Pac Rim 2008 Info
Telling Our Stories: Sharing our Personal Journeys
Facilitated by Ho‘oipo DeCambra
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008: 1:15 pm – 4:00 pm in the Waimea Canyon Room, on topic of Hidden Disabilities
Please join our circle as we share our personal journeys and create a strong network of support. Facilitated by H‘oipo DeCambra, a Native Hawaiian leader, we invite all people to attend and share their stories.
The circle includes:
James Dixon, diagnosed with lymphoma, will share his personal journey from diagnosis, shock, denial, acceptance, treatment, and rehabilitation of mind, body and spirit. Richard Leslie will share his best practices for living and how he moved forward in his life. Noel Light went through life with an undiagnosed hidden disability know as Attention Deficit Disorder. He will share some of the coping skills that worked as well as those that did not and how he succeeded. As teenagers, Juan Sebastian Rodrigues and Maria Torres reflect on their lives. Juan will share his life with ADHD and Learning disabilities and what keeps him going in the middle of his daily academic and social struggles. Susan McCoy will discuss her multiple hidden disabilities, some of which are: Chronic depression, PTSD, anxiety disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Because of her outwardly outgoing, cheerful, and capable persona, people, especially her family, don’t believe that she needs special accommodations. She would like to share some creative methods which she has discovered to cope with her disabilities.
Biography
Ho‘oipo DeCambria is the daughter of a Hawaiian Fisher woman and a Texas father; Grandmother of eleven mo‘opuna (grandchildren); activist and a poet. She says, “I was the last child born to Helena Freeman Liftee Gaughen, and the first to be born in a western hospital. At birth, I was secretly taken to a native Hawaiian healer after the western doctors had broke one of my arms to get me out of the birth canal in order to save my mother’s life and mine. This experience has prompted me to ask the question, “When will native Hawaiian practices and knowledge receive rightful recognition and status in the broader society”?
She is currently in a Master’s Program for Rehabilitation Counseling and works at Hale Na‘au Pono, a community-based mental health center, using cultural foundation to assist adults diagnosed with serious mental illness in managing their lives. She has received the Robert wood Johnson Community Health Leader Award.
