I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes

Thank you all so much for your praise of my sister's book. She would have been thrilled to have read these.

I could not put this down. Moving account of a person's struggle to be seen and heard!! I am a Professor of Special Education at SUNY Plattsburgh and all my students are required to read this book.

I was fortunate enough to work with Ruth for about a year before she passed away. Anyone who has met Ruth knows that her spirit transcended her physical disability. This book is only one example of her courage and perserverence. Please, please read this book. It might change your outlook on people with disabilities.

Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer is, in my estimation, one of the most remarkable women about whom I have ever read. Not only did she survive separation from a loving but misinformed family and the horrors of Belchertown State School, Mrs. Sienkiewicz-Mercer accomplished something seldom achieved by the institutionalized disabled. She not only left the institution, she rose high above it. In this book she uses her eyes to tell her story.I am saddened to report that Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer passed away in the summer of 1998. She never spoke her entire life but she will be sorely missed by those she reached with her words. Many thanks to Steven Kaplan for helping her tell her story.

For anyone who wonders why people who have disabilities fight so desperately against institutional care, this book will show you why! Dehumanization, being cut off from friends and family, rejected by society, this book shows it all. Thank God that this book also describes the way out. Like Joseph, thrown in the pit, sold into slavery, and thought dead for years by his father; we will be free!