| Gloria
Revilla Doyle
“To trade busyness for sitting
still is a total redirection. When I think about my life,
I think of two different lives: life before disability and
life after. Disabled at 41, I had experienced the fullness
of youth and adult life. Yet, I was still young. Young enough
to adapt, to make basic changes. Very young people adapt the
best of all. Older people lack the resilience of youth.”
A Journey Not Chosen
Gloria Revilla Doyle, at the age of
41, was disabled by exploratory surgery. With the stroke of
a knife, neurosurgery left her a “walking” quadriplegic.
Diagnosed with an inoperable spinal cord tumor, a rare progressive
condition, the medical prognosis was grim. Western medicine
offered no cure, yet she has endured and survived. Her personal
odyssey has been a quest for healing and knowledge that transcends
disability.
Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1940 to
a Mexican father and a Spanish American mother, Gloria’s
family moved to California when she was a child. She graduated
in History from the University of California, Berkeley in
1962. In the same year she married Denis, a fellow undergraduate.
They had two children, Alicia and Christopher. In 1972 they
moved to Washington, DC, where Gloria worked as a research
librarian for the Los Angeles Times.
Her story draws on a wealth of cross-cultural
experience, as a source of insight and perspective in dealing
with devasting disability. Her extraordinary eye for detail
and nuance illuminates the experience in unusual and provocative
ways. She tells stories in the kaleidoscope of human experience,
hers interwoven with those of others she has met along the
way from Abdul, the cab driver from Sierra Leone, to President
Clinton.
Encounters with doctors, healers, caregivers,
tales from her childhood, talks with a Jesuit priest, discussion
of books, art and films, insights into Franklin Roosevelt’s
life and presidency make her story a compelling one. Her writing
explores the full range and nature of “disability,”
from those imposed by illness to hardships imposed by circumstance.
Her natural curiosity and historical perspective produce vivid
portraits. Her experiences are unique but her message is universal.
|
