[The graphic consists of a bingo card with the words “But You Don’t Look Disabled!†at the top. The card consists of five rows of five boxes each. The text in each row consists of the following, from left to…
Read MoreI’ve been giving some thought to the work “broken†as applied to the human body. For years, I’ve reacted against the word. I’ve seen it as an implied comparison with “normal,†as a judgment, and as a form of devaluation.…
Read MoreOne of the most difficult things for me about hanging out in Internet social justice spaces is the sheer amount of ableist language that gets thrown around there. Some of us point out the language and ask people to refrain…
Read MoreFor the past 11 years, I have been shunned. Not socially rejected. Shunned. By what used to be my synagogue community. For falling in love with my partner. For my partner falling in love with me. He was serving as…
Read MoreYesterday was National Coming Out Day. I officially came out as bisexual, and it was a celebration. No angst. No fear. No second thoughts. Just a celebration. It was a such a contrast with coming out as disabled at the…
Read More[Trigger warnings for sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, shunning, shame.] Shame is not something that most of us want to hear about. Many of us will listen to stories of any other kind of horror: sexual abuse, physical assault,…
Read MoreI have been feeling a lot of sadness these days. It’s almost a sad kind of wonder. I look back over my life from my perch here in my 50s, and I think about how differently my life has turned…
Read More[The photograph shows ten open paper bags, standing upright, with five in the front and five in the back, against a white wall with grey shadow.] Today, when I was passing out lunches in the park, one of the people…
Read MoreAs I go out and distribute food to people living in the park, I see and hear things that nearly break me apart. Here’s what I’ve seen and heard over the past week. This is how our fellow human beings…
Read MoreOne of the ways in which I navigate the cacaphony of competing discourses about disability, mental health, and just about everything else is to remind myself that we humans are always storytelling and that these discourses are just a series…
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