Author Archives: Peter Sanford Kahrmann

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About Peter Sanford Kahrmann

Writer, disability rights advocate, civil rights advocate.

We Are Not Children, We Are Not Slaves: Living With a Brain Injury- Part I

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Discrimination denies people what they deserve – their freedom.

I have lived with a brain injury for nearly 20 years and have worked in the field for nearly 15 of those years. Raised in a civil rights family I am very much an advocate for every individual’s right to be who they are, in safety, with equality, in the world they live in. When I talk with survivors of brain injuries in this state and others, the number one complaint I hear is They treat us like we are children. Tragically this is true.

My injury was sustained when I was held-up and shot in the head at point blank range in 1984.

The dehumanization of people with brain injuries (of people with disabilities) is epidemic in scope. In too many instances those who live with brain injuries are treated by health care providers as chattel. Living things used to make money for the greedy. No matter how you hold this truth up to the light, it is a form of slavery: emotional, spiritual and physical slavery.

My state, New York State, offers what in common parlance here is referred to as the Medicaid Waiver. The waiver is a form of Medicaid reimbursement for healthcare providers who offer services to people with brain injuries who live in the community. While the lives of many brain injury survivors has improved as a result, the lives of many on the waiver have been turned into a form of community-based incarceration.

This is not a situation that calls for broad brush strokes. There are waiver providers in this state who, in my view, do an extraordinary job. The Cortland Community Re-Entry Program in Cortland and Living Resources in Albany are two superb providers. Others, like the Albany-based Belvedere Brain Injury Program is not even close to its website’s claim that it is “the Capital District’s leading traumatic brain injury community rehabilitation program”. An arrogant and unfounded claim if ever there was one.

to be cont’d

Mornings Are My Sanctuary

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Early mornings are my sanctuary. They have been for years now. All year round they are special, each season has its gifts, and nearly always I am wedded to my morning routine. I’ll get to that later.

The soft quiet of winter, the joy of waking up to to the exquisite silence of early morning snowfall. Other winter mornings when I wake up all the world outside is magically sheathed in ice, the smallest of branches glistening as if sheathed in diamonds.

Spring, of course, brings back leaves and the mid-air-jewel-sounds of birds singing. The green of hope and new life emerges everywhere and I get the distinct impression my body, heart and spirit relaxes and they all work better. It’s as if the possibility of loss has passed with the passing of winter. I don’t know why it feels that way to me. It just does.

Summer can give and take energy like no other season. Sometimes the early mornings are warm in a glorious way, the trees and hills outside my window are alive with expectancy, and, like a little boy, I can’t wait to burst out the front door, screaming my own barbaric YAWP (thank you, Walt Whitman) and plunge into the day with all I’ve got. Then, of course, there are other morning so fierce with humidity and heat I swear someone left a giant oven door open.

Fall is tied with Spring as my favorite season for early mornings. Steinbeck once described one aspect of a crisp clear fall day like this: The air looked cleaned and polished. And when the trees here in the northeastern United States are peaking with color the beauty and majesty of it so overwhelming at times it makes me cry with the kind of joy and comfort one feels when in the arms of a loved one.

My morning routine, or, perhaps better put, my morning ritual, runs something like this. Out of bed, letting the dogs out for some, we’ll call it relief. Water on for coffee. Dogs back in for breakfast. Water boils, coffee gets made (I pour the water through fresh ground coffee in a melita). Dogs go out to their pen. Back inside coffee’s ready and waiting. Now I either sit down at the computer and check e-mail, read a bit of the NY Times online (a paper that has sadly lost quite a bit of it journalistic integrity) and then do a bit of writing. The only alteration in this ritual is if I am in the middle of a really good never-want-to-put-it-down book. Then the first sip of morning is taken as I open the book and resume reading. Oh! I will, in warm weather, make toast or an English muffin with the coffee and in the cold weather, oatmeal with real maple syrup.

Early morning brings me another gift as well. Time with my family. Yes, they have nearly all died. But in the early morning I can feel my father with me, and both my mothers. I can feel the presence of my grandparents: Mommom and Poppop and Grandma and Grandpa, my brother, Bobby. And I also can feel the reach of my birth-father, the one I never met, but who helped give me my life.

I love the wealth of peace found in early mornings. I hope you have moments like this in your life too. We all deserve them – and that includes you.

The Murder of an Innocent: Neda Agha Soltani

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Just the picture of this 27-year-old woman dying on the ground sent me into the waiting arms of the horrors, heartbreak and rage. Rage at the slimy little shit who aimed his weapon at Neda Agha Soltani as she was standing next to her father and pulled the trigger. Heartbreak at all she and her father and those around her went through as life left her body. I have a working knowledge of what it is like to be on the ground bleeding profusely after being shot, death pulling me away from the world. The horrors have been in nightmares, difficulty sleeping , moments when my eyes fill with tears that sometimes spill down my cheeks.

Being a father I can’t and won’t imagine what her father went through experiencing his daughter being shot to death. Experiences like that are out of the reach of words, despite the efforts of this and other pens.

The fact the Iranian government and others turn an encouraging eye on these things is physically, morally and spiritually revolting. This hideous disregard for human life, matched, by the way, by the likes of Dick Cheney and his ilk, the ability to be murderous, is not confined or defined by the borders of any country.

This is a short piece for this blog. It is hard to see through tears and type through the pain. What I can say is please remember to live and remember to love. Remember kindness and compassion. In love lives real power, real strength. For the few who experience the idea of being loving and kind as weakness, ask yourself, why is it so hard for you to do?

Please, be loving, it is the only way out of this.

Rest in peace, Neda Agha Soltani.

Yesterday’s Dream

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There’s moments and times, lost rhythms and rhymes, dreams coming up and dreams going down, no need for tomorrow when you’re yesterday’s dream.

I seen the neighborhood boys and wishful dreamin’, girls gone wild on the backbone of drinkin’, flowers unfolding in yesterday’s rain, no need for shelter when your yesterday’s dream.

You’ve got talent but you ain’t got hope, there ain’t no answers for you ’cause you ain’t asking, but none of it matters because you’re yesterday’s dream.

Yesterday’s dream knows no rhythm or sound, ‘cause yesterday’s dream ain’t even around.

Relationship Jail Cells

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Many years ago I wrote a script that went nowhere called It Was Your Heart I Wanted. The story was about a woman confronted with the possibility of entering a relationship but found herself fearfully hesitant because her last relationship had been such a brutal one. An all too common reason for hesitancy many have when facing the possibility of new love. And so, in a very real way, they are trapped in the jail cells of prior relationships. I called the piece It Was Your Heart I Wanted because I do believe most of us can say that and mean that when we enter into a relationship.

But there is another kind of relationship jail cell. The relationship we are are already in, we know are not happy, and yet we stay in them anyway. The love may be gone, if it was ever there, and the environment is toxic, but we stay. Blessedly, I am not in this situation and after nearly seven years of sobriety would disengage from a situation like this were I in one. But, believe me, I’ve been in toxic relationship jail cells before.

I know a few people who are in them now.

I know one extraordinary person who is an American History buff. I mean this is someone who really knows and loves American History. But their spouse stops them from any involvement with history clubs or other people who love history. I know another person who is in a relationship with someone they like but don’t love but figures the person is good to the kids so why not.

I level no harsh judgment towards anyone who is trapped by their history in a way that stops them from daring to love and daring to be loved. What I will say is this. All of us have the right to love and be loved, and no one’s history deserves so much say it stops them from experiencing the heart-and-soul wonder of a relationship that works gloriously, and believe me, there are relationships like this in the world. I know people who are in them.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll take the risk of loving and being loved. My history be damned. If the possibility of a deep-in-the-heart relationship is there, I don’t want to miss it, at least not because of my history.