To join a community after tragedy, we often have to accept our new—and often unwelcome—identity. Writer Allen Rucker told us that after he became paralyzed, “I initially didn’t want to hang around people who were in wheelchairs. I didn’t want to belong to that club. I saw myself as a freak; I didn’t want to join the freak fraternity.” His mind didn’t change overnight. “It took four or five years. It almost felt like every cell in my brain had to transfer, one at a time, very slowly learning to accept this thing.”
