Disability pride is year-round
A lot of things happened this week.
On Tuesday, I attended a really lovely event that brought together 20 or so women founders and entrepreneurs in Vancouver. Hosted by The Founder's Table, the event featured great food, awesome insights from Kar Brulhart, social media coach extraordinaire, and masterminding sessions where we helped each other through challenges we're facing in our business.
Then, I turned 33 on Wednesday! Which happened to be the last day of Disability Pride Month. (Yes, I'm a Leo 🦁.)
I also had my first ever positive COVID test on Wednesday. (Womp, womp.)
Congested, fatigued, and unable to really focus on work, I've spent the last three days feeling quite sorry for myself — and very annoyed.
It's true of any time I get sick, really. I get annoyed and frustrated because I feel like I'm being further limited than I already am.
When I'm sick, I'm less able to contribute at home, less able to show up for people, less able to stick to my commitments, and all of that exasperates me.
But what's different this time is that I'm asking myself why. Why do I feel that way?
Everyone gets sick. And if it were anyone else, I would tell them to rest and recover. I would understand that they need to take time off and focus on their recovery.
Internalized ableism. That's why.
Despite all the work I'm doing on Seated Perspectives, and everything I've learned from the community, I still have moments of internalized ableism that I need to work through.
A lot of the frustration that I mentioned above is tied to my productivity. It's tied to how much my body and mind can accomplish. Any time my ability to be productive and meet the standards I've set is compromised, I get annoyed.
But that's not fair to me. And it's not fair to the community either. Because if I get hung up in those standards of productivity, then it makes me less of an ally to the disabled folks who can't contribute in the same ways that I can when I'm not ill.
Challenging internalized ableism isn't just an exercise in showing up for ourselves (although that's an important part of it), it's also a process of showing up for the community. The more we work on our own internalized ableism, the more we can work together to challenge the systemic ableism that shapes how the rest of society sees us.
This is why movements like Disability Pride Month matter so much.
Let's look at my own story as an example.
For a long time, disability and pride felt like words that didn't go together to me.
I spent 16 years after my injury feeling a lot of shame around my body and my disability.
I would work harder at school and at my job so that people would recognize my ability to contribute despite my disability.
I refused to use the word “disabled” to describe myself. And instead, just focused on the facts: I was just a wheelchair user.
I actively stayed away from spaces that were exclusively designed for disabled folks.
The impact of that was that:
I didn't have a disabled community to speak of
My internalized ableism ran rampant
I didn't have language to help me articulate my needs
I compromised on a lot of my needs in order to fit in
The last two years have changed that drastically. Opening the door to the disability community — which was really always open to me, but I just needed to push myself through it — has been the best gift I could have ever given myself.
I've found my space. I've found my people. I've found pride.
Now, I can comfortably say that I'm proud of my disabled identity. I'm proud of everything it has given me. I'm proud of being able to hold both the joy and the heartbreak that comes with living in a disabled body.
It's because of this (relatively) newfound pride that I was able to show up at that founders event on Tuesday, as the only visibly disabled person there, and take up space. I fought every ounce of internalized ableism I had and spoke loudly and proudly about the work I'm doing with Seated Perspectives. And it felt really freaking good to show up for my community in that way.
But disability pride isn't just an individual thing — it's communal. When we celebrate disability pride as a community, we:
Put the spotlight on the beauty in our spaces
Open the door for important discussions on the both/and of disability
Challenge societal narratives
Spark conversations and ideas
Encourage innovation and creativity
And while we celebrate Disability Pride Month in July, this is a year-long movement. So I challenge you to keep finding small and big ways to bring disability pride to the table.
