NLD doesn’t define me

I deleted an excellent article about nonverbal learning disorder (NLD) that somebody else put on my Facebook page.

I did it for the following reasons:

1. My personal Facebook page is my page—one thing in life I can control to an extent.
2. I only put in articles about NLD that I or my friends wrote.
3. Many of my personal friends and family don’t want to see anything about NLD; come to think of it many of the people I only know through Facebook and/or conferences etc don’t want to see anything about NLD either.
4. The above might be their lacking, and I might be considered to be pandering to them, but….
5. My memoir is about a woman (girl in most of the book) who happens to have NLD but NLD and disability aren’t the themes of the book.
6. Yes I would have loved to have known that my problems were neurological, and I wasn’t crazy, but by the time I was in college I couldn’t have cared less about my problems except for disorganization and spatial ones.
7. Funny but disability doesn’t play a large part in my life. When I first learned about NLD I wanted to know as much as I could about it. My ways of learning are by reading, talking and writing——oh basically all ways of learning.
8. My learning disabilities weren’t the kind that affected my adult life. I took an estates & trust paralegal course because I needed the certificate and had worked in litigation for three years prior to that. To my amazement I excelled at it. I’m good at statistics too which will always come as a surprise to me. I’m horrible at speaking Spanish. That will always make me a little sad.
9. I was able to overcome my writing being all over the place through a lot of practice and then help from a great friend.
10. I can come off as mildly autistic but that has more to do with my total spatial unawareness. And my level of comfort.
11. Apparently I was very comfortable during my childhood, late teens, 20’s and 30’s because the only social things I hated were singles events at the 92nd Street Y. I had more fun than I would have had if I had been focusing or even thinking about disability, and more fun than anybody deserves.
12. That’s not true. I believe that happiness is a right. As we all know the search for it is a right in the Constitution–and a great one.
13. Family and friendship are the two most important things to me. It took me a long time to realize that I would have been a good spouse, and a better mother. I always knew I was a good friend.
14. Now I’m not sure if I always was a good friend. I might have been demanding, obtrusive, and me–oriented.
15. But I was generous, loving, caring, and while me–oriented put others over me.
16. NLD doesn’t define me so please respect that.