#PartOfMePodcast – Episode 24: Gina – Acquiring a Disability

Hello again. Everyone. Welcome again to another episode of The part of me podcast, the disability peer interview podcast. Thank you so much for joining us again. This is episode 24 and it’s Christmas. So Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope you get lots of presents and have a really lovely day. I’ll definitely be drinking lots of gin and whatever else I can get my hands on. Really today, we’re joined by another guest who asked if she could tell her story on the podcast. And this is Gina, so hello,

Hi there, and thank you very much for welcoming onto the podcast.

Well, of course, thank you very much for offering to come on as a guest. So I just want to get straight on with it really. Can you start by telling us who you are and what you do?

My name is Gina Gardner, and I’m an empowerment coach and a transformational leadership trainer and facilitator.

That sounds really interesting. Can you just elaborate a bit on that?

All of my work the last 30 years has been about helping people step into their genuine power. And when you’re in your genuine power. It isn’t about diminishing anybody else or making them feel small. It’s about owning who you are, having a great relationship with yourself, believing in yourself and liking who you are, wobbly bits and all, and the transformational leadership as your listeners will hear from my story that I’ve spent most of my adult life developing leadership in one one situation or another, and a big part of my story is that I believe that my disability created a huge opportunity for a gift, and the gift that’s come out of it has been a unique way of developing leadership.

Okay, all right. So, I mean, that was going to be my next question. We are on a disability in the workplace podcast, so could you explain to us, I think that’s a really I can imagine myself completely agreeing with you. So can you explain to us a little bit about your disability and how you use that as a gift,

Right? It’s quite a complicated story, and I think it would be worth telling the story, because your listeners can then see how it’s not just one event. It’s been a whole catalogue of things. I was completely able bodied, and I became a teacher at 21 I was promoted very early, and was promoted to be the deputy head of a very large junior school aged 28 and I was appointed to be the catalyst for change. I was told when I went to the school that the head didn’t want to appoint me. He wanted a man. So there’s another form of discrimination for you. When I went to the interview. we will appoint him, but they appointed me, and the acting deputy head was not best pleased, because she’d been told not to apply because they were going to appoint a man. I was the youngest on the staff bar two, and the school was was really living in a sort of pre Second World War way of doing things. And this is now 1970 no 1982 when I was appointed. So you’ll appreciate people being there a long time, absolutely. And so for the first two terms, I worked with the then head, John Hughes to strategically plan how we were going to move people forward, how we get them with us. And we got to the February half term, and I was really pleased to get there, because it had been very, very challenging, and I went off skiing, and I was a very keen skier, and in those days, it was the thing to do to have your skis as long as you could have them. And I had a new pair of skis for Christmas. And I’m I proceeded all through the week to wrap the extra 10 centimetres of ski round my neck. Thursday, I’d had a really bad fall, and I was shaken. And so on the Friday morning, I said to my friends, look, I’m not going to go and ski with you. I’m going to go and poddle about on some of the blue and the red runs, blue and green runs, and I’m going to get my confidence back. I’ll meet you for lunch. I met them for lunch, and they said we found this fabulous Run. Come with us. And so I said, Yes, and off we went in the chair lift. Now, your listeners may not be familiar with going on chair lifts, but there’s this amazing magic which happens as you leave the valley floor and you get further and further away, all of the houses look as if they’re, you know, little model houses at the bottom, and people look like ants, and there’s a certain sort of quality to noise, but there’s also this amazing silence, apart from the of people as they ski under the lid. Anyway, we got to the top, I got off, I followed them, and they then skied a little bit, turned a corner, and then I knew something was wrong. Even though I was behind them, they’d taken a wrong turning, and instead of being on the wonderful run that they anticipated, we were at the top of the Schindler grass, which is the most difficult black run in st Anton. Oh my gosh. And the only way to get down is to go down the black run. Wow. Now I skied black before I was, you know, as a pretty good skier, but this was a monster. Now, again, your listeners name may not be familiar with the principle of moguls. Moguls are where the weather has carved out the snow, and it leaves lumps. So in the night, they freeze and they become, if they’re small, they’re like cobbles. And it’s like skiing over cobbles, but these were six foot tall, snap off the lump, and the only way you could ski was to ski turn on the top of a mogul, slide down and then ski in between the moguls and then do the same come back.

Gosh, it sounds horrific. It wasn’t good, I have to say.

So we started down, and I managed the first third of the of the slope fine, and then I left it too late to turn and I had a nasty fall, and it took me about 20 minutes to reach all of the others, and they were sitting on a mogul, each of them like an elf, sitting on a mushroom. So I went and joined them, and I sat on my mushroom. If you like my mogul? Yeah, it was a brilliantly hot, sunny day, and the top of my mogul gave way. Oh, my God. I found myself falling. What I remember is a scream, and then everything going black, wow. And I have no idea how long it took for people to ski down to me, but they, the people I was with, said it took them about half an hour to get down to me. I didn’t one good thing about that is that by between the two falls, I’d skied most of the slopes. There wasn’t much left to go, and I was determined I wouldn’t have the blood waggon. And so with their help, I managed to get back to the hotel, and the next day, we travelled home, went straight to accident and emergency, and I was told I got a bad concussion and that I had trapped a nerve in my neck to cut. As I say, it’s a complicated story. I went back to school after a few days, and five weeks later, I got the okay from the medics that I could go I was the deputy leader on a borough ski party with 150 10 and 11 year olds. And this time, we were going to Switzerland. And I wasn’t quite right. I still was using a collar around my neck and but I I’ve been told that it was okay to go. We got a doctor with us, and all through the week, I became more and more like Quasimodo. And by the last Friday, I, as we kept brought the children back to the home, said to my colleagues, I’m going to have to go and lie down. And within a very short time, I found myself to be paralysed down one side. Oh, wow. I didn’t want to frighten the children, and so I just had to wait until somebody came, yeah, and it the time seemed forever. As soon as somebody arrived or hell broke loose and I was carted off to hospital, yeah, yeah. Incidentally, one of my colleagues packed for me because we were going home the next day. They packed three novels. They’ve hacked toothpaste, but no toothbrush and no knickers.

Oh, great.

Very different set of priorities to mine, absolutely. Yeah. So I was in hospital there a few days, and then flown home by air ambulance, and then in hospital for a while, and it took me until well into the end of May to get back to school. And although I could walk, my mobility wasn’t great, and all I did was school and sleep. So by the time I got to the summer holidays, I thought I’ve got six weeks now I can rest and recuperate. But that wasn’t to be two weeks into the holiday. I got a phone call very, very early in the morning to say that my it was from my head teacher’s wife. She just found him dead in bed. Oh my gosh. And so instead of having a rest, I had helped her with the funeral. I was letting the staff know, letting the parents know, letting the authority know. And so I was acting head, and three months later, I was appointed the permanent head, wow. And I was determined that the children would get the very best educational opportunity, and the same for my staff, and then the sense, the decision, then for me, was that what I would do, if I couldn’t do it properly, then I wouldn’t do it at all. So my determination was that the school would do well now for the next few years, every time they kept on investigating why my mobility was getting worse, why I was so fatigued, why I had so much pain, and I basically school and I did sleep every time I did a test fell apart. My mobility got worse, and so by 1989 no actually 1987. I had to use a wheelchair to get around school, but I didn’t use it in my office, in the hall or the classrooms. I could physically get into them, but I resisted going into a wheelchair big time. And the crunch came in the school holidays when I and some friends went to whistly Gardens, and I love gardens, and I could only manage to get the car to the kiosk in the car park, and we could have hired a wheelchair, but I decided, in my stubborn way, that I wouldn’t, and I sat in the car park for two hours while they went round the gardens, thinking, What are you doing, Woman, why are You cutting your nose off to spite your face, and I was really worried what people would think, but I was on the experimental drug therapy, which went very badly wrong, and the next day, went into hospital, and was there for four months. And when I came out, I had to use a wheelchair around school, and as I said, I didn’t use it in classrooms at that time. I then decided to keep well away from doctors, because every time they touched me, I fell apart, and that saw very well until 1996 it was three weeks before the end of the summer term. It was in the garden, and I sneezed and I felt something significant go in my back. Oh my gosh. I got to the end of term, thinking it’s just end of term, and my back aches, and I’ve got sciatica. And for me, I was used to pain all the time, but I went to get up from assembly, I had a high chair, and I went to get up, and I my legs wouldn’t hold me, and I was taken to hospital and found to have a very bad ruptured disc, and they operated. And those days, you spent three days doing nothing, very flat and still. And then when the physio went to get me up, when I put my left foot to the floor, I just fainted, and that didn’t go and I became a very good stalk. I had to use a wheelchair around school because I couldn’t walk. I had a wheelchair upstairs, a stair lift and then a wheelchair downstairs, and it took me 18 months to manage to walk to the bottom of like very, very small garden. Wow. And so I thought, I’m on the up now, and things are improving. And we got to the last day of the summer term. There’s something very significant to me about the last day, the last bit of the summer term. And I wasn’t feeling very well, and I got home after the term had finished, and then I was physically sick. And as I was being sick, something went to my back, and I’d ruptured another disc. Oh my gosh. Was rushed into hospital. They removed the disc, and I then had back surgery, syndrome again, and now I couldn’t I couldn’t stand at all. I couldn’t hold my own weight. Wow. I was in hospital for eight weeks. And four days after I came out hospital, I was back at school. The new neurosurgeon, five months later, said to me, I think we might talk about you going back to school for a couple of hours a week. And I just laughed. And people have often said to me, Oh, why did you rush back? Why didn’t you recuperate? If I was at home, I live on my own, and the carer hadn’t filled the kettle and put a cup down or tea bag in it, I couldn’t make myself a cup of tea. I had daytime television and I could read, or I could go into school. I could use my mouse, I could use my brain and my hands, and I could do something that I loved and was making a real positive difference. And there were people around who could lift me things if I couldn’t get them, yeah. And so for me, it was a no brainer, yeah, so that’s 1998 and for the next six years, I continued to as the head teacher, but my health was failing. I was working a 1314, 15 hour day on a regular basis. I did lots of roles outside school to bring a budget into school and to prove to myself, I suppose, I could do it cutting edge. And I was given the ultimatum by the neurologist in 2004 if you don’t stop what you’re doing, you will be completely house bound and you’ll be unable to drive. I had a heavily adapted car, and I took the very difficult decision that I was going to leave, and then I had an internal spinal stimulator fitted in 2000 late, 2004 which at that time was very, very new. It’s like an Intel ends machine. Okay, so the wires go into my spine and the batteries in my tummy, and I turn it on with what looks like a TV remote control, I can now walk short distances. I don’t use a wheelchair in the house or garden. If we go to a pub or a restaurant, I can manage to walk from the car into the building. I’m not great at standing. I find it difficult to walk on uneven ground because I don’t really feel the bottom of my feet properly. But I can do a lot, lot more than I have been able to do for years. So there am I, I’ve, I’ve retired from school at that time. I mean, it’s, it’s now 2019 it’s taken me 15 years to walk as far as I can, and it was a very, very slow process. But what I recognised is the gift of my disability. And it may sound strange was I couldn’t physically get into the classrooms. I couldn’t I couldn’t get through the door of most of them, and even if I could get through the door, couldn’t get round. So I had to create a different way of ensuring excellence, of empowering the staff to take responsibility for their own performance, rather than having me standing behind them and saying, Well, that’s all right, and that’s not. We created a shared language around you know, what does excellence look like in the context of each of the different aspects of school, and it was incredibly successful. And we were on the best 100 schools in the in England twice, while I was ahead with one of the first Beacon Schools, worked with dozens of other schools and hundreds of other teachers, and I know that knew very well that this stuff worked, and I’m I’m honest enough with myself to know that if I’d been able bodied, the chances are have been too interfering, that I would not have the necessity of having to take a step back and find other ways of Becoming a much better listener, of becoming far more empathetic arose out of becoming completely wheelchair bound and always then being on the roof or having to look in rather than being in the thick of it. Yeah, so I’ve left school, and I think what now I know I’m no more liking the idea of daytime TV than I was previously. And I thought, well, I’ve done all of this work with leadership, with the National College. I was an advisor for the government, and I’ve worked in a whole range of roles, not all at the same time that you look appreciate. I was ahead for 21 years. I one years, and so I took myself off to do a research project across industries. Were the issues facing then, in terms of leadership and developing leadership, the same as they were in education and they were so I wrote my first couple of books, and then between 2005 and 2009 I generally work. I’ve always done life coaching, and I’ve been a qualified life coach for much longer than than that, but I worked. The other part of my work was working with corporates doing coaching and training, leadership training, creating bespoke training programmes and then delivering them. And that was great, until the recession hit, and in one week, I lost all of my contracts. Wow, because organisations just cut their slashed their budget. Now, by this time, I was already doing work for as a lecturer at Esi please University, around a huge range of aspects of leadership, but as a guest lecturer, and they would commission me to go and work with individual organisations. These weren’t the big corporates. These were anything from five employees to perhaps 150 employees, and I’d go in and I’d work with them, sort something out, and then they’d invite me back. A few months later, I was I became very aware that these were all of things which could be avoided. So when I lost all those contracts, what I started to do was to work with businesses and work with them on a regular basis, always with the senior decision makers, depending on the business, sometimes with the whole staff, sometimes just with the managers, sometimes just within other individuals. Still do that today, but I became more and more aware that there was so many people who were either finding it a struggle to lead other people because they’d been appointed as great salespeople or great technician, exactly, yeah, or they were on the receiving end of poor leadership. Young people were stressed and so on, and I had this burning sense of purpose that I needed to get to more people. So two years ago, I started to create genuinely you. My first business, which I still operate, is Junior garden associates. And so now I’ve written more books. The latest is thriving, not surviving, the five secret pathways of happiness, success and fulfilment, and that’s my second number one international bestseller. Person, thank you. The personal and spiritual development programme that I have, and I’m just about to launch an Enlightened Leadership programme, which works on the basis you have to lead yourself first. You are the common denominator. You are responsible for every aspect of you and so on. All of those principles and many of the strategies were created back at school. Yeah. The other thing that I think is relevant to the story is, after I finished with headship, I decided I wanted to to know more about Neuro Linguistic Programming NLP, which basically means using words to change beliefs and behaviours and having and become an NLP coach and a Master Practitioner, I went off To to look at as many people as I could using NLP. And I ended up at the Excel Centre in London with a guy called Anthony Robbins, which many people may be familiar with, exactly the best paid, most known motivational speaker in the world. You want to be coached by him. It’s over a million dollars a year.

Oh, only a million dollars. Okay, yeah, okay, brilliant.

He’s six foot seven. He’s bigger than life. And I went, and I have to say, I was fairly cynical about this guy, who I thought it’s going to be lots and lots of hype and, you know, not a lot of substance. But I was wrong, and there was a situation that occurred there, but which, for me, has been absolutely pivotal in terms of my beliefs about myself and what I’m capable. So in the morning of the first week, talking about a course in California, and I thought I like the sound of that, but I wouldn’t be able to manage it because I haven’t got an electric wheelchair that time, an electric travel chair I have now. And how would I manage on my own? And it’s a different country and and although I travelled here quite widely, helping other people, I had a driver who took me from home to where I was going and waited for me and took me back, yeah. Now on that first day, we did the fire walk. Now, your listeners may not be familiar with the fire walk, but that’s where there are hot coals along, I suppose, 30 feet and you walk with bare feet across hot coals,okay, I have heard of it, yeah, but

Yes i have heard about this

Without getting burnt. Mindset, yep. Now bear in mind, this is 2006 so my mobility is still very limited, and I have somebody either side of me supporting me. And I managed the walk, and I was ecstatic. And as I sat down in my wheelchair, I was really chuffed, but I looked because I was sitting and facing the next person coming. He was a double amputee. He had no nothing below the knee. He tipped himself up onto his hands, and he walked on those hot coals on his hands. Wow. And I thought to myself, if he can do that, then I can go to America and I can start. I can do that. Course, yeah, my ticket and I bought my flight. I went off to America, and since then, I’ve done all Anthony Robbins training, trainings. I’ve become a senior, a leader. I’ve travelled all over the work and for pleasure, that guy has no idea of what a difference he made my life, and because I share that story with other people’s lives, and it fits so well, because I believe disability is a metaphor for life. Okay, my legs don’t work very well. Get into my wheelchair, and I can wheel up and still use a wheelchair to go out into town or to go on holiday or wherever. I have to say, always on full speed.

Yeah. Me too

Yeah, because they saw somebody else doing it and egg them all? Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

And I think if, for those people who are listening, if you’re disabled, or you’re the carer of somebody who’s disabled, I would urge you think dream big, you know, becoming a great problem solver, I think, is one of the skill sets of somebody who’s disabled, would

You greatly agree? 100% agree absolutely, and the other reasons that you pointed that out in your story.

And you know, I think a great sense of humour is also incredibly helpful. I think so. I think

Almost 100% agree with you, but I do want to ask you a question. So when there are those means, for example, that say things like, the only disability is a bad attitude, what is your take on them?

I think that’s a load of rubbish. Okay. Why I think a bad attitude is an element, but it’s not the whole story. Our beliefs are installed in us when we’re for the most part, when parents who say, or you’re clumsy, or you can’t do that, or I wasn’t any good at it, and you’re just like me, and parents will, I think my experience as a head, I’ve got experience with disability in a whole range of ways, one myself, secondly, as a head, encouraging parents to give their children the opportunity to To do things and at times take a calculated risk, calculated risk, absolutely, but not to keep them smothered. Yeah, yeah. In the third way, my sister sadly had two children with a genetic disorder where they progress normally till seven, and then they deteriorate to be profoundly disabled, and she had both boys before they knew of this disability. So I’ve lived with disability in a whole range of ways. And I think that you think about yourself, I mean, you’ve only got to watch something like the Paralympics, and here, everybody’s got, everybody’s got a story and what? Yes, having a positive attitude, focusing on what you can do rather than what you can’t, is a huge, huge benefit. But also what your underlying beliefs are, what support you have. Because if you have got a really positive attitude and you’ve got no support, you are at a lesser advantage than those people who’ve got support that encourages and opens doors expects of you. And if one of the arguments I had with many parents was because we because, I suppose I was in a wheelchair. My school had many children who came through who had one disability or another. And I would say to the parents, you know,if you’re not careful, you’re going to doubly disadvantage. in a way. And my sister was the deputy of a special school, and her view of those children was, you know, they’ve got to be the best they can be. They’ve got to find a way of fitting into society, and you’ve got to expect that from them. You can’t, you can’t smother them and baby them and, oh, what can you expect? You can’t expect any better, because that’s, that’s where they will aspire to? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely passionate about people recognising that the only limitation in terms of what goes on in their head is how how they operate. But I absolutely accept that it’s so much easier when you have people around you who have high expectations, who fight your corner for you and with you, and sometimes that’s giving you a kick up the button.

Yeah, I completely agree. I completely agree. I think the I 100% agree that you think anything I would add to that is that whilst we’re supporting people to challenge themselves and be the best we can be, we have to be mindful that there are barriers that are presented, presented that stop people physically and emotionally and mentally being able to achieve but I know that’s what you were saying, but I just wanted to point that out to our listeners as

Absolutely, and I’m not making light of that, right? I’m talking about within the context of what though is capable. 

Yeah, absolutely no. I completely agree. But I think it’s important to make sure that my listeners understand that, because the one of the reasons why I find that meme so dangerous, the only attitude is a bad attitude, is because, as a society, I think we like to categorise people. And so we see on TV, and we see the Paralympians, you know, leaping over six foot fences and their wheelchairs and all of those. And then we walk down through it and say, Well, you disabled person, why can’t you do that? You’re just being and I think it’s important to reiterate, as you do very well, as you very eloquently did, that no matter how much somebody wants to do something, sometimes there are barriers preventing them from doing it.

And you know, even now, and I’ve you know, my disability started in 1983 there are times when, you know, people look at me and think you’ve got it pretty well taped. And I am very fortunate that I have a very positive attitude. I focus on what I can do. There are still days and excuse the language, which are fairly bloody. Yeah. I mean, my particular bete Noire is hotels who say that they’re accessible, and then when you get there, there’s two planks up to eight foot window. That’s the only way to get a wheelchair. Yeah, your rooms that are accessible, and you can’t get the wheelchair in. So, yeah, there are, there are huge, huge frustrations, and there are limitations. I absolutely accept that, but I’m if I can give you a story of experience, please do, because, in a way, it shows what I mean. We had a little boy who came to our school, and he had brittle bones, and when he came to us, he was in a perspex cot. Wow. Okay, so he came from the infants, and he came to us, and he was on a perspex cot with legs. Now this white boy had a good brain. His mouth worked, his brain worked, his eyes worked, but physically he was very, very limited. And I said to his his parents, we’ve got to find a way of getting immobile. We’ve got to find a way that he can actually have eye contact with people where he’s not got people looking down, yeah, yeah. And they said, but he might break his bones. And I said, Well, look for a way where we can minimise that risk. But my belief is, and I want you to think about it, is, if you keep him in a perspex cot, he will never, ever be able to live a whole life and be independent. And so we started very gently. We explored wheelchairs. He was in a foam container. In his wheelchair, I have to tell you, he was blooming lethal. He was in his electric wheelchair. He used to whizz around the place like a lunatic. And I you know the fact that he got freedom Exactly, yeah, exactly. Learnt to be independent. He worked for local authority. He had his own flat. He got married. He had a baby, excellent, yeah, but he would not have done any of those things if the parents, and bless their hearts, they worked with us. So because the first thing was that mum wouldn’t leave him to wean mum and say, right, you go and sit in the office and leave him in the classroom. I’ve got a member of staff who will be with him. We’ll look after him. And gradually she had confidence that we weren’t being silly about him. And this was done in a very measured way over the four years, he was with us, but he had an independent life. And for me, that exemplifies what I want for people who have a physical or a mental disability, it’s how can you be enabled to make the best of what you have

Absolutely and how can you be empowered to believe that you can make the best that you have?

That’s where it starts for me. Yeah, I believe it. It’s never going to happen, is it?

But I think I completely agree with you, but I think that it’s so rare. I mean, it would have been rare when you were a teacher, but it’s still rare now that in education, there is that there’s that space which is be able to help children in that way, as you say, the parents and the carers in that way.

I agree with you, and I think it’s incredibly sad. As the curriculum has become narrower and narrower, and as the budgets have become tighter and tighter, I think it’s got more and more difficult. Yeah, I can only feel for parents because there’s not the support when they’ve got the children at home and the kids aren’t getting the support in school. And I think, I think it’s criminal.

I agree parents. A lot of parents are being told from day.oh I’m really sorry. Your child is disabled. It’s all over for you. Now, your life is over. Your child’s life is over. So even from day job, they’re not getting the opportunity to think in a positive manner about what you know, how their children might be able to succeed and lead an independent and I say in quotes, because what is normal, normal life, or average life as they would live otherwise

I would say to parents who are told or don’t succeed your children, take no notice. Yeah, I agree. Medics don’t know, yeah, if you work, so long as you’re sensible about it, and that you don’t create a sense of failure for your child, but you support your child in having a go and keeping going at having a go, then your child will blossom. And I think it’s important, but it’s true of able bodied children. 

The Disability thing is it? It’s an encouragement thing.

It’s just with knobs on it, if they have a disability, then, of course, it’s harder.

Yeah, absolutely. And then society and stereotypes and assumptions are against you. So I know I have a list of questions, but I would like to carry on with what we’re talking about. So I have a question that’s out of the blue, which will my listeners will know this happens all the time. So what do you think of the special schools and specialist education for disabled children?

Right? I think it is just very context driven. And I think there’s two contexts probably more. One is the very specific needs of that child, and there are many children for whom mainstream school, particularly secondary, is simply not suitable. I went with a friend who has a child who’s on the autistic spectrum, who’s really struggling in secondary school because they’re not making the accommodation. Yeah. So he’s gone from a class of 28 where everybody knew him and he was safe, into a school of 2000 Wow. Well, he can’t cope with changing lessons that people pick on him, because he does come across as a bit different, and he’s really, really struggling. Now, I don’t think the right place for him would be special school, but I do think there’s huge accommodations that need to go on. I think tonight, these days, to go into special school. There’s got to be very severe needs. And what I found when I because I used to go in and work with my sister’s school after I left headship and do some training there, and it was a fabulous school. And what the children who came in having failed year after year after year, were given the opportunity to raise their confidence, to to recognise that they were valued. But I would say, I think the children that did well, there were either those who were profoundly disabled and needed a huge amounts of equipment and support and care, or they were those who had significant learning problems where the normal curriculum was so far removed from what was right for them that mainstream wasn’t going to work.

So taking your example of the your friend with the autistic son who went in specialist education, because he’s in

He’s in mainstream.

In mainstream

He’s in mainstream in a school of two, with over 2000

Oh, I’m sorry. I thought he went then to special education,

is in mainstream and struggling to get the school they give him the support that he Needs.

Okay, okay, so do you, I mean, I think you’ve just answered my next question. Do you not think that’s more to do with the inclusion of the school and the education that goes on for those teachers, rather than his needs himself?

He’s high functioning. He could cope with the curriculum, but the sort of thing that sets him up is, if the class is noisy, 

Absolutely, yeah

So if he’s with a teacher that’s structured, who’s got good discipline, he thrives. If he’s with a teacher that hasn’t, he falls apart. And then there’s a problem, yeah? So inevitably, then that’s this is such a complex thing, isn’t it? Because in a primary school, they’re either with a teacher that works or they’re not.

There are so many teachers

Teachers in a day, but if he has a teacher in the morning where he’s he’s triggered. It’s much more difficult for the next

To calm down. Yeah, yeah. Now I get it, yeah. It’s, I mean, you know, that’s an example of how sad it is, isn’t it? Because it’s nothing to do with him. It’s to do with the level of training and the level of awareness, and sometimes even the level of empathy. And I do understand there’s there’s another side of that, that teachers don’t have time, they don’t have the resources, and they’re not supported in the right way. I do that as well, but it’s those things that are stopping that child succeeding. So I’m sure you have come across a social model of disability, yes, stating that society that creates barriers for disabled people. We’re not disabled by our bodies or our limitations, but we’re disabled by the society who creates with limitations for us. And that’s a pristine example of the social model not working, or more over the medical model being in play,

And that was replicated time again.

Yeah, throughout. I mean, when I go into to deliver training, I explain the social model of disability, and it’s tangible to grasp the tangible thing. So it’s the tangible things, like the physical side, so ramps instead of stairs and so on and such. But your example is a great example of how it’s not just about the environment, it’s about people and their attitudes, and people can make a difference and include people. But I want to go back quickly to your story that you were telling in the beginning. It was such a I don’t like the word inspiring for many reasons, but I think your story is one that inspires empowerment, inspires people to think differently. What struck me first about your story is there were so many events that led to your disability, and how each time you jumped up and started again, you fell down a massive crevice. Most people, including myself, would be, oh, well, that’s it, then, isn’t it? You got up and you were like, you walked back to the hotel, and you, you know, you took the help that was there, that you refused the easiest help, probably. And then happened again and again again. I just think that’s an incredible story, and how you set out you know that that supported you to develop problem solving skills. It’s so true that I think one of the biggest assets that disabled people bring to the workplace is their ability to problem solve, because as a disabled person, we problem solve on a daily basis. I would say, from the minute I open my eyes to the minute I close them, I’m problem solving all the time. And so I think your story and this entire conversation has done really well to really eloquently highlight the barriers that are presented by disabled people, but also how disabled people can overcome with a bit of support and a bit of encouragement and a bit of self belief. So I’d like to say, thank you very much. Oh, it’s my absolute pleasure, and as well as all my other listeners, I’m sure the the as well as all my other guests, sorry, I’m sure the listeners will have really enjoyed listening to this podcast. One more question I wanted to ask you. Obviously, this is a business podcast, so the majority of people that listen to this are managers, line managers, people that are supporting disabled people in the workplace. Want to understand how disabled people can benefit the workplace, either as employers or employees or as customers. So listening to your story, I think it’s very obvious, but people might be thinking, well, how that’s a really good story, but how is that relevant to business? So are there any kind of is there any way that you can sum up how this is relevant to people within business.

Well, let’s separate that out into people who work for you first and will come to the customers, yes, but if I had had a different experience and that the beginning, the beginning, after that initial accident, I had given up, or I’d given up after any of those things, my skill base, my experience, my my take on life, which I has helped people would have been lost, not only in terms of of the one you know, actually I help you, but also that through that other people have learned, and then that’s a bit like the stone in the pond going for the ripple out. I know that, for example, the local authority, I was the only head who had a physical disability that was a significant and part of that work with them and access to work, who were very helpful in providing some of the funding in terms of and remember, we’re talking about the The 80s here. So we’re talking about, to a large extent, I’d like to think a different world, but actually, as I say, I know it isn’t that looking for ways to to to find solutions, and they didn’t just help me. So, for example, I couldn’t manage the door chair, so there were electric doors put in places around school. Parents would come and say, Oh, it’s fantastic. I don’t have to fight with the pram. I don’t have to fight with the buggy. People who had a stick or a crutch would say, that makes such a lot of difference. And I think it’s easy to think of, you know, very significantly disabled people, and think about what you have to do for them, but they don’t actually think that there are lots of people who are not disabled, but actually carrying heavy boxes or whatever where, you know, simple things can make a big difference. And I think it’s about, how do we look at society differently. How do we create something which is practical, looks good and helps the vast majority, rather than just honing in on people who have a disability? And I think doing that everybody would benefit. You know, you go and that hotel or into an organisation, and the count is very high. Well, okay, if you’re in a wheelchair, that’s a pain, but if you’re four foot two, it’s a pain too. So I think this is about. just thinking about, how do you help people make the best of the situation, whatever, whatever it is. And I think if you’re an employer, if you the more variety you have in perspective, people’s experiences, in people’s capacity to listen, to share, to work together, the better. And I think, well, certainly, my only experience is that the capacity to listen and to empathise has hugely grown as a result of my disability, and people who’ve worked with me to help me, I mean, and have said it’s also impacted on their capacity to empathise and perspective. Okay, brilliant. Now, talking about your customers, I don’t know what figures are, but you probably will how many disabled people there are in this country.

There are just over 14 million disabled people, including obviously disabled children in the UK

So that’s a huge chunk of society who are buying public, and it makes no sense at all to ignore them. Yeah, lots of gaps in the market for people who had a bit of ingenuity, where you could make a killing, rather than you know just what we are offered in terms of disabled aids and disclose the disabled and activities for the disabled. And it’s time that somebody started to have a much more creative look at

Those agreed. So we’re nearly at the end of our podcast episode today. Is there anything else that you would like our listeners to know?

I’d like to say, if you’re interested, then on the website, which is the usual, HTTPS, colon, forward, slash, genuinely, then a hyphen, then the word you.com you’ll find lots and lots of free resources, brilliant. You are a leader or a manager, and you want to lead in an enlightened way. We’re launching the Enlightened Leadership Programme next month. If you’re interested in personal spiritual development, there’s stuff there for you as well. And I would urge people to go and so that’s generally hyphen. You.co and go and have a look at the website. Okay

And everybody, I will stick Gina’s link to her website on the bottom, so you don’t have to write this down. It will be on the podcast. Well, it will be on the episode, so you’ll be able to type it in or click on the link. Thank you very much for your time, Gina,

Thank you so much for having me on and thank you for all the work you do, we need people like you making a difference,

Course, and I’m definitely, I’m going to download your book immediately. Is it available on audible ?

Yes, it is.

Oh, really excellent. Have a really nice Christmas and a Happy New Year, everyone, and I’ll speak to you all soon. Bye. Bye. Now You