[Stylist] I also sent book exverpt

Tue Feb 9 18:51:32 UTC 2021

Ok here it goes, you guys are the first!

My outline so far maps 30 stories/chapters. Each chapter will be accompanied with a relatable recipe. Food is my passion, my medicin, my art form, and last year I graduated from Culinary school at the age of 52.

this is one story somewhere in the middle, it’s the adrenolyn story:

Adrenaline fills my body with little bubbles of energetic high. I’m alive. I know I’m alive, because I can feel the buzzing.

Not like the buzzing of restlessness that feels like battery acid in my muscles when I’m trying to feel satisfied or comfortable sitting and reading a book on the sofa. That would be a beautiful thing to be able to do, but in my universe the satisfaction of living can’t ignite unless I’m out there in the world, active, seeking only activities that lead to accomplishments that make me feel more normal, more accepted. If I win, people won’t see me as weak or disabled, which is the bare minimum anyone needs for belonging. In other words, the very foundation of fulfillment is the thrill of the win. I need to jump out of my skin with excitement to have the self-confidence to stop  putting myself down. 

Winning proves that I am ok, that I am normal. Seeking the same acceptance as everyone else, I made winning or performing the channel for being recognized by people. My life became a game of gathering attention. 

I had noble intentions too, of course. I also wanted others to see that their stereotypical perceptions of disability are wrong, that there are no real barriers between anyone and a fulfilling life. Adrenaline bubbles gave me the tangible, physical feeling of fulfillment, and there were always methods within my ability to bring it to me. Scuba diving, down hill skiing, parasailing, zip lining, even gymnastics. 

To do a backflip on a thin beam when you can’t see where it is, you need to move by knowing.  You start by feeling the position of your body in space and knowing the contours of your physicality. You feel the beam under your feet, and align yourself physically and mentally with the laws of the beam. You know it’s width, it’s length and it’s rigidity. You intend. And then you move through the multidimensional vision of you mind, by feeling it. The brain knows the precision required, and I don’t interfere with the mathematics. 

We could all be sitting on the same sofa having the same conversation, experiencing completely different realities. Nobody sees the way another sees. There is no true vision other than the Light. 

“Wow, you can do it!” they’d cry.

“Orly, you’re incredible! What an inspiration!” 

It’s definitely a buzz when that praise turns into adrenaline then to acceptance then to love, but somehow it doesn’t last long. 

Maybe, not being able to see what’s ahead of me visually has made me more prepared. If someone through the years prescribed a limit on what I could do, I made a point of going out and proving them wrong. Showing off my disability was the opposite of retreating, it was a demonstration.

Of course, everyone has their disability. Everyone has a challenge or affliction. But when you are blind, you are very visibly blind. You can’t hide your blindness in the dark, what an ironic joke that is. There are entire cultures who hide their disabled people at home, hidden behind closed doors to prevent the mark on the family from being revealed to the judges who would reject and cast out. 

I wasn't designed like that though, it wasn’t in me to hide. I became the other extreme, to try to overachieve with everything I did, to be as visible as possible. Heaping the pressure on myself, I stretched expectations and my own thought processes to bring the harsh light of overcompensation to prove to myself I was not being untrue. 

Life is to be out there, doing things, engaging with the movement of the world. To be frightened, and to win.

When you're blind and you commit to extreme sports, you can’t just change your mind. On the edge of the plane when you're about to jump out, right at the point of pivot just nanoseconds before the launch into total loss of control, you can’t change your mind because you’ve relied on so many people to even get so far. You’d look like an idiot. So you just have to go for it.

After a Tony Robbins conference a few years ago I was waiting in the line up ready to walk across hot coals. (Hot coals available? That’ll definitely do the trick!) Nervous energy was whizzing from my solar plexus to my skin, my words moving quickly in my head “Oh my god oh my god”. From ahead of me came the sensual clues of the awesome horror that was waiting for me. Screams of pain and elation, urgent cheers, panting and gasping. Smells of burning coal, the ashen smell of smoke that is both primally terrifying and deeply comforting, and perhaps even undertone smells of singeing flesh. Waves of heat, whirling seductively and threateningly in the air from in front of me, licking my face like a passionate lover. The line moves. We shuffle up. The heat intensifies, the sounds become more intense, the energy is thickening in tension. I heard people giving up and turning away, they couldn’t follow through, it was too hard for them to imagine enduring the process of accomplishment. They didn’t have enough to prove. The lump in my throat grew. The people in line around me had all kinds of disabilities, challenges from intellectual to mobility, each with their own handicap. They let the disabled people go first, you see. So there we were, a crowd of disabled people lined up to walk across hot coals so we could feel the visceral sensation of being perfectly alive. 

INSERT: Walking across the coals, and getting to the other side. 

When I see, I have so much more input than most sighted people because all my senses are engaged, I get input and signals and messages from so many coordinates that it’s hard to ignore the information. I wish I could just close my eyes and make it all go away, but unfortunately my vision is as clear with my eyes closed as when they are wide open. Even so, I can’t see what I’m in for. 

Standing top of a cliff with the buzzing vibration of a zipline near me, other people could see people whizzing through the air, but I can only imagine it. They try to describe it to me from their perception, but all I get is a limited view of someone else’s universe. 

If I was completely autonomous I could change my mind more easily. I’d just say, “nope, this isn’t for me,” and turn around. You’re way more committed when your loyal guides have helped you get that far, because you don’t want them to think you’re a failure or weak. No way I’m looking like an idiot. It gives me the motivation to follow through. 

And then there’s the feeling of getting to the other side. It’s like you’re alive. Your body is tingling, your mind is liberated from the planet, in space, like you’re walking on air. Touching down after a skydive or a zipline, stepping out on the other side of a burning coal bed, gasping for air after being submerged at the bottom of a rushing river, I felt my body soften, less rigid, like a release of intense physical and mental pressure. Born again. The sensation of love and acceptance, a moment of clarity and truth, a sparkling light brighter than the sun. 

Is this what performers, actors, singers and bands do when they get the audience cheering and clapping, that beautiful feeling of high? They bring the group collectively to a state of united belonging. Aligning vision. All these chemicals and hormones flowing through all the different body systems, healing medicine. That’s why people get addicted to the surge. 

Addiction is harmful. Believing I need hot coals to feel alive is harmful to my soul who wants to live no matter whether there are dangerous pursuits to accomplish or not. To be OK just sitting here on this sofa, being just as as calm, relevant and belonging. Just breathing, feeling the sofa under my body, my feet on this floor, just being OK in this moment. In my striving to be OK no matter no what I’m faced with, I forgot to be able to feel that inner peace without the restlessness even when I’m faced with nothing. I am enough right here.  

The weekend I met Ben, my first late husband, I was on a camping trip with a group of people I met while downhill skiing in Toronto. There was rush of wild river rapids in the area and the thrill of rafting out of control was like a shot of heroin that I couldn’t resist. I wasn’t the only one, a host of voices scattered along on the shoreline, along with sounds of rafts and tubes and the hustle of movement between humans and their surroundings. I could hear the rushing sound of the gorge to my left as I was approaching the river. The stones under foot were cold and sharp, sending electric signals up through the reflex points in my feet. Alive ning had begun.

Perhaps if I could see I would change my mind. That is one of the benefits of being blind I suppose, I can commit myself to Life without knowing what I’m in for. But as I approach what’s coming up, like the river, my senses start painting a picture and my imagination fills in the blanks. “Oh shit. Oh, can’t turn back! Orly, are you crazy? Yes I am! Here we go!”

I approached the shore of the flowing river. Hundreds of people in a cacophonic mass of voices around me, screaming, laughing, shouting meaning at each other over the roar of the water. “I am here, moving boldly toward the danger.” 

“Come, let me help you!” a voice startles me on my left and shakes me out of my confidence and into uncertainty. Who are they speaking to? Why is their voice implying that there is a weak, frail, incapable woman here who needs help? Why are they holding my elbow?  

To my right I heard other people and the flow of rushing water, but the rushing water on the right of me more intensely than on the other side. Loud. The volume of the day was loud and intense, booming frequencies of wild excitement. There was fear in the texture too, the delicious anxious unknowing that comes with danger. 

“No, I can do it,” I said, gruffly. “I don’t need help. I can do anything sighted people can.” 

The inner tube was huge, you have to carry it in both arms and then you place it in the water and jump on. I needed to move quickly before someone else would come and think I needed help. Their need to help me chipped away at my feeling of self-love and acceptance, kept reminding me that I’m not good enough. Charge forward and quickly prove them wrong. Neglect to take my time to feel the water and know which way it’s actually going. A sighted person would not even think to stop to gather that information. A blind person (a wise one at least) needs to use the sense of touch to know the way a river flows, especially when the sound is so deafening. But I was too busy to immerse my sensual knowing into what I was doing. 

There are handles on either side of the fat rubber ring and your butt sinks into this donut hole. I jumped on and started spinning, immediately losing my sense of direction whizzing inside a tornado of movement on a turbulent surface of water. I started paddling with my hands the wrong way up the rapids, wobbling and spinning and trying vainly to win over the force of the river. The deafening booming volume of the air was like a blanket around my perception, I couldn’t hear if anyone was shouting directions. The water got faster and wilder, I crashed into a rock, fighting with it for survival. 

“Hmmmm, maybe I’m going the wrong way.” 

“I’m not going the wrong way, the river is going the wrong way.” 

I proudly placed my inner tube in the water thinking the current was going the opposite way. I held on for dear life, crashing, bumping into rocks, falling in but getting up, falling in, getting up, all wet and stubborn! Friends rushed to my side, worried I had lost my mind. Covered in bumps and bruises, inflicted by my blind pride as I kept refusing the support I needed and deserved, stubbornly trying to force my inner tube to go against the current! The thing I was avoiding was hitting me right back in the face. I just kept thinking what a blind thing to do!! Or perhaps, what a human thing to do. If I just reached out and said, yes I need help and support to position my inner tube for a successful fall down the river rapids, I would have been safe, flowing with ease, have more fun, less tension and pressure. So simple right?

But the stubborn water refused to change direction and the strength of the flow spun me under the surface where I took a few deep gulps of river and hit my knee against a rock, gashing the skin. 

A friend waded out to help me, “Come up, hold on to my hand! You are injured.” 

My knee was throbbing, my head was bumped, but when I came up to the surface to the cries of good-hearted do-gooders all crowded round to save me, I was already seduced by the adrenaline. As soon as a friend had straightened out my inner tube and aligned me with the direction of the river, I jumped in and zoomed down. 

Light, free, zooming speed, the flow of the air, sailing on the current of the wind, sprinkled by living water, splashes of life on my face and my body, fresh and cold, awake and alive, love. Inner love. I loved and accepted myself. 

I did it again and again that day. 

I was sore and bruised that evening, my knee hurt, and I definitely had a little bump on my head. But I didn’t show people around me that it hurt. Going down the rapids, is like walking out the front door. We are immediately in the flow of life, and have our disabilities and well-meaning do-gooders to contend with. And when we prove the do-gooders wrong, we have the adoration of the idolizers to feed us with enough buzz until the next thrill.

“Oh my goodness Orly, you’re so amazing, inspiring, breaking down barriers, a mover and a shaker, a trailblazer, all that stuff!” 

The truth is the only thing that mattered was that adrenaline made me believe in myself. The adoration of others was a reminder, but it didn’t last long. I kept losing that feeling. I wanted to get it back. 

Orly Shamir (My Light)

Integrity Based Human Influencer / Chef

Website:  <https://nourishedbylight.com/> https://nourishedbylight.com

Email:  <mailto:orlymylight at gmail.com> orlymylight at gmail.com

Phone: (954) 559-4105

From: Stylist <stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Vejas Vasiliauskas via Stylist
Sent: Tuesday, February 9, 2021 12:57 PM
To: Writers' Division Mailing List <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Vejas Vasiliauskas <alpineimagination at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Stylist] I also sent book exverpt

Hi Orly, 

You can submit a piece of writing to the list and ask for feedback, but typically it wouldn't be a long piece. People submit poems, sometimes short stories and, on occasion, a chapter of novel. You could pick out a chapter or section of your memoir that you'd like feedback on, and post that.

Vejas 

 9, 2021, at 03:37, Orly via Stylist <stylist at nfbnet.org <mailto:stylist at nfbnet.org> > wrote:

Hi,

I am so new to writing, I’m not writing poetry, but atype of memoir, recipe memoir, and wondering if I can share anything I’ve done so far?

I’ve written my outline, it took months, now slowly writing the stories.

<image001.jpg>

Orly Shamir (My Light)

Integrity Based Human Influencer / Chef

Website:  <https://nourishedbylight.com/> https://nourishedbylight.com

Email:  <mailto:orlymylight at gmail.com> orlymylight at gmail.com

Phone: (954) 559-4105

From: Stylist <stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org <mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org> > On Behalf Of Debra Braiman via Stylist
Sent: Monday, February 8, 2021 9:42 PM
To: Writers' Division Mailing List <stylist at nfbnet.org <mailto:stylist at nfbnet.org> >
Cc: Debra Braiman <Braiman318 at hotmail.com <mailto:Braiman318 at hotmail.com> >
Subject: Re: [Stylist] I also sent book exverpt

Thanks I did get that. Did you submit? Also, can I submit a poem as well? Thanks and good luck to all. Deb Joyce 

From: Stylist <stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org <mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org> > On Behalf Of Mary-Jo Lord via Stylist
Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2021 5:07 AM
To: 'Writers' Division Mailing List' <stylist at nfbnet.org <mailto:stylist at nfbnet.org> >
Cc: Mary-Jo Lord <mjfingerprints at comcast.net <mailto:mjfingerprints at comcast.net> >
Subject: Re: [Stylist] I also sent book exverpt

Hi Deb,

You should have received a message thanking you for your submission. I just resent it from another email address.

Mary-Jo Lord

From: Stylist <stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org <mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org> > On Behalf Of Debra Braiman via Stylist
Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2021 2:11 AM
To: Writers' Division Mailing List <stylist at nfbnet.org <mailto:stylist at nfbnet.org> >; Shelley Alongi <alongi.shelley at gmail.com <mailto:alongi.shelley at gmail.com> >
Cc: Debra Braiman <Braiman318 at hotmail.com <mailto:Braiman318 at hotmail.com> >
Subject: [Stylist] I also sent book exverpt

I am just checking I sent an excerpt for my book Identity Theft A Victims Search For Justice Did you receive it? Thanks 

Deb B aka Deborah E Joyce 

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