Certain individuals’ disabilities are quite visible. One who has to use a wheelchair, one who is missing a limb, or who one who has Down Syndrome have visible disabilities unequivocally. There are other disabilities that are invisible. Worse, some people associated with persons who have the invisible disability might not understand nor believe that he/she/they are disabled. This can lead to doubters being unsupportive.
High school sophomore Mara Ankenman of Main Line Classical Academy in Bryn Mawr, Pa. and a student at Danny’s Guitar Shop in the nearby town of Narberth has an invisible disability: PKU, Phenylketonuria, a genetic disorder that prevents the body from processing phenylalanine, an amino acid found in many foods. For more information about PKU, log onto
https://www.luriechildrens.org/en/specialties-conditions/phenylketonuria/
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Ankenman also has ADHD and frequent pain in her hands and fingers.
“My friends and other people don’t know that I have these disabilities,” said Ankenman.
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“And I’m one of them,” said her Danny’s Guitar Shop instructor EJ Simpson who sat in on this interview after her guitar lesson. “I didn’t know anything about this.”
Ankenman said that she saw no reason to tell Simpson.
“We only meet a half hour a week for guitar lessons.”
“Now that I know,” said Simpson, “I’ll teach you yoga stretches that will help your hands and fingers.”
Having these disabilities made Ankenman feel different.
“For the first 14 years of my life, I couldn’t go out to eat at restaurants because there wasn’t anything there I could eat,” said Ankenman. “I had to eat special stuff at home. I couldn’t go out with people. I couldn’t do this; do that. I also had a lot of aches and pains; it made it very hard to function normally.”
Ankenman added that when she has too much or too little protein, her PKU causes her ADHD symptoms to worsen.
“When I was growing up, I always felt weird,” said Ankenman. “I felt like an outcast. I never had a lot of friends.” Music gave her a social life.
She is a community musical theater performer and has grown close with other musicians her age. Music gave her a sense of normalcy, which is one of her key reasons for liking it. Besides playing guitar, she plays the bass and sings.
“She was always talented, said her mother, Michelle Ankenman.
Mara Ankenman recently performed at the GET Café in Narberth, along with some of Simpson’s other students. The GET Café hires people who have a variety of disabilities, including blindness, Autism, intellectual challenges and mental illness.
Mara Ankenman said that she enjoyed performing at GET: “I felt less alone.”
She concluded by saying that she wished that she had more time to practice her music, but Main Line Classical Academy students have rigorous academic schedules.
“I take six classes; I like it,” said Ankenman, who found public school to be less challenging.
At school, she especially enjoys studying the work of the 19th century Russian Novelist, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky.
She said that some of the students at Main Line Classical Academy learn to read The Iliad and The Odyssey in their original language; Greek. They also learn to read The Aeneid of Virgil in its original language, Latin.
To learn more about Danny’s Guitar Shop, log onto https://dannysguitarshop.com/
To learn more about The GET Café, log onto GETincluded.org
