The Patient - Mishelle Woodring
Mishelle Lynn Woodring was born in Liberal, Kansas on June 22nd, 1949, the firstborn of Earl and Louise Woodring. She went blind at eighteen months of age after being given an unnecessarily large dose of penicillin to treat what was assumed to be a severe case of measles. (Astute readers will recall that antibiotics were used for every sort of perceived infection in those days!) It was not measles; rather a case of rheumatic fever and it was this misdiagnosis that eventually resulted in the stenosis of her heart’s mitral valve.
By all accounts, Mishelle was a remarkably fearless and precocious child. Her singular lack of fear arose largely from within herself, of course, but it must be noted that her parent’s adamant refusal to over-protect their eldest child contributed to this incredible courage. As a result, Mishelle was no different from any other kid. She played and explored the limits of her world and her blindness did not limit her in the least.
Nor did it limit her deep conviction of who she was and what she was. Though genetically male, from the time she was a small child, perhaps no more than five years of age, Mishelle knew she was female. How she knew this can be in part attributed to her blindness, as she had absolutely no way to compare herself to others and thereby know what ‘female’ looked like. Sighted people rely almost exclusively on visual cues to establish the various forms and aspects of human relations. But the subliminal cues: smell, voice and a myriad of even more subtle sensations lumped together as somatic and kinesthetic are often not consciously recognized. In the blind, these senses can be amplified to the point where they seem eerily parapsychological in nature; the Sixth Sense.
Mishelle was no exception. She grew to know her world very well indeed and to be able to judge the character of nearly anyone she encountered with astonishing accuracy. She could know and accept a person without the bias of skin color, dress or apparent social status. She could accept a person for the goodness of their spirit, in other words, and it remains a tragedy that others could not accept her on those same terms.
The broad biographical events of her life are delineated in The Color of Sunlight and there is no need to reiterate those here. Instead, consider that her life was always a quest for two things: to know more of this world and those in it, and to tell those in it the truth of whom she was and what it meant.
When she first realized that she was not alone after hearing the Geraldo show, the relief she felt and the release from guilt and shame at her fear of being ‘crazy’ impelled her along the Path that, however indirectly, led to this book. Had she not decided that her own mission was to educate and break the boundaries of fear and suspicion, Michelle Alexander might never have spent four long years bringing this story to the world.
And you, the reader, might never know the meaning of unconditional acceptance, and the strength that inexorably arises from understanding one another.
We may thank whatever power of Providence might be that the greater of the possibilities occurred and it has become possible for all who read this and understand it to transcend their own limits: to become better, more understanding and accepting. The authors hope and pray that the memory of a woman born a man through no fault of her own, who survived and transcended herself, will always serve as a clear example of the indefinable nature of that thing called Spirit.
Mishelle Lynn Woodring passed away in the arms of her closest friend and student August 12, 2006. Her Spirit lives on.
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