FS: What advice do you have for people wanting to help?

GR: When you really want to jump up and help somebody in a wheelchair open a door, take a breath. Just take a moment and see if they really need your help. We have worked very hard for our own independence. I do not like when someone says, "Here give me that, I'll do it." You can ask "May I help you?" It gives us the option of saying "No, thank you for your offer," just like anybody else would without a disability. But you have to ask politely and take no for an answer. Do not assume automatically that they need your help. I am teaching those with a challenge that they should try to take responsibility to ask for help, when needed.

FS: Tell us about your adult life and how you got into golf.

GR: I was living on my own when I met my husband while I was bartending. He came in with his friends after work. I said something stupid about football. He is a Dolphins fan, I’m a Jets fan and they’re usually archrivals. I said something backwards, and he thought it was cute. He invited me to a football game. From then on, we dated seriously and then got married. We have been married 36 years, have two children and three grandchildren. I can honestly say that I am absolutely adorably in love with him and nothing turns my head or my heart, no matter what I do, even though, I’m around men all the time.

As an adult, I began to get that feeling of being left out again. I was feeling like that 13-year-old girl again. My husband, his friends and their wives would meet most weekends to play golf. Also, all these years, the couples were playing golf with my husband, but he doesn't have his wife with him. They were nice enough to call me when they rounded the 15th hole to join them for lunch. Just like all golfers do, they would sit and talk about their morning round. I found myself not having much to add to the conversation. I was happy to be there, but I didn't have much to contribute. Sometimes, they would go back out, and I would go back home by myself. Finally, I had enough of that.

I asked my husband. “How can we figure this out?” I was born this way and I’ve always learned everything a different way. It was a lot of trial and error. I decided to start hanging out at the driving range, but we just couldn’t figure anything out. We talked to different teaching professionals that were my husband’s mentors golf coaches. But nobody had been trained to teach somebody with one hand. I was advised to come to the beginners’ clinics, which I did. The first thing they teach you is “One hand goes here. The other hand goes here for gripping,” and they’ve lost me. The teacher said “Let’s come back after the clinic and we’ll try to figure something out

together, because it's not something that we're going to figure out with the group here." I agreed and also felt that it was not fair for the group to wait for me. So, we would go back after the clinic and talk. We tried a bunch of different things. I tried lefty, I tried righty, I tried a prosthetic. But because my arm developed differently, the lengths are different. We tried some prosthetic devices, and all kinds of crazy gadgets, but I was never able to keep two points of contact on the club. In golf, they always teach two points of contact on the club, which is why you'll see people with amputations wear prosthetic arms. But it wasn't working for me. So, since I couldn't use a prosthetic, we just started with the one hand. We tried lefty clubs, we tried righty clubs, and it took probably about three years of just chipping away at it, no pun intended.

FS: What advice do you have for parents that have children with disabilities?

EXCELLENT APPROACH: An adaptive golfer on the fairway; "Today, Adaptive Golfers hosts accessible golf clinics across the country, as well as training for golf instructors and course operators interested in better equipping their facilities to support golfers of all different abilities."

GR: Parents often have limiting beliefs about their own children's abilities. Because of that, they often do not take a step back, because they want to make sure everything is easier for their children. In spite of their best intentions, the coddling robs the children of their independence.

As a child, I was held back and being limited. There was a lack of exposure, because my parents did not put me out there. I didn’t get offered the opportunity to play sports. I didn’t get pushed to go to dance class or gymnastics. I didn’t get that because they thought I could not do it. Don’t keep them in. Push them out. Step back. As a parent, you want to empower your children. Your job is to empower them, to bring out their individuality, and help them shape it, as different as it may be, for whatever the unique child is. And that’s not just a disabled child, that’s any child. It is important that parents do not limit and hold kids back. Don’t balk at putting them in softball. If they don’t like it, they don’t like it. If they’re not good at it, they’re not good at it. But give them every opportunity. You should treat your child as any other child. Who would have thought I would be playing golf? Allow your child to explore. Don’t just do everything for them.

When you really want to jump up and help somebody in a wheelchair open a door, just take a moment and see if they really need your help. We have worked very hard for our own independence.

Some parents, even though the child could communicate with me, communicated for them. An example, I was talking directly to the son and the mother answered for him. You can’t do it all for them. You wouldn’t think of people with mobility challenges going to CrossFit. The first thing they do at CrossFit, is the teacher will come and push the amputee out of his wheelchair. “The first thing you need to know is how to get yourself back up in that chair. If you can’t, we’re going to build your strength. That’s going to be your first goal, getting yourself off the floor back into that chair.” That’s the first CrossFit exercise so