Why you should watch “Rising Phoenix” even if you don’t have a disability.

A recently released Netflix film titled "Rising Phoenix" follows 9 athletes and the history of the Paralympic events. I was instantly drawn to the cover art which features Ellie Cole, Australian Paralympic gold medalist, and right leg above the knee amputee, gracefully suspended in water. I needed to know more. Losing her leg to cancer as a small child, she took to swimming naturally and was determined to become the fastest swimmer on her team while competing against swimmers who had both legs.

Bebe Veo, an Italian wheelchair fencer who lost all 4 limbs to meningitis, tells her story with such honest courage and infectious optimism. "If you go thinking every day why me? Then you won't go anywhere." "It just happened you know... shit happens." She learned to fence without the two anatomical parts required for the sport. Fingers and wrist.  Sprinter and long-jumper Jean-Baptiste Alaize, lost both his lower legs and his mother in the Burundi civil war, as a child. He arrived in France as an orphan where he received his first prosthesis. Tatiana McFadden, a Russian born track and field star, was born with spina-bifida and spent the first 9 years of her life in an orphanage walking on her hands, unable to afford a wheelchair.
These are just a few of the incredible athletes whose stories inspire to no end.

Ludwig Guttmann, a neurosurgeon and neurologist from Germany, ran a spinal cord center during a time when ex-servicemen with spinal cord injuries were simply left to die. He developed a small multi-sport event for his patients in 1950. This later grew to be what we now know as the Paralympic Games. Thanks to Guttmann and others who believed in the power of the human spirit, these 9 athletes and countless others have been given the opportunity to inspire and begin to break the glass ceiling of discrimination and inequality.

The telling of how the world has viewed those with a disability throughout time is a much-needed reminder that we still have strides left to make. And what a crucial time in history to be reminded of this. If just for a moment, viewing the world through the eyes of someone who has been looked down upon and told no time after time, is enlightening. Told they may never amount to much and sports would not be an option, they fought to be able to be a part of something great. At its core, this is a tale of pushing back against adversity and the dream of a world where we can all support one another. If you are fighting against something, if you are feeling discouraged, if you are human, you can and will find inspiration in "Rising Phoenix”

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