Top of the mountain!

I recently began volunteering for GiGi’s Playhouse as a way to give back not only to people with disabilities, but also the people who support them. My older brother Austin was born with Down syndrome, and so I have been familiar with Down syndrome my entire life.

One summer my family took a vacation to Acadia National Park in Maine. I begged my parents to let us climb a mountain trail I had read about called the Precipice, and they reluctantly agreed. We set out to hike up the mountain in our worn tennis shoes with only one bottle of water to share between the four of us, because the guidebook said it was only a short trail. We had done a lot of hiking before but mostly on forest trails or bluffs, never a real mountain. The Precipice was way out of our league. The trail was rocky and steep and there were points where you had climb up iron rungs stuck into the sheer face of a cliff. Halfway to the top we were tired, scared, and near hysterics. A man stopped and assured us that climbing back down now would be even harder and that if we could just get to the top there was an easier trail that went back down the other side of the mountain, so we continued to climb.

The amazing thing about this climb was that Austin was the one leading the charge up the mountain and assuring us that we could make it to the top. If we were going to climb the mountain we were going to do it together, as a family. We never considered leaving Austin at the bottom of the mountain to wait for us, or having him turn back when things got rough. We made it to the top of the Precipice together and never felt prouder of ourselves.

Families know that you cannot leave a man behind on the mountain. You have to keep going and help each other to the top. Austin knew he could conquer the mountain, and we knew we couldn’t conquer it without him. Families are the first support networks a person with a disability has, but they don’t have to be the only ones. Organizations like GiGi’s Playhouse not only give Austin and other people with Down syndrome a place to work towards their goals and dreams, they also give people with and without disabilities the chance to come together to learn and support people with disabilities, so we can all work together to make it to the top of the mountain.