The Dignity We All Deserve

Kennedy Lee lives with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a condition that "causes your heart to beat faster than normal" when transitioning from lying and sitting down to standing up, which can produce a fast heart rate, dizziness, and fatigue and cause fainting, according to the Cleveland Clinic — as well as a functional neurological disorder.

Kennedy graduated from her Tennessee high school this past May, and has made headlines because she has filed a lawsuit against the school district for the way it treated her and two other students with disabilities during their graduation ceremony and throughout their high school careers.

This lawsuit alleges that Kennedy and her peers were forced to sit with the audience on bleachers instead of with their fellow students during their graduation. It also alleges that Kennedy and another student with POTS spent nearly all of their junior year in a “former storage closet", because the school claimed that their disability was “too much of a disruption to other students”.

“This case involves extreme prejudice and insecurity towards persons with disabilities”, reads the complaint against the school.

“It really hurt that I was not given these same opportunities as my other classmates, and my entire high school career has not been normal," Kennedy has said. "So I just wanted one night to be a normal student and be treated like a normal student, and that was robbed of me.”

You may agree or disagree with the filing of the lawsuit. We are not in the  position to comment or weigh in on such legal matters. But, we are in the position to comment on how we as humans and as a culture value and see one another in this world.

Throughout Someone To Tell It To’s 12 1/2 - year existence, we have listened to and heard thousands of stories of people who have not been treated with respect, dignity, and the belief that they are persons of equal and sacred worth. Our hearts break to know how so many lives have been broken because of behaviors and beliefs that have the effect, in a multitude of ways, of telling people that they are “less than”. 

Less than whole. 

Less than good. 

Less than worthy. 

Less than cared about.

Less than loved. 

Our whole value system is based on the belief that everyone of us, every human being, should have the ability to be and become their very best selves. 

Every person matters. Every life has significance and meaning. Everyone has something to teach and help us to be our best selves. Everyone’s story has significance and deserves to be heard. Everyone deserves to be known and treated with goodness, grace, and generosity of spirit.

Everyone deserves love.

For love breaks barriers. Love mends relationships. Love sees beyond the surface. Love respects each person. Love heals the brokenness.  

Love sets us free to be our very best selves, no matter our abilities or disabilities.

Listening to one another - with this belief at the core - is love in action.

It’s really as simple as that. 

The more we can see beyond our outer selves to the humanity that lies inside each one of us, the more we can respect that each one of us has value and that each one of us deserves the dignity that we would want for ourselves.  

Kennedy Lee and her peers deserve that respect and dignity, simply because they are human beings, endowed along with everyone else, with feelings, abilities and disabilities, and the need to be known and loved for who they are.

Photo credit: Julie Norwood Shell