This is part of the Brejcha Personal and Disability Resource Site. Welcome to the English version of an article I wrote for a Swedish newspaper - the translation of which I asked my mother to check (nothing like a mother who lives nearby, was a school teacher, and is presently a professional translator). My Swedish is conversational, and pretty good for letter writing, but for a professional publication? Not! After reading this, there is a menu link at the bottom.
In 1968 I was ten years old and happily living in the pristine and peaceful little town of Åmål. But my parents had just divorced and my life was about to be totally turned around by emigrating to America where my mother was seeking a new start.
America was an exciting new environment and other than fond reminiscences of snowball fights on Kungsberget and the thickly frozen ice of the preternaturally peaceful wintertime lake Vänern where we could play and explore on kälkar (sort of a sled made for lake ice) and skates -- a lake which in the summer was barely warm enough to swim in -- Sweden soon faded from my life. My fondness for my homeland was revived in 1971 when I went to seventh grade back in Sweden for a semester in Lund where my father, step-mother and half-brother lived (and where I briefly fell in unrequited love with a girl in a white sweater -- her name was Inga). My other vivid memories of that trip were of Rif Lakritz chewing gum (oh, how I miss that!) and the awed reaction of a classmate when I told him that my mother had a Ford Mustang convertible. His comment was an envious: "A Mustang convertible? Oj! We just have a Mercedes." And I of course remember the shame of being caught shoplifting a candy bar from a store.
But back in America, the years and events raced by as we moved from Denver to a Philadelphia suburb where I finished high school a year early and started an art education program at Philadelphia's Temple University. Then those promising studies were ruined by rapidly progressing M.S. and I virtually had to start college all over. Subsequent part-time honors psychology studies were also interrupted, when a desire for a new outlet for my creative urges eventually led me to write science fiction -- and I started selling my work after some efforts. Depression slowed me down and I did not have the energy to write, work, and go to school, so I concentrated on work and writing, and after I gradually started appreciating life again, I found satisfaction also in doing volunteer work helping others with disabilities.
My writing and life have been slowed some due to my M.S., but I feel very fortunate since I have a respectable bibliography together, I am still able to care for myself and work full-time despite life in a wheelchair, and my disability advocacy has entered the digital age with a disability resource web site on the internet at http://www.netreach.net/~abrejcha.
And this was where Sweden again reached out to touch me.
Suddenly I found an e-mail message -- in Swedish -- in my electronic mailbox, and lo and behold, it was a delightful communication from three ladies from Åmål who went to elementary school with me before I came to America: Lena, Christina, and Marie. My mother, who is also a writer among her other accomplishments, had recently written an article about me for Provinstidningen Dalsland titled "Lång Väg från Åmål" (A Long Way From Åmål) (Saturday, January 21, 1995, Ann B. Weissman, Ph.D.), and Lena, after reading it and seeing that I was a writer, did a search on the internet and found me and my web site.
It was a vivid reminder of how technology, which has been accused of being a dehumanizing force, can be the exact opposite by allowing us not only to reach out inexpensively to anyone in the world, but to find others we have lost touch with. My own website has already had around 700 visitors (as of 11-11-97: but as of 12-18-98 the count is getting close to 6,000) and through it I have been able to help people whom I have never met. Among others, I had a grateful letter from a woman in California whose son was paralyzed in a construction accident and who found inspiration to get involved in life again through my posted reprint article on a flying program for people with disabilities; a local woman I otherwise never would have 'met' read about me and my website in a newspaper article and found help for her nephew with M.S.; and I had e-mail from Moscow from a woman with post-polio who, as a professional translator, is going to work with me to set up an exchange of letters beween Russian and American people with disabilities.
The internet may seem like an arcane mystery to many, but for a lot of other people it can be a lifeline to let us reach out to give and receive help and support. And as I discovered, it can sure serve up some fun surprises.