Poppy Jean Sundquist
Poppy Sundquist is 45 years old Korean-American has spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy and is hard-of-hearing. Poppy’s career and life has centered around promoting inclusion, equity, disability equity, BIPOC equity, in the workforce and the community. To help bring forth changes regarding the systemic issues that people with physical disabilities and intellectual disabilities face. Specifically issues people of the LGBTQIA+ community face being BIPOC and having intersectionality and disability. Is a Paraprofessional - Regular Education with Saint Paul Public Schools District #625, Secretary for Arc of Minnesota Board of Directors, member of Self Advocates Advisory Committee, and many other committees within the Arc of Minnesota. Poppy is active in the disability community by volunteering her time with Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute- Golden Valley, Vice President of We Love To Play for five years. A nonprofit organization providing recreational opportunities for disabled adults.
Interview Transcription:
SPEAKERS
Molly Joyce, Poppy Jean Sundquist
Molly Joyce 00:03
The first question is, what is resilience for you?
Poppy Jean Sundquist 00:07
For me resilience is having that mental but not only just mental having that innate, something special inside you that allows you to accept negativity accept failure, but not accepting, necessarily the negative components, but accepting that it happened in, in learning from those moments. And learning how you can move forward learning what you need to change, learning what your part was in that negative experience, or even a positive experience that can add to being resilient, or having resiliency. So it's essentially more more in depth connection to just not giving up. But it's having that ability to look, to listen, to learn to recognize your part in your behavior, your actions, other people's behavior, and understanding what you can do to move forward you might not be able to change what has happened. But what can you do to move forward to, to keep going, if it's something you're striving for, if it's something that is important to you, and you may have in your mind failed, or not executing something in the way that you wanted, by having that ability to keep going and keep moving forward to your goal, or even if it's a collective thing, with a group, and you work so hard on this important thing, or project and it didn't go well, or the intention wasn't there, something was missing. Keep going, keep, keep moving forward, keep fighting, keep learning, keep growing, keep listening, keep changing, adapting.
Molly Joyce 02:16
I really love that. Thank you. The next question is, what is isolation for you?
Poppy Jean Sundquist 02:22
For me, isolation can be many things. Obviously, it can be physical, this last year has definitely been a challenge for all of us in many capacities, some more challenging than others in particularly when you're talking about individuals with disabilities, depending on what home environment, or living environment they live in, there's been more restrictions in beginning with individuals that live in group homes. But for me, I live in an apartment. So it was very much not just having that physical component of not being able to quote really leave your home unless it was really important for necessities or that type of thing. It was also very much mental not being able to mentally or even physically function in the way that we were used to see you're having to rely on if that ability of a finding a new level of ironic that we just talked about this result against the to create those moments of not feeling isolated, and we all felt that we all were impacted by it. So it's really just a component of, of, of feeling that you're alone, that you're in maybe even physical isolation of not being able to have access. So you can't go you're not as involved in the community in the ways that you want to be. You're not involved in the things that you want to do or go to places. But isolation essentially is for me is is not having access. If that mental access to resources to for me to feel safe, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, if that is your important to you or part of your your life, not having those things can cause isolation because essentially you feel alone and essentially you feel you even though you may know it, technically, but you're feeling so alone, that there's no one else that gets it that. But no one else understand. So it's also not just feeling alone, but it's a disconnect from, from connection, whatever that may be places people access.
Molly Joyce 05:16
I love that, and especially relating to access with disability to how it's all kind of intertwined. And also really leads to our next question, what is connection for you?
Poppy Jean Sundquist 05:29
Connection is so many things. For me, I really believe in how, with yourself, how are you connecting with yourself? Are you connecting in the way of for yourself internally, mentally, physically, that is allowing you to have positivity, feeling good about what you're doing, feeling good about what your goals are, what your objectives are feeling good about how you want to maneuver the, the your space, the world, the community, how you want to be involved in the community. But it's also how, how is the world created for you. And if it's not created for you, what are you going to do with the support of family, friends, community resources, when you're going to do to make that a more of a living reality for you. And obviously, forever. For many people with disabilities. There's many levels of feeling connection. But there's a lot more work for all of us to feel really connected. But besides the spatial part of it, being connected is also being connected to people that are important to you people that are going to lift you up, people that are going to understand you people, that might even be your created family. Because there might be dynamics or situations with your family that love you or support you. Or maybe in cases, unfortunately, that don't get you or support you or love you. Having that connection to having a created family can give you that supportive connection that everyone wants, which also can help with community access, which also helps with connection because if you don't have access, then there is no connection. But it also has to start with you. What are you going to do as an individual? And again, that's on many levels of emotional that's physically, what are your what do you want to do? It's also mentally, how are you going to connect in your mind, which will be given other parts of what's happening or that you're involved in? Are connected to through out your life?
Molly Joyce 08:27
Yes, really powerful. Especially thinking about the world not created for you in a way and how to make that? And then last question is, what is darkness for you?
Poppy Jean Sundquist 08:42
Darkness really is. Wow, I know I talked about it. In our previous communication with the group collective darkness is really not in my opinion, for an individual not feeling connected to anything, and therefore you fall into this spiral or pitfall of despair. And then that can create some really deep mental torment because it doesn't make you feel good. And it doesn't allow you especially if it's mentally brought you in a dark, deep place. It's not allowing you to get out as quickly as you would having access having community having connection having support.