You get the wheelchair at check-in. An attendant swoops in and looks at everyone except you. The attendant is looking for someone apparently disabled. It’s embarrassing, and you wish you could take back the twenty-four-hours-in-advance phone call that reserved this chair. The alternative is to walk for you don’t know how much, stand in the security line for you don’t know how … [Read more...]
5 Things I Wish People Knew About Being Disabled
Meeting a person with a disability for the first time can leave people with a lot of questions. Personally, I’ve made my life about stuff so I don’t mind. However, some questions are frustrating or repetitive. As someone who has been a lot of peoples “first times” here are five things I wish able-bodied people (bonus fact: Able-bodied is what you are if you are not disabled.) … [Read more...]
Surviving the Holidays with Sensory Processing Disorder
Five years ago, I wedged myself into a town car with two fistfuls of luggage and settled into my seat next to my parents. My palms were drenched with sweat, I was unusually clad in comfortable velveteen sleep pants, and I was headed into the middle of New York City rush hour traffic to get to the airport. To take a flight. At night. Overnight. For days leading up to this trip … [Read more...]
10 Tips for Radically Loving Your Body (Disabled or Otherwise)
Having written, spoken, and taught about loving my disabled body for most of my life, a common first question is always “How did you do it? How did you learn to love your body?” I’ll tell you a secret: I’m still working on it. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have most of them, and you shouldn’t trust anyone who says they do. However, here are ten things I’ve … [Read more...]
10 Tips to Help Neurotypicals Understand Sensory Processing Disorder
[Image description: The photograph shows the author, a white woman with shoulder-length black hair and green eyes. She is looking into the camera with a friendly but serious expression. She is wearing a gray blouse and a necklace with gold, red, pink, and white.] Dear Neurotypicals Who Love or Know Someone with SPD, In honor of Sensory Awareness Month, this … [Read more...]
10 Answers to Common Questions People Ask When Being Called Out for Using Ableist Language
The Body Is Not an Apology’s goal is to share the myriad ways human bodies unshackle the box of “beauty” and fling it wide open for all of us to access. Our goal is to redefine the unapologetic, radically amazing magnificence of EVERY BODY on this planet. When we do, we change the world! Join the movement and become a subscriber today! bit.ly/NoBodiesInvisible. *** This … [Read more...]
Learning Not to Care What Abled Folks Think: How Internalized Ableism Affects My Body Image
I was talking with some of my disabled friends the other day about body image. One of my friends said they were always worried about looking fit because, as a wheelchair user, they feared that any extra weight would be perceived as the result of laziness and possibly part of the reason they needed the chair. Someone else mentioned that she avoided short haircuts because of the … [Read more...]
How Can We Support the Disability Movement if Obamacare is Repealed
As I write this, there are people in this terrifying administration still actively trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act – the only reason that I, and many other disabled and chronically ill people in the U.S., have access to health insurance. If the ACA is overturned, we’ll return to the old system: one in which insurance companies can charge whatever they want, and their … [Read more...]
How to Center People With High Needs in the Disability Movement
I do a lot of talking, both on my public platforms and in the disability advocacy circles I frequent, about visibility for less-visible disabled people. Don’t assume a person isn’t disabled because they don’t “look disabled”! Don’t assume that a person who uses a mobility aid sometimes and not others “doesn’t really need it”! Don’t assume that neurodivergent and intellectually … [Read more...]
Why My Broken Body is Worthy of Delighting In
This article first appeared on Postmodern Woman and is reprinted with permission Content Warning: For Discussion of Sexual Assault This past year has been so exhausting. Not because I was working hard (though I have been), not because I'm still in mourning (which I am), and not because I desperately miss my family and friends (which I do). No, the reason is much more insidious … [Read more...]
Forced to Fake It: How the System forces Disabled People to Lie
Somewhere, in the darkest corners of the Internet, lurk packs of people who devote themselves solely to seeking out disability and chronic illness bloggers to stalk and harass them, accusing them of faking or exaggerating their conditions. A few friends of mine from the online disability communities I hang around in were recently targeted by them, and it exposed me to a world … [Read more...]
6 Ways NOT to Nurture Neurodivergent Kids
Neurodivergence is something we all are learning and understanding more about all the time – both those of us who are neurodivergent ourselves, and the parents, teachers, caregivers, and advocates who (hopefully) are working to support and help us. Because the terminology and the understanding of how we tick (and in my case, tic) are always changing, I get that it can be hard … [Read more...]
5 Things I Discovered About My Body After Major Surgery
Let me start off by stating what the more polite among us would dub ‘the bleeding obvious’: 2017 did not start well. And although the horrific state of politics in both the United States and my resident country of Britain would be more than enough reason for me to make this claim, my reasons are also a little more personal. When the clock struck midnight on New … [Read more...]
Should I Consider My Cancer Body to be Disabled?
Until two years ago, I had never had any real interactions with severe illness or with the US healthcare system. I am one of the lucky few living in the US who’s been able to have health insurance and access to healthcare for the vast majority of my life. Healthcare is a human right, but here in the US, we treat it like it’s a privilege and a commodity, and because of that … [Read more...]
The Body Is Not an Apology
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