Showing results by author "Ona Gritz" in All Categories

Ona Gritz has had cerebral palsy all her life, but until she gave birth to her son,she didn't really understand what it meant to be disabled. Her cerebral palsy affects her coordination and balance but not enough to have ever truly hindered her. "For the most part, I considered my disability a cosmetic issue", she tells us in On the Whole. "Just how obvious is it? Do people see me as pretty despite the limp?" But now she's got a new baby to care for, and no one has warned her what a physical job she has taken on.

In 1982, twenty-five-year-old Angie Boggs, pregnant with her second child, was brutally murdered, along with her husband and infant son. Ill equipped for the horror of that violence and the enormity of her loss, Angie’s sister Ona, a college sophomore, felt numb. She also felt deeply ashamed of her inability to grieve. But shame, like her sister’s absence, was something Ona knew well. For as long as she could remember, she’d felt ashamed of being their parents’ blatantly favored child.