New Book Illustrates Adjustment to Disability

By Donna Emert

When Susan Stuntzner was 19 and injured her spine, there was not much information available to demystify the process of adapting to it.

Her first book, “Living with a Disability: Finding Peace Amidst the Storm,” addresses that need. “It was written initially to be a resource for people going through the experience of acquiring a disability and adjusting to it, relating both my own experience and the knowledge I gained through education and research,” Stuntzner said. “Trying to adjust can be a very isolating experience, primarily because it is not easy to meet others who know what it’s like to live life following a disability.”

The book illustrates the arduous process of mental, spiritual, social and physical adjustment. It also exposes the dehumanizing cultural assumptions that people with disabilities are either weaker than or

Leadership and Counseling

more courageous than others. Those assumptions are pretty much fingernails scraping across the karmic chalkboard of Stuntzner’s post-injury experience. The need for such a book has intensified for other reasons as well, Stuntzner said, noting that insurance companies are now reducing allowable hospital recovery time and rehabilitation care.

“People with disabilities and their families are not given enough information,” she said. “And when they’re released, they’re on their own to figure it out.” The first book, published by the Counseling Association of India and available on Amazon.com, also will serve as a textbook for educating counselors in India. It incorporates questions at the end of each chapter aimed at students and professionals, and it concludes with an overview of approaches in the final two chapters.

Stuntzner is program coordinator and assistant professor for the Rehabilitation Counseling and Human Services Program at the University of Idaho Coeur d’Alene. She holds a master’s degree in counseling from Portland State University and a doctorate in rehabilitation psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She researched and wrote the books over the last 2½ years, while teaching and advising between 10 and 25 students. While finalizing the first book and redrafting a second, Stuntzner’s greatest challenges included time management and the personal nature of the subject matter.

“Just putting my life and experiences out there was difficult,” Stuntzner said. “I did it in hopes that it would help others. Unless you walk the path, you really don’t know what those experiences are like. No one ever really prepares you.” She recently submitted the second book, “Reflections From the Past: Life Lessons for Better Living,” for publication. It focuses on coping skills tied to resiliency. She is now at work on a third book, looking at how families are impacted by and cope with disability.