Finding a Way to Connect

January 19, 2011

By: Barton Cutter

Finding a Way to Connect

After I spoke at a storytelling event at Raleigh's First Friday, one of the audience members came up to me. "I see you," she said, her glare affixed like searchlights to my eyes.

Despite the pop reference to the movie "Avatar," the intensity of the woman's comment surprised me. This was perhaps the first time when I was in a public venue that it was clear to me that I had connected to the audience without relying on someone else, usually my wife, to interpret for me.

As a relatively young professional and business owner with cerebral palsy, I have ways of connecting meaningfully with those who, in my view, may be ideal clients or those with whom I see the possibility for collaboration of one sort or another. It took a number of years to discover these ways of connecting.

My disability has affected my voice, giving it a tonality that requires patience to decipher. Even with patience, the fact that my voice sounds like a cross between a disgruntled elephant and Uncle Jim after having one too many can transform any conversation into an impromptu game of charades.

We've all been in situations where words fail to convey the sentiments we feel in our hearts and heads. I see this many times in my role as a professional coach. When we scramble to our feet at a networking group to spout a tried-and-true elevator speech worn thin by too many recitations, we feel that gap. Or in the moment when a witty one-liner is met with the blankness of someone in the midst of an alien encounter, that twinge of awkwardness is there. When you add the erratic movement of my body, some people simply don't know what to do with me.

Yet in these silences, I've discovered it's not so much the people involved who create the feeling of tension, but rather a lack of space to allow for a deeper connection to grow. When I first began to recognize that much of the misunderstanding I was feeling was because of an environment that could not, by its very design, support the healthy growth of relationship, my approach, fueled by a hearty dose of irreverence, began to shift. Soon so did the response from others.

A tiny space of lightness opened in me that, when tapped, transformed the friction into a moment of relief. Rather than attempting to force the muscles in my mouth, throat, lungs, and diaphragm to produce something resembling "normal" speech, I now open with a coy smile and an invitation to not necessarily listen to the words coming from my mouth, but to experience how the intent behind those words affects them.

I know that it isn't likely that people will catch every word and that there still may be those who choose to turn away from anything that exists outside of their sense of normalcy. That's their prerogative. But for those who are willing to join me in this space beyond words, there exists an endless playground to discover a laugh and build partnerships.

And while it has taken some time for me to recognize the power that my disability has to offer, the more I explore its impact on various conversations, the more it serves as a lens through which people can see a greater potential within themselves.

barton@cuttersword.com

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