This article is also available in: 日本語
I’ve used a wheelchair since 7 years old.
My parents always told me “you can do anything besides walking.”
But as I grew older, I found the things I can/can’t do by wheelchair.
One of the timings was when someone asked me about my dream.
When you were young, people around you often asked you “what do you want to be in the future?”, right?
I was also asked the same question.
Before entering an elementary school, my dream was working at cake shop or flower shop like other girls often would say.
When I was 10 years old, my dream was actress.
It was just because I thought I could meet my favorite pop star. haha.
I told my mother about my dream, then she said “hmm..actress in wheelchair..”
She didn’t say “you can’t be.” nor “why don’t you try?”
But I felt it would be difficult, and gave up.
When I was 12 years old, I loved going to a hair salon and wanted to be a hair stylist.
Then my mother told me “hmm..hair stylist in wheelchair..but you can’t keep standing up..”
Again she didn’t say “you can’t be.” nor “why don’t you try?”
I didn’t have any dreams when 13 years old (junior high school student in Japan) because I couldn’t find any jobs which I, a wheelchair user, could do.
However I knew only one person in wheelchair who were working.
She was my Japanese harp teacher and I was taking her class since 4 years old.
She married and raised 3 children.
Then I realized “I can be a Japanese harp teacher!”
However when I told my dream to my teacher at school, I was told that
“you can’t get enough salary if you work as a Japanese harp teacher. You need to find another job to do.”
And my mother told me
“it won’t be easy to be a master of art. If you can’t do anything besides playing Japanese harp, you should do this. But you can do many other things too, right?”
She was very severe because she was the master of classical Japanese dance.
Also I believe she really wanted me to go into the world in other ways.
Once starting job hunting, moon riders would notice that many companies hire people in wheelchair.
But before that, we cannot imagine what kind of job we can do in the future.
We barely see an employee in wheelchair who works at the places we can easily find in daily life in Japan.
If you are a girl, you could say “my dream is to be a housewife:)”
even if you don’t have any dreams.
But for young me, I also had a worry that I might not be able to marry for good, so I could never answer like that either.
The thing I want to say here is that I want more moon riders to go into the world and work in various places, not only at office.
I want more kids in wheelchair to be able to imagine their future dreams with many kinds of occupations as other kids do.
When I was a student in US, I found a guy in wheelchair working at a supermarket (one of major retail companies in US) and taking care of customer.
We cannot imagine this in Japan right now, but we can make this real in the future.
To do this, moon riders’ actions are very important.
Let’s change the future together! I will work hard on this too!