously called myself a writer.
• 13:03
  Justin Alan Hayes: So putting it's good to be here together.
• 13:07
  Justin Alan Hayes: That thought process just was natural to you of how you are as a human being and things that you're good at good at expressing yourself, good at writing.
• 13:18
  Justin Alan Hayes: So is that just like a natural progression of hey, I wanna share my story with the world.
• 13:26
  Christina Chase: Yeah, I've always wanted to share my story with the world.
• 13:29
  Christina Chase: As you say, in like my 20s, when I graduated from high school and I was still around, I thought, well, maybe I should write a book, and that didn't happen until I was what?
• 13:42
  Christina Chase: 42, 43.
• 13:43
  Christina Chase: So two things were against me I was a procrastinator and a perfectionist.
• 13:50
  Christina Chase: So, even though I had all these writings, to be able to put them together in a beautiful way and a meaningful way and then to edit them so that they were as good as they can be, that was a process I found very difficult.
• 14:09
  Christina Chase: So I started with a blog when I was I was 40.
• 14:17
  Christina Chase: Yeah, yeah, when I was 40.
• 14:20
  Christina Chase: And that seemed helpful because I knew the first things that I wrote there and edited made sure that they were worthy for the world to see, that they were not going to be seen by the world.
• 14:34
  Christina Chase: They were going to be seen by maybe a handful of people, if that.
• 14:38
  Christina Chase: But then as I I really improved with my writing through that blog.
• 14:45
  Christina Chase: Then, as I improved, I was also getting more followers.
• 14:52
  Christina Chase: So I knew more people were reading and I had a couple of faithful readers.
• 14:58
  Christina Chase: That really encouraged me to just write a book.
• 15:03
  Christina Chase: Now I thought that my book had to be a memoir, a story of my life, my life of disability, of overcoming challenges, of my search for God or understanding what it really means to be human.
• 15:19
  Christina Chase: But I decided instead to just write a book based on reflections from my blog.
• 15:30
  Christina Chase: So that's how it's Good to Be here started this particular book because I wanted to just put together my favorite reflections, some of my readers' favorites, and I discovered that there was this theme of what it means to be human and the beauty of being human, the really terrible beauty of being human, the majesty of being human, the wonder you know, the sacred wonder.
• 16:00
  Christina Chase: And as a Christian, who you know, I was raised in the Catholic Church, but I, like so many Catholics of my age, just kind of fell away from the Catholic Church, started exploring other religions and I just didn't believe in anything purposely for a while Just like you know, maybe none of it's true.
• 16:28
  Christina Chase: And then I did have an experience which is long and hard to explain, so maybe you'll have to say that for another time, but it was just an experience of just being silent by myself and becoming aware of this present presence, and from that point on I couldn't deny the existence of the ultimate reality that everyone calls God, and then my faith progressed from there.
• 16:54
  Christina Chase: So my blog is actually based on my consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which for non-Catholics probably doesn't sound like anything, but basically it was a devotion to understanding divine love and what divine love means for humankind, you know, in general, and also for me in particular, through Jesus Christ, who is God made man.
• 17:23
  Christina Chase: So that was the theme that I was seeing through my, you know, chosen reflections for my blog, and so that who became the very long subtitle of my book A Disabled Woman's Reflections on God and the Flash and the Sacred Wonder of being Human.
• 17:49
  Justin Alan Hayes: Wow, very powerful back story to that.
• 17:55
  Justin Alan Hayes: Could you share a thing or two to somebody's watching or listening that maybe going through a difficult time in their life?
• 18:07
  Justin Alan Hayes: Maybe they receive a diagnosis, some bad news, some uncertainty of how you have overcome, and you went from looking at life of I wanna live another year to I'm just gonna live, I'm just gonna live and I'm gonna be here until I'm not here and right now I'm here living in that moment Cause I think if you can share some little bit of that inspiration and have a great outlook for somebody, Sure, in my little way I'll try as best as I can.
• 18:49
  Christina Chase: I'll just say one thing that a sense of humor is crucial, and if you naturally have a sense of humor and then this devastating thing happens to you, that's not funny.
• 19:05
  Christina Chase: There's nothing funny about it.
• 19:07
  Christina Chase: It's not a joke.
• 19:08
  Christina Chase: It is powerfully and painfully real and changes your entire life.
• 19:14
  Christina Chase: That's not funny, but there could be little things in a day that are kind of humorous.
• 19:23
  Christina Chase: I remember my mother was demonstrating to a home healthcare worker how to put me in my wheelchair, and so my mother's talking and I'm talking a little too, and about putting me in the chair, and all of a sudden I start to slide slowly out of the chair.
• 19:45
  Christina Chase: She did not do it successfully.
• 19:47
  Christina Chase: I was heading for the floor and my mother and I just started.
• 19:51
  Christina Chase: We just started laughing.
• 19:53
  Christina Chase: We that poor new home healthcare worker must have thought we were crazy because it was just.
• 20:00
  Christina Chase: I don't know.
• 20:01
  Christina Chase: It's funny.
• 20:05
  Christina Chase: As serious as disability and dependency and disease can be, we can't take it too seriously.
• 20:15
  Christina Chase: First of all, I'm not the only one on the planet who is disabled, who is diseased, who's struggling in some way.
• 20:23
  Christina Chase: There are millions of people on this beautiful earth that aren't finding it that beautiful sometimes who are really struggling in pain.
• 20:34
  Christina Chase: And so to have a little perspective, to see that if there are any good things in your life, concentrate on that, focus on that, because some other people may be going through the same thing, they don't have those good things whether it be family support hopefully I always find it hard to give advice because I've had such a loving family and I know how extremely more difficult every challenge would be without that but also loving friends, that can be a great support system.
• 21:14
  Christina Chase: And then there can be community supports too, whether it be through a home healthcare program or a counseling program, group therapy, something that, if you're suddenly disabled, find something, that a group that will bring people out into the nature, whether it be kayaking or all those adapted things that can kind of get you out of the sick room, if you will, and remember that you're still alive, even if you can't do everything that you are able to do which I can't do, everything that I was able to do that there is still so much beauty and goodness and love and, yeah, sacred wonder in the world.
• 22:04
  Christina Chase: But if you don't try to go find that in some way, even if you can't get out of the house.
• 22:15
  Christina Chase: It may be your favorite music, classical music.
• 22:19
  Christina Chase: It may be reading.
• 22:20
  Christina Chase: It may be watching, not just watching anything on television that could be depressing, but something uplifting, something informative, you know.
• 22:30
  Christina Chase: Connect with other people who maybe don't have anyone to talk to in the day and start conversations with them and Facebook is a great way to or other social media platforms to connect with other people who are suffering and airing and find the good in the little moments and in every day.
• 22:50
  Christina Chase: And when little things go wrong, play the humor in it.
• 22:54
  Christina Chase: And, of course, with me I have my faith perspective, where I know that I am divinely loved.
• 23:02
  Christina Chase: I mean even more than my parents love me.
• 23:05
  Christina Chase: I was loved into being, as each and every one of us has been, and we're still being sustained by that love that, no matter what happens, that love does not fail, it does not weaken or thicken.
• 23:22
  Christina Chase: It's deep within our hearts that we can find, in those moments of being grateful for what we have, and just quiet reflection and, you know, a whispered prayer to never hurt anybody, right.
• 23:37
  Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah, what are you reading nowadays?
• 23:41
  Justin Alan Hayes: What, what, uh, what, what.
• 23:44
  Justin Alan Hayes: What do you like to read?
• 23:47
  Christina Chase: Well, I used to love to read, uh, novels, especially like the classics.
• 23:51
  Christina Chase: Uh, I made it my little ambition to read everything that John Steinbeck wrote.
• 23:58
  Christina Chase: Currently, I found myself drawn to reading more spiritual works, but again going to the classics, like right now I'm reading scene of Dustin's Confessions, which was pretty interesting in the beginning.
• 24:14
  Christina Chase: Oh, by the way, and when I say reading, I used to love to hold a book and turn the pages.
• 24:20
  Christina Chase: I can't do that anymore.
• 24:23
  Christina Chase: So I listened to audio books, which, again, technology always gives me these, these ways that I can continue doing the things that I love to do.
• 24:34
  Christina Chase: I'm grateful for that.
• 24:36
  Christina Chase: So I've been listening to Confessions, which was getting kind of heavy at the end.
• 24:41
  Christina Chase: So then I switched to something a little lighter.
• 24:44
  Christina Chase: It's, uh, it's one of the books by Anne Lamotte.
• 24:47
  Christina Chase: Uh, who's who's got a good sense of humor and talks about faith and but also just, you know, being a human being living, living in this world.
• 24:58
  Christina Chase: That's what I'm currently reading.
• 25:01
  Justin Alan Hayes: Great we're.
• 25:03
  Justin Alan Hayes: We're getting close to the end of our our time together.
• 25:07
  Justin Alan Hayes: What is there anything that we didn't cover?
• 25:12
  Justin Alan Hayes: I want to make sure we cover how, how people can find your book and purchase your book for sure, and then, uh, if there's any other topics or areas we can, we can definitely go that route.
• 25:27
  Christina Chase: Well, quickly about my book.
• 25:28
  Christina Chase: Uh-huh, I was also grateful that Sophia Institute Press published the book, so you can find it on their website.
• 25:38
  Christina Chase: Uh, it is also available.
• 25:40
  Christina Chase: It's only $2 on their website.
• 25:41
  Christina Chase: This was written four years ago, I guess it's also available on Amazon.
• 25:46
  Christina Chase: Uh, if you want to check out the blog that I was talking about, uh, you can chasechristinacom and there's Christina's about CHR.
• 25:57
  Christina Chase: Oh, yes, and uh, I've also done some videos on YouTube exploring different things about life and faith, and any last words.
• 26:10
  Christina Chase: Um, you know, I would just say that, being as severely dependent as I am my life, I don't mind calling it abnormal.
• 26:21
  Christina Chase: It isn't exactly normal.
• 26:24
  Christina Chase: I don't know who really does live a completely perfectly normal life.
• 26:31
  Christina Chase: So I'm just like everybody else, except I do live differently and there's no shame in having to live differently over having to, you know, have strangers come in and see you naked when you first moved out.
• 26:49
  Christina Chase: I mean, it can be a little like this is a weird life, but it's mine and you know we all are so different in music and that's what makes life so interesting and human, kind, so beautifully complex.
• 27:07
  Christina Chase: So you know, really just appreciate all those little peculiarities that make up who you are, your uniqueness because you know your beauty is probably your most beautiful aspects are found in your quirks, your peculiarities.
• 27:34
  Justin Alan Hayes: Through your book and now speaking with you in person digitally.
• 27:38
  Justin Alan Hayes: I just wanted to thank you for what you have done and what you're doing through your book, through your blogs, social media videos.
• 27:49
  Justin Alan Hayes: It's truly inspirational to me and, as you probably find out, others as well, and I want to just wish you the best of luck with the future endeavors that you have.
• 28:05
  Justin Alan Hayes: And thank you for again, for putting that reflection book together, because if you hadn't done that, I wouldn't have come across it in a St Raphael bookstore, picked it up, read it and then wanted to speak with you and have you be able to continue to share your experience.
• 28:28
  Justin Alan Hayes: So it's very inspirational.
• 28:31
  Justin Alan Hayes: So thank you for what you have and what you're doing.
• 28:35
  Christina Chase: Thank you.
• 28:35
  Christina Chase: God works in serious ways.
• 28:37
  Christina Chase: Thank you for inviting me and thank you for the work that you do too.
• 28:40
  Justin Alan Hayes: You're welcome If you hang on for a minute.
• 28:44
  Justin Alan Hayes: I'm going to close out and then we'll take a couple photos and we'll post those on social media ahead of the episode airing.
• 28:51
  Justin Alan Hayes: And we want to thank you, our viewers, our listeners, for checking out our transcript, for joining us together on this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast, and a very special thank you and gratefulness to have our special guest with us today, Christina Chase.
• 29:14
  Justin Alan Hayes: Please check out her book, her works, her website, stay in contact.
• 29:22
  Justin Alan Hayes: She truly is an inspiration to me, and she can be an inspiration to you.
• 29:29
  Justin Alan Hayes: So, until next time, I'm Justin Alan Hayes, founder and executive director at Voices for Voices, and we hope you have a great day and be a voice for you or somebody in need.