Empowerment Therapy

“Text of Speech RI Award for Excellence in Professional and Personal Achievement,
RI State House, June 27, 2002”
by Brian J. Hubbard

That sounded like a wonderful and flattering introduction, I wish I could have heard it.

Don’t worry, I will find someone after I give my talk and have him or her repeat it to me word for word.

I really do love it when I have a chance to talk, it’s about the only time I can hear everything.

But one of the greatest challenges I ever had to face, was that I was told I could only speak for ten minutes today.

No sustained laughter here, please, it’s cutting into my speaking time.

When I was about seventeen years old, something very important happened to me.

I saw a poster in the gymnasium at the prep school I was attending in an effort for a hockey comeback, despite being legally blind.

That poster read "The only handicap in life is a bad attitude."

Although the letters in the poster were in actuality only about an inch long, they seemed as large as basketballs to me.

The author of that unforgettable quote was Vince Lombardi, the immortalized coach of the legendary Green Bay Packers.

When I was 21, another very important thing happened to me.

On June 12, 1968 I was listening to Senator Edward Kennedy eulogize his slain brother Bobby in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

Without warning, I heard Ted speak these words: “Some people see the things the way they are and ask "Why?", but my brother saw the way things could be and asked "Why not?"

Those mighty words snapped me right smack out of my despair and disillusionment over my hero Bobby’s senseless assassination and hit me like a thunderbolt.

Those electricity charged words stayed with me in the forefront of my consciousness right up to the present time as I speak to you.

Those prophetic words that became the driving force of my philosophy will without a doubt whatsoever stay with me for the remainder of my life on this earth.

When I was about 24 and in the midst of a struggling marriage, two more very important things happened to me.

I read two books that changed my life forever.

The first was ‘The Art of Loving’ by Erich Fromm and the second was ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Victor Frankl.

I learned from reading ‘The Art of Loving’ that in order to truly love others, one must love oneself first.

I am not talking about grandiose, inflated self-love that is based in exaggerations or even delusions, but genuine self-love that is based on honest self Awareness.

This honest self awareness is based on the three a’’s, appraising one’s self honestly, appreciating one’s strengths and accepting one’s limits.

Victor Frankl’s book was very important to me because it taught me that man could make whatever meaning out of oneself and the world he lives in that he wanted to.

Frankl made positive meaning of his evil confinement to a Nazi concentration camp into a positive experience.

He concluded he would find positive meaning of this atrocious experience by surviving it and doing whatever he could to never let this kind of madness happen again.

It was these combined important happenings in my life, as well as other very important events, that I became enlightened and aware that I could make whatever meaning out of deaf blindness that I wanted to.

As I once told Kate McCarthy from the Providence Journal, “When one door closes, another door opens. But that does not necessarily mean the positive door to growth and empowerment, for the positive door to open, we have to make that happen through the exercise of our free will."

Furthermore, I remember when I told the writer for the Boston Globe that I was never happier in my life until after I lost my sight and hearing. I could tell as if she were looking at me as if I had three heads.

I reassured her that I would absolutely love to have my sight and hearing back, but never at the expense of the true vision and insights that I have gained after losing my sight and hearing.

In all of my empowerment messages, whether in writing or speaking, I always emphasize that every situation in life has its advantages and disadvantages.

This is not rationalization, this is a fact of life.

For far too long, I rejected the standard notion of rehabilitation that seemed to emphasize adjustment, that is, fitting a less abled person into a more abled society.

Rather, I far more enthusiastically embraced the concept of ‘different-ness’, that each and member of the human race is a unique and separate human being, each with his own set of strengths, limits and needs.

To become all one can be, one must be truly motivated to reach that aspiration.

One cannot be motivated, cannot be empowered if one does not truly and fully accept oneself as a whole person, in essence, if one does not truly love oneself.

I realized that I could change the negative meaning of my deaf blindness that was continuously being superimposed on me by others in the outside world.

Typically, those negative messages were directly spoken to me with statements to the effect of "that’s horrible, how will you be able to survive being deaf and blind?" or indirect messages such as sensing that people were avoiding me because my different-ness, my uniqueness, was too threatening for them.

Enlightened, I became joyously aware that I could change this negative meaning of foreboding doom into a positive one of seeing what my options really were.

This meant, of course, I had to welcome the challenges that went hand in hand with these options.

I changed the meaning of my deaf blindness into a positive meaning backed up by an entirely new belief system.

I changed the meaning of my deaf blindness to mean that if I were to survive at all, I had to be as mentally strong as possible.

At the very least, I had to develop incredible integrity in order to develop strong, totally trustworthy support systems and role models.

Anyone who has opened the positive door to deaf blindness in order to survive two of the most devastating losses imaginable can only be fueled by the greatest determination not only to survive, but to truly be all one can be.

That person has no alternative except to develop the most empowering, positive attitude possible.

That person has to give new meaning to fears so that limits become viewed as challenges.

That same courageous person must act with dignity in a way that truly reflects this empowering attitude.

I can assure all of you here today that this collective spirit of determination and empowerment demonstrated by all of us deaf blind people who have opened the positive door to becoming all we can be far outweighs the collective spirit of those people who have successfully adjusted to society, including all those people who can see and hear.

The positive meaning I have assigned to deaf blindness has been the greatest driving force in my precious, God given life.

Whenever anyone asks me what I am most proud of, I do not reply learning to talk at the age of four despite being pre-lingually deaf, not getting my Master’s Degree in clinical social work, not being perhaps the only psychotherapist in the world who is both deaf and blind, not winning three gold medals and a member of the US Disabled Ski Team, not learning to be very adept with the computer despite odds that many thought insurmountable, not writing two books, From Emptiness to Empowerment: Changing Physical and Other Losses Into Strengths and Sharing The Light, and not even developing Counseling for Independent Living, the nation’s first program to provide empowerment counseling to disabled and chronically ill people.

I tell people who ask the question about what I take the most pride in is that I have developed a positive, empowering attitude, in essence I have truly learned to love myself because only then I can truly love and trust others.

It is only this true self-love and love of others can one learn to truly be interdependent with others.

It is only through this true interdependence based on genuine love of self and others can we learn that the best way to get support and help from other loved ones is to give support and help to the ones we love.

I want to thank you very much for taking the time listen to me.

"God Bless you and I love you all”