Eight years ago, Wendy Wolfe started a dating service for disabled people who were having the same problem she was experiencing — a lack of dates. Wendy will begin answering questions about relationships, including romance, from ACCENT readers in the next issue.
Many of us who do not have a significant other in our life go deep into the doldrums around holidays including our birthdays, feeling they are an ominous reminder of growing older and somehow, growing older is negative. I was as guilty as most having that attitude, looking in the mirror for telltale signs of being over thirty and then over forty, and another holiday with no flowers, no chocolates, and mostly no commitment from the man in my life. As a disabled person in a wheelchair, one of the greatest social problems I faced was the lack of dates. As a teenager I actually wished my mother would pay someone to date me. In later years I remember saying to myself and others, Why doesn’t somebody create a dating service for dating for disabled?”
Eight years ago on my birthday I was looking in my “over forty” mirror and I had an epiphany as a flood of why-doesn’t-somebody” thoughts occurred to me, ‘Why doesn’t somebody invent a wrinkle cream that makes laugh lines disappear? Why doesn’t somebody open a dancing school for people in wheelchairs? And my old favorite, Why doesn’t somebody create a dating service for people with disabilities?” Then it dawned on me, why somebody else, why not me?
If I was going to sit around and complain for the rest of my life and let another birthday go by, I’d probably be asking the same questions of my over fifty and over sixty and over seventy face in the mirror. Why wait for somebody else to do it? If I believed it was so important, I would do it.