“How we meet the built environment depends on both bodies and worlds.” Hendren, Sara
“New Prosthesis Day” at Tenwek Hospital
There are books that connect with your experiences but from another point-of-view. Sara Hendren’s book, What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World, is one of these. Her perspective, as a mother and a professor of engineering, explores the reality of disabilities and the environments individuals face. What connected with me was the variety of the creative design responses.
As she emphasizes, many of the environmental responses are not appreciated and are invisible to the broader community. It takes creative design responses and deep investigation of our assumptions about the meaning of disabilities to respond in effective ways to create more inclusive communities.
The larger community responses become the ecology of healing. I have seen those responses in the development of Friendship Houses here in the United States and the Special Needs Clinic in Africa.
Thanks, Sara Hendren for expanding this important healing conversation. You can hear her on the “January Series” from Calvin University on January 9, 2023 at 12:30 pm EST.
Marvin
References
Hage, M. L. (2016). Another Kind of Healing.
http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2016/04/another-kind-of-healing.html
Hendren, Sara. What Can a Body Do? (p. 3). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Friendship House - Western Seminary Holland Michigan
https://www.westernsem.edu/welcome-friendship-house/
Special Needs Clinic - Tenwek Hospital
https://friendsoftenwek.org/medical-specialties/special-needs-clinic/
