Disability can look like…
Disability can look like
The gold which passes by
A million unheard voices
Love in unseen eyes
Disability can look like unwanted, invisible beings
Turning up to greet the day
Stop stepping on our feelings!
Disability can look like
Needing to belong
Not a number or a label
Not a life that has gone wrong
Disability can look like
A bud opening in the spring
We’re a breath away from tomorrow’s glow
What will the next day bring?
Disability looked at me
And met me with no doubt
That whatever life from here on meant
Just don’t leave me out!
It’s been to long to mention
And the stardust from that time
Melted in my being
Finding lives lived similar to mine
To connect the points from separation
And throw open blinds to see
We’re moving forward with the narrative
Disability can look like me!
It’s disability pride month - let’s just think about that… It’s still a topic that I need to nurture. Needing to replace all the shame bought about by times not meeting the fragile sense of me staying in this world when my stroke - wiped me out. It was so easy to lie in bed and think about how if I wasn’t here: everyone would be so much better off. My feelings of “Maybe I shouldn’t have survived” were as strong as the will to live at that time. Knowing I was continuing to everyday discrimination and misunderstanding was a feeling which just sat like a stone in my core.
If able bodied people were still unhappy and discontent with their lives - then how did they see someone who lived with disability! How would I be judged by the community around me?
It filled me with terror - fear doesn’t describe my emotion properly - it filled me with terror to be perched on the edge of my hospital bed with absolutely no control over my body whatsoever. To be putting all my trust in a nurse as she held me up while I flopped forward like a weighted rag doll. The reaction I had was one of discomfort and horror which emerged from my mouth in big slobbery guffaws of pained shrieks. So disability pride for me allows me to look back at so many times like this with intense love for my bruised and shattered being continuing to show up to each and every time I was pulled, pushed, wiped, turned, poked, jabbed, ignored, shamed and misunderstood. I am not alone in the need to turn away from medical jargon which describes my living experience and hold - just hold myself while moving amongst life.
I think my major influencer which shaped my views of disability from a young age - was learning about Helen Keller, I only remember small bits and pieces - but they had such a lasting impression! Helen appeared to hold herself with such grace, so disability and grace for me has always been how I’ve tried to respond to my situation. And the image of me perched on the side of my hospital bed is anything but graceful. So I looked with sadness at my new way of physical being and inside I cupped my hands together and imagined I was holding myself. An image a bit like my old High School Emblem.
Disability is so much more than a line item or a diagnosis and if I am going to share my disability pride - then I need to mention spirituality and disability. I don’t need to go into it, but I know it’s an area of safety and growth for me.
So I look to the sky and think of all the people who share my experience of disability in whatever way that is for them, and I exhale the negative, inhaling the shared strength and love we have for one another.
What a wonderful train of thought………
Sue 10/7/2022