Crippled but Strong

Today, as I flipped through the newspaper, I saw another interesting article. There was this article about a woman. Miss Oh Siew May, 38 years old, is not a normal person. She is a writer of a book titled "Scaling Walls". The book was an instant hit, with over 3000 out of 5000 copies sold when it was released.

So what was so special about Ms Oh? She is the youngest of five children in her family. Ms.Oh is actually a victim of cerebral palsy. This disease renders her ability to move normally. Unfortunately for her, she is not the only one in her family to suffer from diseases. Various diseases have robbed her of her families and friends. One of her siblings once had a high fever causing the sibling to be mentally impaired. Besides that, her father and one of her friends died due to cancer. Her father succumbed to colon cancer.

The other friend, Lui Ming, who greatly inspired her to do wonderful things, died in 2005 at the age of 44. Lui Ming and her daughter, Aurora encouraged Ms. Oh in many different aspects. They even persuaded Ms. Oh to climb Mt. Kinabalu, which is situated in East Malaysia, and stands at a height of 4095m, making it one of the tallest mountains in South East Asia. Ms.Oh's mother, too suffered from chronic skin disease and had to amputate her right leg.

Despite facing these various setbacks in her life, she continued to work to make money for her family. It was a hard task for her to find jobs, as many companies did not want to hire physically or mentally impaired workers. So, Ms. Oh had no choice but to start a pushcart business at a shopping mall. She had to gave up in 2003 when SARS hit, resulting in drop of customers. After that, she continued to look for jobs.

In the end, she started to write books. After finishing writing the book, she tried to find a company to publish it. Eventually, she found a company. When the date of publishing came nearer and nearer however, the company refused to publish her work as they cannot reach an agreement of contracts. So, her group of motley friends pooled up over $10000 to start a Siew May and Friends publisher and managed to publish Ms.Oh's book in merely 8 weeks.

Ms.Oh has been a great inspiration to me. People can be motivated just by looking at what she has done, even though she is crippled. She had to break more barriers in comparison to a normal human to do what she has done. She is really a determined person. We should emulate what we can from her.