We’d like to introduce you to a remarkable woman. Meet Mary Keating, an accomplished lawyer, published author, poet, scuba diver, world traveler, and advocate for people with disabilities.
Mary’s wide-open world instantly contracted at age fifteen when a teenager drove her into an oak tree at maximum speed. With a wheelchair as a permanent accessory, she was no longer seen as “hot” or one of the “in” crowd. She found herself transported into an alternate reality — defined now by her disability. But nothing could stop her from achieving whatever she set her mind to.
Fast-forward 50 years, and Mary just came out with her first book called, “Recalibrating Gravity,” which is her memoir in verse (available on Amazon). Her book reminds us that no matter how hard life may seem, that grace, love, and humor will save us from despair and allow us to live our best life under any circumstances. When life becomes overwhelming, Mary says she jokingly pretends she’s trapped in a bad B movie waiting for a new director.
Inspiration on Steroids
We asked Mary what inspired her to write the book, and she told us that, way back when, she used to write poetry before going to law school. She needed an outlet and really loved poetry. But once law took over her life, she only wrote once in a while and never for publication. About eight years ago, she went to a career coach because she wanted to do something more creative with her life. The coach asked her what she liked to do. She said she liked to write. The coach suggested that she join some writing groups, which she promptly did at Fairfield Library in Connecticut. She boldly ventured forward, writing poems and sharing them ─ and they were well received.
Then, as life can sometimes be, she “had this horrible experience in the hospital, where the Hoyer lift battery was dead, and they didn’t know how to use it,” said Mary. “They had me up in the air, and the battery cut out, and I was just dangling in the air, and they didn’t know what to do. I told them to put the bed underneath me and raise the bed up. That would get me down, right?
“After that, I wrote a poem about it and sent it to New Mobility magazine. They wrote back to me saying they don’t publish poetry, but they loved my poem and were going to publish it! That was really cool, especially when my poem got tons of feedback. So many people posted, ‘Oh my God, this has happened to me, too.’”
With that as her impetus, she wrote more poems and had more published in journals including Rattle and Wordgathering. Her poems are not all about disability, but there’s always something in there about it. She also likes to do open mics. And she continues going to writer’s groups. One of the women she met there, who became her mentor, suggested that she enter a book contest.
“At first, I though no, I don’t have a book. But then, I looked at all of my poems and saw that I could tell my life story through my poems. And I always wanted to tell my life story because I wanted to share on a lot of different levels,” explained Mary. “I had an accident when I was 15, and I succeeded, according to society. I ended up becoming a successful lawyer, and I got married, and I went scuba diving, tried skiing, traveled the world. And I wanted people to be empowered, to feel motivated.
“I also wrote the book to change the conversation around disability. What does it mean to be disabled? What are disabled people like? So it’s a story of me, and that’s part of who I am. It shapes my life a lot because of the inaccessibility of things. But it’s about changing the dialogue.
“And also to be an advocate, to let people know the world needs to be accessible. We can shift the design and become more inclusive for all kinds of disabilities. Every time someone puts in a new ramp or closed captioning, they’re opening up the world for more people. There are a billion disabled people in the world. That’s a lot of people, and they should be included instead of being invisible. I wrote my book to be visible.”
Mary won the book contest, and Woodhall Press published her book ─ a wonderful stroke of fate for her.
Finding Gravity Again … And a Sense of Humor
“My book is full of humor, because you have to have humor or you can’t survive,” Mary told us. “I wanted something humorous for the book cover … I told the cover artist I like to dive. And so in the cover artwork, there is a glass half empty with a scuba diver exploring inside it, and she’s got a lifeline coming down from somewhere (because it’s also very spiritual ─ I think there’s someone out there protecting and helping us through everything). And though her world is confined, she’s in there exploring it all, and she’s got a little fish as her companion. It’s a happy cover. And plus it relates directly to me. I learned to scuba dive, which was very freeing for me.
“The title came from when I was at Burke Rehabilitation Center and I was trying to learn to sit up (I’m paralyzed from T3/4 down), and I couldn’t find how to balance. My therapist said, ‘You have to find your center of gravity again.’ I thought that would be a cool title because gravity has so many meanings: it’s how serious something is, how things are weighing on us, how we can escape gravity. To survive in the world, you have to recalibrate gravity all the time.”
Mary also illustrated the book (she had an art minor, too). And each chapter begins with a haiku.
“This book was a labor of love,” Mary remembered as she smiled from ear to ear.
We were so inspired in talking to Mary about her life that we just had to share her story here. This is a woman who can do anything she sets her mind to. And so can all of us, if we just determine it to be so.
Overcoming a Common Mobility Transportation Challenge
We met Mary when she came to the Bussani Mobility location in Mamaroneck, NY, for regular maintenance and to have an important modification made to her accessible van because she changed her wheelchair.
She had purchased her Toyota Sienna from a large national mobility vehicle dealer that was approved by the state of Connecticut as their only mobility vendor for which state funding could be applied. Her vehicle has a side entry with a power ramp, and with the further customizations of a power pan for her manual chair and hand controls.
But for this new modification that was needed, she didn’t want to go back to the dealer where she bought the van because her experience there was “just horrible,” as she told us. “They don’t listen to the people … When I first got into the van, I was driving from my wheelchair (which was new for me). I had told them that I didn’t want the electric hand controls, I wanted the hand controls that were manual. When I got my new van, it had the electric hand controls! I was worried about them because I heard that they could fail. And don’t you know it, when I was driving with my husband and crossing the Post Road in Norwalk, which is very busy, they cut out on me. I’m broadside to the oncoming traffic, and I can’t move my car! That was really scary.
“Somehow, my husband got the car to go. I was furious that the dealer didn’t tell me that I had electric hand controls. And, when I picked up the car, the price that they gave me was more than it should have been. It took them four times to get it right! They blamed it on a computer glitch. While I was sitting in the waiting room, I asked a woman if she ever had a problem with this company, and she said yea, they overcharged me, too. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them anymore.”
Fortunately, she found a solution for her mobility needs at Bussani Mobility, and we were so happy that we could help with maintenance, this modification, and all future repairs and service. Mary launched into go-mode and pressed on to have the State of Connecticut approve Bussani Mobility as another choice of mobility vendor. Just imagine how many more people living with disabilities will be served by her thoughtful actions and can-do attitude.
Mary said, “I was so grateful for Bussani. I just knew they were family-run and had a great reputation … and they were closer to where I live. They’ll come and get your car. If you have a problem, you call and there’s somebody you can actually talk to (you’re not put into a voicemail chain). I have the cell phone number of the mechanic, and I can text him. You always feel like you’re the customer first, that you matter, that they’re there for you.
“When you go to Bussani, you feel like you’re family. It always feels good there. When you have to deal with annoying things with your vehicle, they get it that you rely on your motor vehicle to go places. Without it, I’m stuck, I can’t just call and rent a car, or call Uber like everybody else does. They get it ─ and they want to get your car back to you as soon as possible.”
How Her Accessible Vehicles Gave Her Freedom
When Mary first started driving, back in 1973, she got a car from Drive-Master. Back then, they were one of the few people in the world that made these vehicles. She said, “They modified them in their garage, but they had no safety features really … I drove a Chevy van, the only color I could get was orange and white … Sold it for what I bought it for, 15 years later, for $15,000.
“Then I got a Saab, and I drove Saabs for years. In 2008, I got a van. I didn’t really want a van, but I used to pull my wheelchair in and out of the car, and my rotator cuffs were going, so I realized I had to get a van. My first van had a six-way transfer seat. But that gets old, and you can slip and fall. In my new van I drive from my wheelchair.
“Driving right from my wheelchair is a Godsend. It’s so easy. I remember when I first got the van, I was in and out of it in two seconds. It’s so much easier driving right from your chair.”
Mary is a very active person. As a lawyer (a Yale Law School graduate with her own law firm), she has to go meet with clients. As a poet, she has poetry events to go to. And then there’s the rest of her life, like going to the doctor herself, or driving her husband somewhere, traveling, or seeing her friends.
Having her own wheelchair accessible van has brought so much more convenience and freedom to her life.
“I can go anywhere,” she says. “I don’t have to call somebody and arrange for a ride and not know when they’re coming. And anyway, it’s sort of demeaning when those wheelchair vehicle places come to pick you up. I had to take one once, and it’s all so much rigmarole.
“With your own vehicle, you have so much freedom, and you can go anywhere. Like a friend can call me up and say, ‘Do you wanna go out for dinner?’ and I can say, ‘Yea, I’ll be right over.’ Or someone says, ‘I’m having a problem and I really wanna spend some time with you,’ and I can go right over. If I forget something at the store, I can go back and get it ─ I’m in and out of the car in no time. I’m not hurting my shoulders because I’m not transferring.
“I’ve driven a lot of people in my van, too. I was just at an art fair, and the organizer lived nearby and had everybody park their cars at his place. When it was time to go, I asked if he wanted me to drive people back to his house (I could fit about five people in my van), and he said yea. When the people got in my van, they said they’ve never seen one of these before.”
People Need to Know This
Similar to her experience at the art fair, “there are still a lot of situations where people are surprised that I drive,” Mary recalled. “Even when I went to the hospital and it was time to go home, the nurse asked who was going to bring me home, and I said, ‘I am.’
“People really need to become educated about that. They need to become educated about what those lines are for in the accessible parking spaces. I had an aide for a couple of days once, and she thought that’s where you were supposed to put your shopping cart! People park over the lines and block you in, not realizing every inch matters. What I do now is I carry an orange cone with me, and I put it in that space. Most people never park next to me now.”
Her Best Advice
Because Mary has overcome so many challenges faced by people with disabilities, and she has clearly thrived in her life, we asked what was her best advice for someone who is newly injured and grappling with how they need to adjust in their life.
“Take one day at a time. Don’t project,” she shared. “Follow the philosophy of AA. My mom was in AA, and when I had my accident, she’d say, ‘One day at a time. Don’t project.’ And it’s really true. At the moment that you’re in a situation and you feel like you’re never going to get out of it, and the world’s falling apart, just relax, because it will change. Everything changes, and you just have to let go. You’ll be surprised at what happens. It takes a lot of courage to just let go, but you’ll be taken care of somehow.”
She also advised: “It’s really important to breathe. It’s hard when you get hurt, you can’t even move or breathe. You’re like a baby. When I look back, I can see how far I’ve come. You need to have a sense of humor, too.”
For more information about Mary, you can mosey on over to go to her website or buy her book. You’re sure to be inspired, just like we were.