As I lean into my own vulnerability and walk away from the shame in my life the issue of disability is something that I must address. This is a very complicated issue for me and one that might resonate with others.
When I was in high school I was a Rush Limbaugh loving teenager who, strange as it sounds, had a strong belief in the idea of fairness. I believed the world was unfair and those who paid the worst price were straight white guys like me. When I reached college I was introduced to endless volumes of research and personal stories documenting the clear institutional and systemic advantages for people like me. The racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes that I occasionally told and often laughed at also seemed to no longer fit my evolving belief system. I rejected the awfulness of Rush Limbaugh and continued to be on the side of fairness, but my understanding of that term had changed significantly.
The next couple years involved a significant amount of unlearning much of what I had been taught about the world and learning new ways of feeling, seeing, and thinking. I learned about concepts like gender roles and oppression. My youthful understanding that my life was "normal" evolved into an understanding that my life involved a series of exceptional advantages that so many others do not have in terms of housing, health care, quality schools, supportive family, and constant imagery in the media validating my place in this culture. I started to build authentic relationships with women, people of color, and LGBT individuals resulting in a fuller understanding of how their experiences in this country were and are fundamentally different than my own.
This learning and exposure to others allowed me to gain great comfort with people whose identities are different than mine. Unfortunately, there was one area of identity that seemed to lag behind the rest. I am not sure what is behind my historic discomfort with peoples with disabilities, but I know it has been around for a while. I did sustain a major hip and knee injury during the 10th grade that required me to ride the "short bus" for children with disabilities. The bus usually had a half dozen students on it with severe developmental disabilities and then I would get on. I remember having a great deal of confusion and discomfort on those bus rides.
Another powerful experience involved working with a student while at Colorado State who had massive skin growths all over her body. She looked like she had massive curds of cottage cheese under her skin. I remember her being exceptionally smart, well liked, and very kind to me. I can also remember being incredibly uncomfortable whenever she was around me. This situation is high on my list of life moments that I wish I could do over. While I hope she had no idea how I was feeling, my guess is that she did. The idea of that makes me feel awful, but that is what telling this story is about, leaning into the vulnerability and letting go of the shame. The only benefit of this situation is it pushed me to work through and resolve my discomfort with disabilities.
In the 12 years since I left Colorado State I have come a long way. I no longer squirm around people with disabilities and have come to understand their experiences and issues quite well. I have gained significant knowledge about some parts of this community such as the deaf and hard of hearing. I would still say that disability is an area in which my comfort, experience, and knowledge is further behind other identity areas, but the gap is now extremely small.
I have also come to understand that the reality for able bodied individuals is that our status as being able bodied is temporary in nature. Due to a medical issue, injury, or age our bodies will increasingly break down resulting in most of us joining the disabled community. You may not feel that issues of limited bathroom and building access, unaccommodating visual and audio only materials, or the cultural and institutional oppression of the disabled are your issues today, but there is a strong chance these will be yours issues in the not to distant future. When we reach the point of facing these challenges, this Ted Talk will likely hit the spot even more than it already does.
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