Dr. Rosemarie Rossetti
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Dr. Rosemarie Rossetti, author of the Universal Design Toolkit is an expert in accessible and universal design. She speaks to and consults with design and building professionals and homeowners who want to create homes that are more accessible, safe, and convenient.
She and her husband are the designers, builders, and occupants of the Universal Design Living Laboratory, the national demonstration home and garden in Columbus, Ohio that is the highest-rated universal design home in North America.
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Hey, everybody, it's Gustavo, the host of the Enabled Disabled podcast. It is my great pleasure to have a very accomplished, very interesting human being today, Rosemarie Rossetti. She is a universal design and accessibility consultant, best selling author, TEDx speaker, disability inclusion expert. Just a phenomenal human, and we are really excited for this opportunity. Quick description of myself. I'm a middle-aged Latin American male. I have short, dark Brown hair parted to the middle, and I'm wearing a Navy blue Polo shirt. I am in my living room right now and there's some blinds and beige drapes behind me. Rosemary, welcome. Can you please describe yourself?
I am a Boomer, so I'm a little older. I am in a wheelchair. I'm seated in my home office, the Universal Design Living laboratory. So behind me you will see the light turquoise paint and the wooden doors from my home office. I'm wearing a bright blue blazer and a cream colored blouse. I have Brown hair and glasses, and I'm delighted to be here.
We're delighted to have you. We have a lot of interesting things to talk about. Can you tell me a little bit about your childhood? What was that like? What were you interested in? What were some of the formative experiences that you had that led you into your early adulthood and professional career?
I came from a family of three. I was the youngest, the only daughter of Italian family. With a name like Rosetti, you could expect that. My father came over as a child, and my grandparents were all from Italy, so the family owned a small carry out. It was the FDR Carry out, which were my father's initials, Fiona Vante Dante. So we had a small family business. My older brothers work there most of the time. I was a little too young. We carried a lot of beer and wine, so I was never old enough to work there and hold in the fulltime position. But I was there as a child, helping in any way I could with the family business by stocking the candy case. That was one of my favorite things to do, also dusting and cleaning and pricing items. So we lived in a neighborhood that was brand new. My parents had built a new home when I was seven. We moved into it. I've always lived in Columbus or the central Ohio area. I live in the Columbus area now, and it was a pretty good childhood with my mother and father at home nurturing me and supporting me, going through a private school and having my brothers surround me with their antics, as older brothers often do.
Yes, they do. Are you still close with your brothers?
I am close with Michael. He is six years older. My oldest brother, Richard is deceased and he had a developmental disability, so I took good care of him throughout his adulthood as my mother, in her mid 90s, developed dementia, and so she was in assisted living and Richard had 24/7 care at home, and I had to manage all his caregiving.
Well, that must have taped you to have just somebody in the family with a disability. How did that help? How did the family adapt to that? What was that like? And what were some of the lessons you learned or some of the adaptations that you went through that most kids don't being surrounded by people with disabilities.
All his friends going with him when we dropped him off at the special camp in the summertime and all the other people with disabilities that were there and being around him when he went bowling or when he went to a dance. So I was around some very profoundly disabled people at different shows where he got free tickets to go to maybe a Broadway show or to the Ohio State Fair, where it was a day where all the people with disabilities got free passes and free lunch. And so I was always with him for those. So it brought me in an environment to see the people who were very profoundly disabled and to have a better sense of empathy and acceptance of those people with disabilities. My brother to look at him, you would never know he had a developmental disability. He was more functional, of course, in his intellectual ability. It was definitely there. But to talk to him, he would have a wonderful conversation and had lots of fun, hobbies and interests. So I supported him there. As a faculty at the Ohio State University. I had access to the football tickets anytime I wanted.
And so Richard love the Buckeyes love football. So I always had season tickets for Richard and I. We went to every game during that period, and I even took him with Mark, and I took one of the National Championships in Arizona, where the Buckeyes actually won that year. And what a memorable experience for the three of us to be on vacation together and to see his joy in watching his Buckeyes win that game.
That's amazing. I personally love sports, and I think that they help bring so many people together and enjoy something in common and feel like you said that joy and that camaraderie of cheering for something bigger than yourself. I think it's a great thing. You said something really interesting in your Ted Talk. Tedx Talk that caught my attention. You said when you have an accident, you are paralyzed from the waist down, and you realized when you got home after five or six weeks that your home intensified your disability. And I think that's a really profound incorrect way to say it. That really resonated with me. Did you see that in your lived spaces with Richard or going to the Stadium or going to these places? Did these built environments intensify anything for him?
No. He and I were both fully capable of walking. He had no physical challenges in terms of his mobility. So we were easily accommodated by going to and from different locations because we were both physically fit and able to walk. So that didn't impact us until later. For me, in 98, being hit by the tree and suddenly having a spinal cord injury and coming home in a wheelchair, that was the moment of intensifying, the disability. Later on, Richard acquired Parkinson's disease. Then he became immobile and was using a wheelchair for his mobility.
Sure, I know the universal design. We're going to dive into that, into your home and all the construction process and everything that you learned. Were there certain environments maybe where he felt more comfortable in or less comfortable in? I guess he was always comfortable around crowds because he liked the football games. But there are neuroesthetics and lighting and moods, things that can calm the nervous system down. I'm just wondering if there was anything that you encountered that might have touched on that or that you learned about later.
No, I'm not aware of any environmental issues that affected Richard.
Okay, so tell us a little bit about your home and the construction process and how you took on this incredibly courageous and bold venture without having really any experience in universal design. How does that work?
Well, that was the Herculean challenge, the big hairy project. It started out, of course, the house was not going to work that we were living in when I got home from the hospital and that house we had built. It was only three years ago that we had built that home, and we thought it was going to be our forever home. But little did we know that the features of the home were not going to accommodate us forever. So we started looking in the multiple listings for the real estate in the area. We had a realtor working with us to try and say maybe we'll just find another home, and we weren't finding anything that was going to meet our needs for accessibility. So then we started going to the new builds, saying, okay, let's look at a model home. Let's see who has a Ranch style home. That's what we preferred. So we didn't have to put an elevator in. And let's see who has one. Those were few and far between even to find a model that was a production home. So we finally decided it wasn't going to work. To find an existing new build, we needed to hire an architect in 2004 was in earnest.
That's when we pulled the trigger, interviewed an architect and said, go design a house for us. Here's the house we live in. Here's our square footage. Here's our considerations for each of the rooms. And so that process continued. We bought a lot in 2006 to put it on, and then the groundbreaking was in 2009. Now, thinking about it, starting in 2004. Five years later, we're finally in the groundbreaking. At that point, we were acquiring sponsors. We had to have contributors in order to afford to build this. And we acquired over 200 at the time of completion of this project. We had volunteers here, and then my husband and I were the general contractors. And I've got to tell you, neither of us have built a house before, and we will never build a house again. It was more than we expected. My husband had some construction background in the commercial side, but never in the residential side. So we hired construction managers. We hired an interior design team of horticultural design team and had lots of advice and guidance throughout the construction. We then moved in May of 2012, and then two years later, finished the landscape and the lower level where the training Zoom, the meeting room and the extra bedroom and bathroom and all of the mechanicals are there.
Then we opened to the public in 2014 so that people could see it. And we raised money for spinal cord research. Just imagine, your house is open from noon until six for 30 solid days, and you have strangers walking through your house and they're wearing a headset, listening to a recording that we had prepared with various stations along the way so they could take tours at their own leisure. That was just a lot of work, and we were exhausted every day. At 06:00, we looked at each other and said, what were we thinking? So we have continued to have tours by appointment. We've had classes here, the Universal Design Living Laboratory. Anyone can take a tour virtually. At our website, Udl.com is the initials. It's a virtual tour, it's a video tour. And they can also get a free chapter of my book. The Download is there now, the Universal Design Toolkit. And that chapter is a listing of the Universal Design features room by room in our home.
I know that Universal Design today is in a much better place than it was in 2009, even though there's still a long ways to go residentially. What did your approach to the sponsors and manufacturers look like at the time to persuade them to join you in this venture?
Some of the manufacturer representatives understood Universal Design. Once we started talking about what the home was going to do. Others we said, do you know about this term Universal Design? And they just look at us. They had not ever heard of it. Now, granted, this is the Salesforce that's at the International Builder Show is where we met many of these manufacturer representatives. So we would look for the features of Universal Design and Green building. We wanted our home to be certified, and it is certified with Lead for Homes and also the National Association of Home Builders, the National Green Building Standard Program. And we were following three National Universal Design certification programs, of which we acquired the highest certification in all three. So we had to explain what this house was going to serve as a national model of a garden and a home that we were the builders. And little by little, we just started accumulating contributors. And as the list grew and our website started to proclaim, these are our contributors, and these are what we're given. Then it became easier. It was like a slow moving truck up a Hill at first.
And then finally the truck went on level land. And people started realizing, oh, if Marvin windows is in giving you all the windows and doors at no cost, and if Whirlpool KitchenAid is in giving you ten appliances, it's not that big of a risk for us to be involved in contribution of our products or services. But it was a long process to contact all of these potential contributors during a time in history in 2008 and 2009.
When our country was in a major recession and construction was one of the hardest hit as well. So that's a very bold venture, and Congratulations for that. And it's great to hear that so many manufacturers stepped up and helped and contributed. And it's not like you just went after any manufacturer. You went after the ones that you said, these products already have some universal design features that we like that we'd like to use. And you also help some of them develop some products, correct?
Yes, we did. I can think of two examples. One is the Iron Away company. We saw that this demonstration at the builder show in Orlando. These are little ironing boards that fold up into a cabinet in the wall. You probably have seen them. And we said, do you have one that people of all heights could use so I could use it from a seated position? My husband Mark later is six foot four. I'm only 41 in the wheelchair. And so we explain that to the people at Iron Away. And they said, that's a great idea. I think we'll come up with one and we'll work with it. And they sent us a prototype. They got it Ul approved. And the next year, we went back to that same booth, and there was on display in their catalog. So they created a universal design ironing system that is adjustable in height.
That's impressive. And what was the second product?
The second one was a lawn mower. Country Clipper is the company. Someone had told us that there is a lawnmower that you can ride, and it has a joystick. It's all hand controlled. You don't need to use your feet. And that's what I was looking for. Since my feet are paralyzed. I thought, great, that'd be great. I could mow the grass myself. And so when we contacted the company and explained what we were looking for, they wanted to get involved. So they immediately brought to us one of the country Clipper riding mowers and watched me transfer from my wheelchair onto the seat. And they realized that's a little bit difficult. There's not enough of a step in the front and there's nothing to hold onto as a handrail. So they went back and they configured a new lawn mower and brought it to us with a front step and a hand rail. And that is now on the market. Kudos to companies that listen and are innovative and go back to the drawing board with their innovation teams.
Absolutely. And they took the time to watch you to see what to understand. That's the beauty of universal design and human centered design. It's designing for people with a wider range of abilities. It's including more people in the design without necessarily calling attention to it. Like you said in your TEDx talk, it's good design. Tell us about you had so much success with so many manufacturers and your architects and your design teams. When you run across people today, when you tell them about universal design and they say it's going to be more expensive or buddy in this house, we're young and nobody has a disability and we don't have any friends who have a disability or coworkers. So why should we do this? Why should we learn about this and engage with this? What's your answer?
The answer is to consider your growth in your development as you're going to live in this house. It's one of the most costly investments probably that a family is going to make. And I don't think it's meant to be short term. When you're going to buy a house, you're pretty set on a location and wanting to stay there. And so if you're putting an investment in, put an investment in so that this home can survive a disease or an injury. We're a second away from anything happening. We can't predict what will be the next day, what will be the next moment as my injury was so sudden riding a bike and suddenly a tree falls on me. Who would have thought that? No one. And then the acquiring of a broken leg or the acquiring of arthritis, or suddenly we have consequences of COVID and now we're weak and we can't climb stairs. Come on. There's lots of things to think about in the life cycle of a family and to what extent additional family members need to live there short term or long term. And as injuries occur and surgeries are needed to stay in that home afterwards for the recovery period.
So it makes more sense to invest in something that will outlast some of the difficulties and allow you to stay in that home. Now you might not be thinking of it as an agency or a thriving place due to your young age, but there might be other families that are in that position saying, no. This time we're going to build a house so that we can stay here for a long time and avoid having to go to an assisted living facility and maybe have some care in the home as needed.
Do you have an updated estimate of how many homes today in the US are either universally designed or accessible?
No, I just know there's very few. If you look at some of the data AARP puts, I don't know what the current one is, but it was very small in the single digits in terms of the percent of homes with the basic accessibility features, the no step entrance, the wider doors, those are the basics to be able to get into the house.
Absolutely. So we still have a long way to go residentially that here in the States. But I think the other interesting thing is your home is a living laboratory. So this has been something that, yes, you opened up the home for tours for those 30 days, but you're still testing products. You're still giving virtual tours. You're still educating people. You're bringing in interior designers and architects and people who want to see this living, breathing example of what a home could be. So what are some of the things you've learned in the last few years? Maybe that you wouldn't do again, but that you're tweaking the design or you're saying this could be better or I really love how we did this, and I wish more people did. What are some of the things you've made comments that people have told you or that you and your husband have picked up on the home works for us.
Both of us, and it works for any visitors that are here. We've had lots of house, and no one has complained in any way about any of the home design. It's very safe. It's very luxurious. It's a privilege to live here. So because of the design team that we had and the extreme amount of time that we took in creating the home, we've done a great job with the kitchen design, the bathroom, the wardrobe, the laundry, Zoom, everything has worked very well. Now, there's one element that we could have done a better job with, and that's the acoustics in the great Zoom, we have very tall ceilings. We have a lot of glass, a lot of stone and hardwood in there. And so there is some echoing. And my husband particularly notices when we're watching TV, some of the sound he may not catch at all. And when we have a lot of people in there, there's that cocktail party where you're hearing the echoing. So you need to be a little closer to someone if you have some hearing loss. Now how could we have done a better job? There's treatments for the ceiling that are acoustical treatments, and we could have done that originally instead of just a drywall ceiling.
We expected a little bit of an Echo problem, but when it was measured later, it was far greater than we ever expected. We thought the furniture would take it up and any other accessories that had cloth involved, but the furniture did not take it up at all. It's just too much bouncing off of the hard surfaces. I love my kitchen, and so do the guests that come here. It's got three different heights in the Center Island and another height around the perimeter. We lowered the wall cabinets so at least I can reach the lowest shelf on those wall cabinets by being seated. Some of the shelves have articulated hardware that I just reach up and pull the handle down. The shower is wonderful. It's four X seven has the handheld shower. It's got a seat in it. Everything is great with natural light and artificial light. The water stays in. I roll right in, transfer to a bench, a chair that's there on the wall, and then I can get my wheelchair out and locked so that it doesn't get wet. So we love the house. It has worked out well.
Are there any new products that you can talk about that you're testing out, or maybe thinking about approaching a manufacturer and making some adjustments, too?
There could be a new toilet in our horizon. As people keep saying, Why don't you have a bidet in your house? And I'm like, I don't know why. We were with Kohler as our sponsor, and at that time, they did not have a bidet toilet, and I was not of the persuasion that I must have. I've never used one, but all the other friends of mine thought you should have put one in. I'm like, Maybe in the future we will.
Okay. Hopefully you do. I want to talk a little bit more about this idea before we do that. Real quick back to the lawnmower. That's something that if I had a home, I live in a condo. But if I had a home or when I have a home in the future, mowing the lawn is something that wouldn't interest me. What made you interested in that? And talk a little bit about your garden and why? Is that something that you enjoy doing?
The background. I have a Bachelor of science degree in horticulture. I taught horticulture at a career center for three years. I am the author of The Healthy Indoor Plants. I worked as an interior landscaper professionally for eight years. Does it not interest you now to understand how gardening is so important to me?
Okay, so what is it that drew you to that?
My love of plants, probably from childhood, helping take care of the yard where I grew up, mowing the grass. I was the designated grass mower at home, and I did a lot, just little things in the yard. In high school, I took a class as a senior here I was getting ready to graduate, and they had a new class at the school, and it was a horticulture class as an elective, and I thought this would be fun. So I signed up for this class as a senior. And then when I showed up, I was the only girl in the class, and my girlfriends were like, Rosemary you're at an advantage here. Don't drop that class. You need to stay there and help us meet those other guys in the class. And so I stayed in that class as the only girl. And the teacher, of course, was extremely attentive to me to make sure that I was learning. He was just giving me every effort to learn about the greenhouse, learn about the plant world. And so I really excelled when I graduated. Then I decided to study plant science and Botany and horticulture at Ohio State University.
So that whole experience in high school was a big turning point for me.
I would imagine there's a sense of wonder, curiosity, peacefulness. Are all those things part of what drew you to the field and what you like about gardening and landscaping, or is there something else that I didn't?
It's just nature. It's the beauty to be outside and to see the color, to see the design. And, of course, it's just a fabulous environment. So I was just drawn to the beauty and the wonder of plants.
Thank you for answering that. That's fascinating. The healthy plant inside that also promotes, I would imagine, some health benefits for us as well to have living plants inside.
There's a small amount of air exchange in terms of oxygen, but it's pretty minimal. I don't profess. That's why we have interior plants. I just like seeing them in the environment. You can see behind my shoulder. That's real. That's not a silk artificial plant. So it's nice to have plants in my office. And in the summertime, we bring all the indoor plants into the outdoor environment so they can thrive even more. But I like having things that are in Bloom, and I also like growing things that we can harvest. So we have an herb garden, and we usually have some cherry tomatoes on our patio.
Very nice. Can you tell me a little bit about what is a disability inclusion expert? That's one of your primary fields of expertise that you talk about on your website. What does that mean?
It means I'm an expert in the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is the minimum compliance standards. And I'm also an expert in universal design, knowing about the checklist and how the environment can either support or not support either a workplace or a residence. As a consultant, then I do things for the profession in terms of the design and build profession, helping to review some of the plans for their homes or their condos or their apartments. And then I also work with the meeting professionals as a consultant with them to be a part of that planning team that might be going to a conference at a hotel. And I'll go with that planning team in advance to make sure that the venue is in place for people with disabilities and work with them on the website and the registration and the evaluation to help make that environment inclusive for everyone.
Excellent. And you also are a public speaker, right? You go and you talk to companies around the country. What drew you to that area? Why did you decide to do that?
The accident, of course, drew me to a whole new career path. And if I'm going to be coming out of a spinal cord injury and waking up with the new changes in Adversity, there were other people in my circle of influence that kept saying, Rosemary, you are a professional speaker. You taught public speaking at the Ohio State University. You taught at a career center. So I always wanted to do teaching. And of course, that is very much aligned with public speaking. So the transition for me wanting to be a teacher, loving all of my grade school and high school experiences, enjoying going to College and majoring in agricultural education with a horticulture dual major and then teaching at a career center, coming back to get my doctorate in teacher education and teaching at the Ohio State University, it just made sense that when I left the University to start my speaking business full time.
So when you are speaking to these companies, I know you're tailoring the message depending upon the company and what the context is. But are you I guess what I'm trying to differentiate is when you are speaking to them, is most of the audience nondisabled? Are there people with disabilities in the audience? Do you tailor the message to one or the other? How do you navigate those waters to make the impact that you want to make?
Every client is customized. I could have every single person in the audience that has a limb missing and uses a prosthetic. I could be in a hospital setting where everyone in my audience is in a hospital bed or a wheelchair. So there are various different audiences. I could be in an audience of a Corporation that's having their annual meeting or having a banquet, and there's no one with a disability in the audience. So my messages are completely different depending on if the message is more informative about universal design or accessibility. Or is the message more about coping with change and dealing with adversity and being resilient? So I do more of a you'd look at it as an inspirational motivational message, dealing with resilience, sharing the lessons that I learned and how to deal with change and cope with that adversity versus the universal design and accessibility consultant or the meetings and events to accommodate people with disabilities. Gustavo My world of speaking is varied and imaginable. When you look at my client list, it's extensive. This is the 25th year of my business and over 200 clients are listed on my client list. I'm just amazed as I look back because of the change, what was I doing before I was injured?
I was doing train the trainer and public speaking. That was it. And then afterwards, all of these new paths opened up and my expertise started to grow, and that's where the business started to make a major change.
That's incredible. The past that life takes us on are almost just beyond what we could imagine and beyond our abilities to predict. It's pretty amazing when you look back at it for all of us, but your accomplishments are pretty profound, like I said. So it must be enormously satisfying to have and be able to look back on that and say, Gosh, I could not have imagined that I would be here and how many people's lives I've touched, how many things have changed because of your work and who you thank you.
And that's really a reflection I try to make often. As I glanced today at my client list, for another reason, I was going to cut and paste some things, and I'm like, man, I forgot about them. It's been 25 years, and I forgot I did that. And so I started looking some of the clients up, going, when did I do that? Who were they? I forgot. It's been so long ago. But people find me. They may have been in an audience somewhere, and then my name gets passed around to someone else, and occasionally I'll get these emails or these phone calls. Can you do this, Rosemary? And it'll be the first time I've done this. But it makes sense. I can do that. And so my prospects see something because of either word of mouth or they were witnessing my expertise in another program, and they said, can you do this for us? It's offered me expansive opportunities that I should have thought of myself, but instead it was a prospect asking me if I could do something.
But then that gives you more of those moments where you get to think about it and say, of course I can, which is fun. It's an adventure that way. You have a couple more questions for you. What do you try to teach people who are non disabled about the disability community and your experience? What is it that you really wish more people could be aware of and understand about who you are and what your experience has been and how things could be better?
Most people will relate to a person with a disability. They're going to have some history in their background in terms of their parent, their grandparent, their aunt or uncle, a neighbor, someone at their religious affiliation or their school. It would boggle my mind to meet someone that never knew anyone with a disability. And so we have to get them back into that framework of, do you remember what it was like when you related to that person and let them have the empathy, walk a mile in their shoes, walk a mile or roll a mile in their wheelchair and understand what they might be going through and give them the experience for our house to be a demonstration home gives that experience for someone to understand why do you have a washer and dryer that's up on pedestals and has the door in the front? People might not realize why we did that. Or why is your dishwasher 16 inches off the floor? Why isn't it down on the floor like most homes? Or why does your oven door open with a hinge on the side? How does that help? They have lots of questions as they go through the house, and I usually ask them questions.
I say, you point out the differences. Take a look at this kitchen, and I want you to tell me what is different.
That's a great exercise. It's empathy, building it's, letting them imagine why those things are there and realizing that it's by design and there's a very good reason for it. I like that a lot. And for people who are in the this is just my question that I wanted to talk to you more about, because I have things to live by that you point out that you talk about in your book. And the one that really struck me as important and I wanted to ask you about was this idea of being patient with yourself. For people who like myself, I tend to be more goal oriented. I tend to want to be high achiever. I want to prove to people that I can do things, that I can be successful, that I can have a life. These are drivers. I was born with my disability. These are drivers for me. Since childhood, patience has been a hard lesson to learn. So how did you learn about patience? And can you tell us a little bit more about what that means to you?
Patience is the true acceptance of the way things are. For now, that's the whole premise and an example of patience. When I was at the other house coming home in a wheelchair and thought I should be able to do laundry. So I bring the basket on my lap and I try to roll with this basket on my lap. And I realized that's not going to work. So I set it on the floor and I bulldoze it into the laundry room. So push it in front of me anyway. I can. You have to do things differently. So then I start putting the clothing into the washer, which was top loaded. Okay. Then the washer is done, and I have to take the wash out and put it in the dryer. And I'm like, but I can't reach in there. My arms are long enough. I can't get anything out of the washer to put it in the dryer. So now I have this little Reacher with the grabbing on it and the little cups on here. I'm like, this is not taking one sock out, one piece of underwear, one towel at a time, and putting it in the dryer.
And the room was so small, I was just scuffing every appliance with my wheelchair. I could not position myself. I could not get the laundry done in an efficient manner. And I was so mad. I was so frustrated and I had to think about it. This is the way it is for now. Just take your time and don't get mad. Just do it. This is how you have to do it right now. It won't be this way. There'll be another laundry route situation someday. So just get over it. If I want my life back, I need full independence. And doing the laundry is a part of getting my independence back.
So just deal with it and dealing with it is for you. A lot of the frustration comes from that lack of acceptance, right is to say it should be different now and why isn't it different now? And you're saying take a step back, you're working towards that change and just be patient with yourself and figure it out in the meantime.
Yes, there'll be a better solution later. So be patient for the way it is for now and don't get mad because that just doesn't get the job done. The more frustrated and mad I got, the less efficient I was in doing the laundry.
And I know this is related to another one of your points, but our lessons is in order to develop that mind, you need to have a baseline or a belief that at least leans towards hope and optimism and the ability to say, I will be able to do this at some point, I will get there at some point.
I call it focus on a hopeful future, not on your self pity. The hopeful future has to be there, and that's all we have. And if you've lost your hope, you think back about yourself. It's you that has lost the hope, so you need to get it back again. Where is that light at the end of the tunnel? What can you do to move forward? What are those goals? What is it that you can do to make some changes towards what you want to happen? Stop feeling so sorry for yourself and move on.
If we want to do anything, whatever that is, whatever that looks like, that mindset needs to be there to some degree. Otherwise you're essentially either coasting through life or kind of in a zombie numb state or you've given up. And we want to get out of that state and we want to help as many people get out of that state as possible.
You're right. Absolutely. You wake up from a circumstance that you had no control over and suddenly you're in a tailspin. Now what am I going to do to deal with this circumstance?
And it's Besides your husband, when you are going through these challenging moments, were there other people in your life that were helpful, that were your support network that really gave you some of that Outback?
Yeah. Everyone in my life, my mother, my brothers, all my friends neighbors. Everyone rallied. All my professional speaking, College, everyone all over the country. You can't imagine the outpouring of love and support and financial support and gifts and cards and prayers and food that they would deliver and come and do laundry for me or mow the grass while I was in the hospital for Mark and clean the house while I was in the hospital for Mark. And of course, our family was constantly there financially and in person. Every single day they would be there, friends all over the country sending me gifts and calling me. So they all knew. They just said Rosary. If anyone can do this, you can. I had great support. I had great insurance, both health as well as disability income insurance, great doctors. I had wonderful occupational therapist, physical therapist, recreational therapist. So if it's going to work, it was up to me to make it work. They were all there, and I needed to prove to them my love for them and move beyond the tragedy and come out as a thriving individual dealing with the challenge.
That's an amazing story. You don't hear that often where you had where so many people were there, had your back rallied around you. There's always somebody. But it's beautiful to hear. When it was so it sounds like it was so not that it was easy, but it was cohesive. You had that structure. You had great doctors, you had great therapists. You have all these friends and family who were with you, and that's beautiful to hear. Thank you for sharing. Yeah.
It just was amazing. All the things they wanted to do for me, it was beyond belief, story after story. And Mark would tell me things even later on, telling me what people were doing for him, giving him a respite saying, Mark, you need a break. I'd have girlfriends spend the night with me so that Mark could go to Cincinnati to spend the night with his parents. Just the thought of that to say, Mark, you need a break. We also had professional counseling for a year. I've got to give credit to the counseling. We were in real deep depression, lots of grieving going on, and the counseling was paramount to our recovery.
That's important, too. And I've heard that several times on the show and talking to people offline as well. My experience is very different because it was something I was born with. So it's the only thing I've ever known. But for somebody who changes, at some point, there is a grieving process and grief. It's a loss for a part of you that isn't there anymore. And it's discovering the new parts of you that are awakening and are ready to like a plant. You plant the seeds and things start growing that we didn't expect or that in ways that we didn't foresee. Thank you, Rosemary. Sorry I said it right the first time. Rosemary, is there anything that I've missed in this talk that you feel is important to discuss those who are watching or listening.
And they need to hear a little bit more from Rosary. Please think about a couple of resources. If you want to know more about universal design and accessible design in the house, go to Udll.com, the Universal Design Living Laboratory. There's over 100 articles. There's the free chapter of the Universal Design Toolkit. Or buy the toolkit, go to the virtual tour and the video tour. You're going to learn a lot there. I also wrote a book called Take Back Your Life. Regaining Your footing after life throws you a curve. For those who would like to know more about the life lessons and the resilience, it's less than the cost of a cup of coffee. Go to Amazon and type in Take Back Your Life, Rosemary Rosette. And you can get the Kindle or you can get the printed copy. I think it would be a wonderful read. It's a quick read. It's 20 little chapters, 20 articles of inspiration. And then Rosemariespeaks.com is my main website. There's lots of videos and podcast, interviews, as well as more articles there on all of the topics that I've talked about. So the main website for the business, Rosemary Speaks.com and the House, is Udl.com.
Fantastic. And you are also going to be you've done the live broadcast before, but you're also going to be doing some future live broadcasts on YouTube with another friend of the show, Julie Softshot, correct?
Yeah. If we got that date now, we're going to be live in our bathroom. So that's coming up soon. We'll be announcing the link very soon. So if you go to my Facebook page, probably by next week, we'll start promoting that. Let me look that up now that you have asked that. I don't have it memorized, but Julie has given me a date. I'm hoping it actually happens. We had to change it. At one point, something came up in her world. But at this point, we are live streaming on February 23 at 07:00 until 08:00. So it's going to be a full hour. Julie Salchuck and that's Sawchuk you can go to Juliesalchuk CA. She's in Canada and Ontario, so she's going to lead the live stream from her bathroom, and then I'll be in my bathroom. We've never seen each other's bathroom. It's going to be spontaneous fun where we're going to highlight what we like about our bathrooms, what we might have changed. She's in a wheelchair. I'm in a wheelchair. She was hit on her bike. I was hit on my bike. We have spinal cord injuries. We both written books about our homes.
So it's a wonderful friendship that has been developed as a result of our injuries and our interests.
Fantastic. I know the last one you did was in your respective kitchens, which was fun. I watched that. So it'll be interesting to see. Hopefully you both keep doing this and sharing more of the home elements, the gardens. And I'd like to see it's fascinating for me because I get to learn about things that I didn't think of before. Why is the countertop height why do you have three countertop heights instead of two in the kitchen, right, or just most people have one, so it's a good learning experience for everybody. I'm really happy you're doing it and I sincerely appreciate your time, your energy, your thoughtfulness and everything that you're doing. I look forward to staying in touch.
Thank you. Thank you very much for being prepared. It was a privilege for me to be your guest today.