By Beth Livingston On Thursday January 12, 2006, volunteer associates from The Home Depot, KaBOOM!, and Easter Seals joined world class Paralympic athletes to build a universally accessible playground in just one day for the Easter Seals Child Development Center in Ontario, California. The playground will...
By Beth Livingston Dear Rebecca, My name is Beth Livingston. I am an artist, a Paralympic athlete, a mother of two and a fledgeling writer. :) Empty Nesting is an essay I wrote last fall after my children had left home for school, looking back at the...
By Beth Livingston “You people are amazing!” How often do you hear that and wonder whether you belong to some unnamed tribe? When I returned to Bozeman after rehab, I was officially “different.” I was in a wheelchair. I stood out. I suppose some communities have larger populations...
By Beth Livingston [caption id="attachment_653" align="alignleft" width="300"] Lila and Parker, the author’s children.[/caption] Months after the car accident that left me paralyzed, my husband gently revisited the subject of having children. I had always assumed we’d have one—or many. “Things are different now,” he said. “I...
By Beth Livingston Just months before I was injured in a car accident (see Growing Pains, “Chronicles of a Young Woman Coping with Paralysis,” in the January Action), I had relocated to Bozeman, Montana, from the East Coast. I was still settling in, so to...
By Beth Livingston After my car accident, I was stabilized at our local hospital, before making the flight to North West University Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. There I was to undergo spinal reduction surgery, and the thought was that I would do my rehabilitation at...
By Beth Livingston In 1989, I had arrived. I had recently completed my undergraduate studies at Parsons School of Design in New York City and had moved across the country to start a new adventure. My husband George and I were married 3 years earlier....