No one can deny the beneficial role that writing has on the person who begins to write. Writing about oneself or inventing stories raises morale, makes the imagination work, and therefore the brain, which slows down cerebral aging. What benefits!
Write to avoid stress, write to avoid taking medication, write to free your mind and body, write to strengthen your immune system … How to create a Wikipedia page for your business when you do yourself good, you also do well to others!
Write to regain one’s dignity as a man
Jean-René Mahi was illiterate until he was 43 years old. Life decided it this way: he could only write his name and his first name.
But, by dint of courage, will and tenacity, Jean-René decided one day to fight his demons and learn to read and write correctly. He felt suffocated by his illiteracy. How to live in a society where the written word is king, omnipresent and a factor of social exclusion?
When he started school at the age of 5, despite being an awake child, Jean-René never succeeded in linking letters together, in giving them meaning. With the words written in front of him, he felt like he was standing in front of an impassable wall, which he could never pass. He could not explain the reasons.
He therefore had a difficult education, which made him repeat several times. He has often taken on the role of the simpleton of the class, alongside pupils who are 4 or 5 years younger than him. The more he grew, the more he suffered in the most total indifference, without anyone taking into account all this suffering. School was, for Jean-René, his way of the cross!
Obviously, this failure was the source of great suffering. He felt like the lame duck of his family, as he puts it himself. Illiteracy should be considered a real handicap. It is unimaginable to see all the ploys that an illiterate deploys to try to get by on a daily basis. It takes a lot of effort and an extraordinary intelligence!
Illiteracy is a serious factor in social exclusion. When you can’t read or write, you can’t go and vote. In fact, you do not belong to yourself. Jean-René depended on others to cover his handicap. When he met his future wife, he asked his mother to read him his fiancée’s letters and write her the answers.
To be illiterate is a source of great anguish, of deep stress. It was the feeling that Jean-René had felt every morning when he got up, throughout his life. At 13, the teenager he was tried to kill himself, he was in so much pain, especially after the death of his father.
Obviously, he was unable to study. At 16, he took over the management of the poultry slaughterhouse in his town. At that time, finding a job was no problem, even without qualifications. He succeeded in obtaining his driver’s license, the only diploma Jean-René obtained in his life! This sesame represented for him freedom and autonomy.
Jean-René got married and had 5 children. He was unable to help his children with their homework, let alone keep up with their schooling. When he dared to admit his shortcomings, his eldest daughter was 23!
At 43, he injured his shoulder. He was therefore forced to stop manual work. His life then collapsed. How to find a stable job at his age in his situation? Perched in anguish, he made another suicide attempt, 30 years after the first.
His physiotherapist, attentive to his psychological suffering, found him a reading and writing workshop in his town. A hand was extended to him which he knew how to grasp. The big difference is that it had nothing to do with school. People were there for Jean-René, which saved him from all his traumas.
Six months after starting to learn to read and write, Jean-René could read 4 to 5 lines on his own. Above all, he could understand the meaning of what he was reading.
Not only does this man command admiration with his courage, but, in addition, he created an association to fight against illiteracy, Add ski, which helps 300 -400 people. He is still a learner in his association and has the same tutor for 17 years.
Jean-René is a man, who in Morale, shakes up the taboos of a disability, affecting 7 million people in France, and who has been recognized as a great national cause. Still, Jean-René can be proud of having received the Academic Palms, at 63, for his action and commitment! These fins, in his eyes, are a concrete result of his fight, specifying that it is not over! A great victory and a great lesson in life!
To read more information on this topic, I invite you to read or reread an article previously written on this topic, more focused on numbers and the fight itself:
Write to heal
90 pages and 23 chapters of a small book, written to testify, in a simple and unpretentious style, a first book written by Laurence Dint rat in four days, during her hospitalization: Patchwork 131
Why this title of “Patchwork”? Because this story is made up of little bits of history. Laurence suffered a blow at 40 when doctors diagnosed her with thyroid cancer. Happy in her personal and professional life between her husband and her two children, she enjoyed life, near Rayan in Charente-Maritime, until that fateful moment of autumn 2011.
Laurence began to write to overcome boredom and isolation in her room in which she was confined during her stay in the hospital, because she could not receive anyone. She put words down on the paper, because for a long time she had wanted to write.
So she wrote for hours and hours to exorcise the disease, to bring back memories, or happy moments spent at the end of the world with her husband.
Why the number 131 in the title of Laurence Dint rat’s novel? Because 131 is the code name for the iodine tablets she took for her radioactive iodine treatment.
Now cured, Laurence continues to write and publish her novels. The disease has revealed it to itself! His only fever now is that of the feather!
Speaking of which, I wrote an article on writing therapy previously.
Write to win a fight
Anaya Ellice is a 7 year old American girl, born without hands.
This handicap didn’t stop her from outdoing everyone else in a handwriting competition, the Nicholas Maxim Prize, which she won hands down. She took part in this competition in the “children with disabilities” category, for a prize that rewards the ability to write intelligibly.
This determined little girl worked hard to get to write with a pen, without hands or fingers. Voluntary and independent, she learned to write standing up, without prosthesis, by wedging her pen in her arms. This allows it to be precise and fast. She ties up her laces herself and dresses herself.
In her school, she is described as a source of inspiration, Wikipedia experts by her determination and her state of mind. She never gives up and does everything she can to get what she wants. In her class, she has the best writing!
Like what, what seems impossible is always possible! Anaya won a check for 1000 dollars and a diploma!
Write to become a role model
With Phillipe Crouzon, anything is possible! This is the slogan he displays on his website:
Philippe Crouzon lived the death closely on March 5, 1994. At 26, he was hit by a 20,000 volt power line while he was working to disassemble his television antenna during his move. His pregnant wife and the people present watch helplessly at the scene.
After 3 months of hospitalization, his body charred, multiple amputations, Philippe is saved, but at what cost? Two years of rehabilitation followed, punctuated by suicidal thoughts.
In 2006, he wrote “I have decided to live”, his book written using speech recognition software.
He also became a high level athlete, stringing together exploits: crossing the Channel in September 2010 to begin with. Excuse the little!
After his first exploit, he went swimming with his friend Arnaud Chaser beyond the borders, connecting the continents between them. He set a diving depth record in 2013 for a four limb amputee. He took part in the Paris-Dakar Rally in 2017. He commented on the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, he wrote a column in the health magazine on France 5, in the field of disability.
He transcribed his feat of the Channel in a book, “I swim across the Channel. “
In 2017, Philippe Crouzon published his book “Pas de bras, pas de chocolate – we can laugh at everything”, in which he officiates with his usual humor, which has become, for him, his anti-blues tool and his remedy for resilience. .
It is an autobiographical novel in which the author tells his breathtaking story, from the day of his accident until the time of writing this book. He tells about his journey of reconstruction, surpassing oneself. Above all, he seeks to play down any situation.
He laughs at his handicap of course, sailing above a morality that has no place to be, crushing taboos. Above all, he does not want to lament, nor to pour into a compassion that does not help anyone.
He displays a mind of steel, an unfailing will, a thirst for adventure that would make more than a valid person pale, finds his strength in his family, friendship and humor.
“I love my life today because I did something with it. I had this accident, I bounced back, and I got involved in sport… I went to the end of my dreams, without nostalgia. I would like to tell everyone who is in pain that it takes time to allay denial or anger. It took me a long time to heal, to cure the ailments of the body and those of the mind. I am often told that “it’s a great revenge on life”. But what revenge? I had an accident. Point. There is no revenge. I did not draw my energy from this terrible drama, it did not come to me thanks to a triple electrocution.
You can be a metal worker and be stubborn. From childhood, I set goals for myself without ever letting go. Before. Nothing changed afterwards. I did not become, I always have been. ” Philippe Crouzon
For Boris Cyrillic, neuropsychiatrist, “Philippe Crouzon is one of those who demonstrate, like an astonishing adventure, that one is never totally submissive. I think that this taste for surpassing oneself is not foreign to the victory against death that Philippe won. He saw death, he was close to it, it could not win, and he was the strongest. ”
As a conclusion
I must admit that the people I have written about in this article command admiration. They have never yielded in the face of adversity, in the face of difficulties that may seem insurmountable to us.
These disabilities, whatever their nature, are in fact an undeniable force for moving forward in life. None of these people gave up. There were, of course, extreme moments of discouragement – in the face of their situation, that seems understandable, right?
