Every January, people flood the internet with promises to “be better.” But if “better” still means faster, thinner, stronger, more productive, that’s just ableism in a sparkly party hat. This year, instead of fixing yourself, try unlearning the stories that say you were ever broken.
🎉 Learn to Spot Ableism in Your Own Reflection
Ableism isn’t just external. It’s in the voice that tells you your worth is in your output, that rest is laziness, that asking for help is weakness. Start catching that voice in the act. Question it. Offer yourself, and others, a gentler story.
🎉 Ditch Inspiration Porn
Disabled people don’t exist to make you grateful for your knees. If you find yourself saying “that’s so inspiring” about someone doing everyday life, pause. Ask what you’re really responding to: admiration, pity, guilt? Then do something about that feeling instead of turning someone’s existence into a pep talk.
🎉 Treat Access Like Oxygen, Not Extra Credit
Access isn’t a gift or a bonus feature. It’s the baseline for inclusion.
Make sure your events, posts, and digital spaces have captions, alt-text, transcripts, quiet spaces, and pacing flexibility. Don’t wait for someone to request it — assume disabled people are already in the room.
🎉 Practice the Art of Asking First
Help is only helpful when it’s wanted. Before grabbing a door, pushing a wheelchair, or speaking for someone, ask. Autonomy is an access need too.
🎉 Reclaim Language
Say disabled people, not differently abled or special needs, unless someone tells you otherwise. Euphemisms distance us from reality; plain language builds solidarity.
🎉 Consume Culture Through a Crip Lens
Follow disabled artists, writers, and thinkers. Notice which characters in film or fiction get to live, love, or lead, and which are punished, pitied, or cured.
If a story treats disability as tragedy or triumph rather than just truth, that’s your cue to critique it.
🎉 Unlearn Productivity Worship
Slow days aren’t moral failures. Rest is a form of resistance, especially in a culture that treats worth as speed. Disabled wisdom has been teaching this forever: crip time is a reminder that all bodies move on different clocks.
🎉 Invest in Disability Justice
Accessibility doesn’t end with ramps. Support disability-led mutual aid funds, advocate for accessible housing and healthcare, and remember that disability justice is inseparable from racial, gender, and economic justice.
🎉 Embrace Interdependence
The goal isn’t independence, it’s connection. Ask what it would mean to live in a world where everyone could both give and receive care without shame. Then start building that world in miniature: in your home, your friendships, your work.
🎉 Be Ready to Mess Up
You’ll get it wrong sometimes. I know I certainly do! You’ll say the wrong thing, miss something, or learn a lesson the hard way. That’s fine. The point isn’t perfection, it’s persistence. Keep showing up, keep listening, keep unlearning.
This isn’t a list of moral chores. It’s an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and treat every body, including yours, as worthy. Here’s to a new year that’s less about self-improvement and more about collective liberation.
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