International Women's Day 2021 - Q&A with Patricia Walsh
Happy International Women's Day everyone! This International Women’s Day we couldn’t think of a better person to interview than Patricia Walsh.
Patricia has many hats; former professional triathlete, Paralympian, published author, engineer, speaker. She is now a member of a CrossFit gym and this month, she will take part in the CrossFit Open for the first time. We hope you’ll have a read and be just as inspired by her story as we are.
She's a really special lady and here she comes!
P: Thank you so much for having me. I was really honoured to be asked and I've been watching the other videos and some of them have been so great.
Who are you and what do you do?
P: My name is Patricia Walsh. I am a former Paralympian in the sport of triathlon. I've got seven international gold medals in the sport of triathlon and I am the 2012 USA athlete of the year. I have the world record for fastest blind and low-vision Ironman distance and recently I have gotten into CrossFit, which is how I met Becs and I think is how I became aware of you. I am also the author of the book; “Blind Ambition: How To Envision Your Limitless Potential”.
So that's me. I'm originally from Austin, Texas, but I live in London. I work at Facebook and at the moment I’m just enjoying the nice life here in London - the lockdown life.
Out of all the things that you've done so far, which are all super impressive, what's one thing that you are most proud of?
P: I think the thing I'm most proud of is pursuing my degree. When I went to university, being a blind person in the late 90s, accessible technology was relatively new. People had no expectation that a person with blindness could be really successful in university. When I started expressing interest in going to university, everyone; my dad, my guidance counsellor, all the school admins were very quick to discourage me from doing that. They really wanted me to apply for welfare or apply for other things and it just didn't seem right to me, even though I really had no success to point to, or to suggest that it would be successful.
In hindsight, I was never sure it would work out. I just wanted to know one way or the other if it would be a failure and I was happy to experience the failure of that if that is what it was going to be. After quite a bit of work and really an uphill battle, it did work out well for me and now I have a degree in electronic engineering and computer science and a great career in addition to my athletics.
I think there's really something to be said for the quality of life and feeling like you're making a contribution, not even necessarily around the financial security of working, but feeling like you're living up to your own aptitude. Particularly for people with disabilities, I think that’s overlooked a lot. I'm very pleased to be able to do this for myself, but also serving as an example of someone with a disability who's employed at a company like Facebook and doing regular work.
S: Absolutely. And what is your book about? Why did you write it?
P: My book is a book on goal achievement. It’s published with McGraw-Hill business education. At the time, my goal was to be an elite athlete with a disability on par with able-bodied athletes. The reason that was important to me was to serve as an example of capability because I think often with disability, people assume we need a lower standard. People mix up accommodation, which is an alternate toolset, with accommodation that is a reduced expectation and that actually sets a very false ceiling.
My book is about how to align your goals with something you genuinely care about such that the milestones that are tied to that thing you care about, or the day-to-day tasks that are tied to that thing you care about, mean something to you.
For example, if I'm trying to change the way that society sees people with disabilities, or if I'm trying to be a positive influence for other people with disabilities, I genuinely in my heart of hearts care about that every single day of my life. If me setting the example of an elite disabled athlete being on par with able-bodied athletes is a step in the right direction, if I tie that to some milestones, which at the time was national championships and various races, I can tie that back to my day-to-day workouts. So when you wake up on one of those days when you don't feel like doing the workout or you're tired of it and you don't understand what the point is, it's very quick to map that to something you genuinely do care about and then the work gets done, with your heart in it a little bit more.
S: I love it. I'm so inspired.
P: Thank you. I'm now trying to adapt that same model for employment, for persons with blindness or a person with disability and employment. So I'm trying to follow my own guidelines and guidance and relating it to employment.
S: Are you going to write another book?
P: I have thought about it. I don't have a book in mind, but I've started to do a bit of blogging about incorporating persons with disabilities in employment for every job. It will just be about blindness because all I really know about is blindness.
In the US, there’s a 70% unemployment rate for working age individuals with blindness and low vision and in the UK it’s 75%, so they're really very similar. Honestly with technology, there's no real limitation anymore. There's no reason for a person to be unemployed. So it's largely around social barriers, which relates back to ‘reduced expectations’. So someone is assuming you can't do something without really exploring how you could do it.
I think for persons with blindness there are definitely occasions, CrossFit has been one of them, where I don't immediately know how I will do something. We're gonna have to try a few things and see what works out. There's not an immediately obvious solution sometimes, but I really do believe those barriers are more social barriers than actual barriers to not be able to see something. So that's what I'm really trying to experiment with a bit in my blogging and see what resonates, see what's helpful.
I think there could potentially be a second book there, but it's sort of workshopping at this point.
S: I love how, for example, when you filled out our retreat form and you said “I'm blind and I do this, this and this”, I was like, I want to meet this lady! How does she do it?! It's so much easier to understand once I've seen you in action.
P: It's funny because that's a tricky piece for me. Sometimes when I tell people they panic a bit, but then if I don't tell people they are very caught off guard. So for me, there's always a question of should I disclose or not? Because if a person panics they sometimes create other problems for me, but if I catch them off guard, you sort of lose trust even though it's really challenging at times.
S: What I meant to say is sometimes people may not read your book, but by you being there at different events they can see a live example of how it's done and that can be very powerful.
P: I appreciate you saying that because that has kind of been the premise for myself. For example, in employment most people have never worked with a person who's blind, so then they get it in their head that a person who is blind can't do that job. Rather than working in accessibility or working in something disability specific, I really made a point of working in mainstream. I work in fraud prevention actually, which is a very exciting space. The vision is a bit of a secondary thing. I try to not make it a defining characteristic.
People are forever asking me why I don't work in accessibility. Certainly I care about it because I use it, but it's not like a person who's blind can’t be passionate about anything else. I'm more interested in fraud prevention and I think it's good to serve as an example of a person with blindness who's in the job of their choosing rather than something they felt nudged into based on disability.
Is there one thing that didn't quite go to plan that you learned a lot from?
P: Oh my gosh, how many things did not go to plan? So many things have not gone to plan! Where to begin?
I competed in Rio, in the Rio Paralympics and I had a guide that I was working with in order to see the course. We had had a lot of problems in the year leading up to Rio and it ended up really coming together in a really poor race, one that I’d spent six years training for. I think I learned a lot about how important who you surround yourself with is. She was an amazing athlete, but I think she had very different priorities and that was not a secret. Of course now, coming in 7th at the Paralympics is something I have to carry with me for the rest of my life. I think if I'd had a partnership that was a little bit more open, a little bit more honest, had a little bit more direct feedback and more trust, we could have done a lot better. Certainly I could have done a lot better.
I think I've learned a lot about who you surround yourself with, how you present yourself, being a little bit more authentic and having an amazing athlete is no trade-off for having someone that you really trust.
S: Wow. What a lesson. But to even make it to Rio is a huge feat! Was this triathlon?
P: Yes. I used to do the Ironman triathlons. I set the world record for blind and low-vision male and female at the time, but I think male has since beat it. Then I went on to compete in the shorter, sprint distance for the US national team for six years, so I was a professional for six years.
S: Amazing. Words fail me at this point, but was this after university or before university?
P: After university. I was a little bit of a late starter in my athletic career.
S: No, that's even more impressive. Is there someone that is like a role model for you in some ways?
P: The athlete that I always look to is actually Michael Jordan. I say all the time, what would Michael Jordan do? I think particularly as an athlete with a disability, you have to push other people a lot of times to include you. Of course Michael Jordan's athleticism, but also his demeanour and at times his willingness to make other people uncomfortable to drive the standard higher, is something I've really had to do as well. So often I will say to myself; “What would Michael Jordan do?”. I don't know if he'd appreciate me saying that!
S: That's so true. He probably made a lot of people uncomfortable.
P: I don't think he was shy about that. I don't think so. Often people will do what's easiest for them. If I think back to being in secondary school and physical education, they would put me on the sidelines stacking blocks; an activity that would be appropriate for a toddler, when I was in my teens. There's all that development I missed - the running, the games and the team sports. There was a lot that was missed. So for me, for myself, I have to push other people very hard sometimes to even consider including me.
S: I guess that gave you the drive to be like; “No, I will not be pushed aside”.
P: It’s so interesting because I think about this all the time. I was never sure it would work out. It was never; “I'm sure I can do this”. It was always; “Let's prove that I can't before we give up before we've started”.
It's a slightly different strain, but I still feel that way. Even when I go to CrossFit! When I try something for the first time, I have no idea how I'm going to do things if I've never done them before and I've no idea what to ask for, but I just think let’s at least try to figure it out. If it doesn't work, we're no worse off.
S: It keeps things interesting!
P: For me and for everyone! It's a lot of surprises.
S: I think that's the essence of CrossFit; expect the unexpected or be prepared for the ‘unknowable’.
P: Becs and all the other instructors at CrossFit have been so welcoming and really responsive. They could have responded in any kind of way, but they didn’t even really bat an eyelid at being inclusive. I don't need much help other than getting equipment because I don't trust myself to carry a bar across a room full of people. But they've been really fantastic and I'm really grateful to them for that.
S: That's quite something to say about coaches. That's huge.
Do you have a quote that you live by or a particular favourite?
P: You know that thing about Michael Jordan, I do actually genuinely say that all the time but I think my quotes change depending on what I need. So what I'm thinking about this morning and the thing I'm saying to myself a lot these days is; “You're never more ineffective than when you're feeling defensive”.
I'm trying to be aware of these moments where I start feeling defensive around my disability, or around whatever it is, that I start shutting down an important conversation or shutting down an important development opportunity.
I've had different quotes every day of the week, but that’s today’s quote; “You’re never more ineffective than when you’re feeling defensive”.
S: Okay, I'm gonna ask you again next week!
P: It's not always about inspiration and motivation. Sometimes it's also like, do you need a course correction?
S: Definitely. I work with set phrases and quotes in life, so the more I have in my memory bank, the more I can pull out.
If you were to say a few words to your younger self, what would those be?
P: Gosh, I think if I were to go to my younger self, I would really just give a nudge to be more aware of who you surround yourself with. I think that is just so powerful. I also would have encouraged my younger self and said that things are going to get a lot better. Your life is going to get a lot better by just believing in what you can do and also by being willing to fail - to fail gracefully, because it certainly happens. It's not just people with disabilities who have failure, everyone experiences that. I think it’s just to take that bet on yourself, but be aware of who you surround yourself with. And then things do get better!
S: I think you've exceeded everyone's expectations, probably including your own expectations.
P: A thousand times. I don't know that I had high expectations at any moment. I think it's not only the achievements but it's just a general level of happiness and fulfilment that I didn't believe was possible. I'm really proud to say that, in general, I wouldn't change anything.
S: Are you going to do the open?
P: Oh yeah, I did sign up for that, but I forgot it's coming this week. I've never competed at home so I’m wondering how this is all gonna work, but we'll figure it out.
S: Yeah, it's something else for you to figure out and try right?
P: Yes. Let's see how this goes.
S: I can't wait. I can't wait to hear more from you.
P: Well, I can't wait for the retreat!
S: I know! We've got a new, even better location and we will make it as good as we can, and then we might start putting more dates on as well. Thank you so much for joining me Patricia. I really appreciate it. It couldn't come on a better day.
P: Thank you so much and happy birthday, by the way!
S: Thank you and happy International Women's Day to you. Bye!
How would you like to join Patricia, Becs and the rest of the MLA gang on our upcoming Jurassic Coast retreat? Find out more about our Women’s Wellness Retreat on the 16-19 September.
You can also find out more about Patricia and follow her amazing journey over on her Instagram profile.