Quench Your Thirst With Alice Tea

Welcome to my place – here you will find a collection of my thoughts, stories, poetry, anything that comes to mind that I wish to or feel the need to share. Whether you agree, disagree or are non-committal to any or all of my posts, I am hoping you will at least leave with a new perspective, a gateway into a world you may or may not have had the opportunity to experience.

A little background: I’m Alice Tea. I live in this incredibly diverse city I affectionately call The Home of the Caffeinated Mermaid, aka Seattle, Washington. It has been my home for many years. Before that, I lived in Yokohama, Japan. My parents were born and raised in the Philippines. My family (I am the youngest of seven) is an interesting mixture of ethnicities, which I believe has played a role in how I perceive the Universe around me. That and other factors have shaped me and continue to shape me, so I cannot, in all honesty, place any particular label or definition of who I am.

We tend to do just that, don’t we? Find the need to fit everything into tidy boxes, labeled to comfort and conform to our perception of Reality. What I’ve come to realize is the more I labeled, the less I actually learned. By labeling myself, I placed limitations on who and what I was, am, and hope to be. So, let’s start anew, shall we?

I am passionate about awareness and understanding, for myself and helping others become educated on both the uniqueness and commonalities of each and every one past, present and future. I am thirsty, and in the process of my writings I want to quench your thirst as well. One subject you will begin to notice that I am very passionate about, if you decide to journey along with me, is Spina Bifida. It literally means open or split spine: the most common, permanently disabling neural tube defect in the United States.

Why, you ask? Because I was born with Spina Bifida. As a result, I have patchy paralysis from the hips down, use a wheelchair for mobility, and deal with other ongoing medical issues as well.

“You don’t SOUND disabled!” *LOL* I just had to throw that in, believe it or not, people have actually said that to me! Maybe that’s another reason why I’m here, to help dispel myths and stereotypes about people with disabilities.

Stay awhile and enjoy yourself, bring a cup of your favorite beverage, get comfy; we’re friends, after all.

P.S. I began using wordpress recently. My older blogs (and a couple of duplicates) can be found at http://alicetea63.blogspot.com/