Hi, welcome!
I’ve thought about creating something like this for a while. Somewhere where I can jot down thoughts and share them with the world, but for the longest time I assumed that the ‘world’ wouldn’t want to read my rambles. And to be honest, I still think that’s probably true! But if anything, this can hopefully serve as a place for me to come and reflect, not only on the present but on the past and future.
I’m a person from Scotland with multiple different disabilities (crap brag, I know) and I spent a lot of my life trying not to reflect on that. When I received three diagnoses in my early teenage years, I tried to ignore, hide and forget this part of myself. There were multiple reasons for this, but I think the main reason was that I hated my disabilities. And, by extension of this, I hated myself. But at least if I could remove, or at least distance, the disabilities from myself then I could not resent myself, right? Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way!
I’m sure I’ll go into a lot more detail about my own journey of self-acceptance in a post real soon, but for now, know that (very) slowly, I started to accept—and even started liking—myself. I discovered the Social Model of Disability, which argues that, yes, while an individual may have an impairment, it is in fact society that is oppressive and discriminatory and causes the ‘disability’ that one experiences. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but if you’re new to disability studies, go read Mike Oliver’s The Politics of Disablement (1990) or his and and Colin Barnes’ The New Politics of Disablement (2012), in which they discuss and give name to the Social Model of Disability developed by disabled activists in the 60s and 70s.
Now, I love my disabilities – well, some of them! While I could do without chronic pain and fatigue, I love the sense of community I have made with other friends with arthritis. I love that my autism allows me to see and interact with things differently. I am doing a masters in Disability Studies, Rights and Inclusion with a bunch of great disabled and non-disabled people. While disability has restricted my life in so many ways, it has also opened me up to so many different opportunities I wouldn’t have experienced were I not disabled.
Anyway, I digress, which I do a lot! Again, I’ll try to write something a little bit more in-depth about my continuous experience of coming to terms with disability, but in the meantime, this is me and this is my website – welcome!