The Whole Mess
Notes from the middle of everything
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about
Collector of contradictions, student of imperfection, and occasional meditator. Writing from the messy middle with equal parts honesty and humor.
Category: ableism
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I’ve never settled for the pink-washing of my experience. Even with the best of possible outcomes, my cancer story has been gruesome, painful, and arduous. It’s also been full of unexpected beauty and eroticism. The idea of being a “survivor”, while helpful to many who need the narrative to get through the ordeal, feels problematic…
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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.
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Part 2 of 4 I believe that part of the push toward painting everything a saccharine pink for “awareness” is, in part, a response to the dis-ease felt by nondisabled, non-diseased individuals. They are confronted with the reality that “all bodies are potentially subject to the threat of illness: the tenuousness of bodily and ontological…
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Part 1 of 4 Let’s return now to Ehlers’s (2015) article reflecting on the SCAR Project. As she proclaims in her article, a disability aesthetic framing of breast cancer “demands an ethical witnessing to the realities of the disease and its disabling effects (whether that be due to surgery, treatment, or their aftermath)” (p. 332)
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Despite being born more than 60 years ago, Riva Lehrer’s childhood world mirrors the one she inhabits today, where disabled bodies remain subject to relentless medical and institutional control. From her first breath, her body was plunged into the ableist waters of ethical scrutiny and biomedical decision-making. Lehrer’s body became the battleground for power, aesthetics,…
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No, I’m not referring to some sweet moves I’m making in my wheelchair. Though, let’s be real, a wheelchair-based Fast and Furious would kind of be amazing. According to Leslie Anglesey (2020), disability drift is described as “the assumption that a person with one disability is impacted in other ways or with other disabilities.” An…
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It’s Halloween! Let’s play a little game called Trick or Treat: Disability Edition. Basically, I’ll list out a bunch of surprise “tricks” that disabled people too often face, followed by unexpected “treats” that can manifest when we least expect them. Please feel free to comment with your own!
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This is a subject I’d like to come back to as there are numerous resources on the matter that I simply haven’t read yet. In the meantime, I do have a small reflection on my experience in asking for accommodations in my grad certificate program.
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When so much of my disability experience is people talking at or about me, it is essential that I be able to find a voice of my own. My disabled life becomes a metaphor for nondisabled to representing a narrative of overcoming, of persevering when they would rather choose death, of a million other things…
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Inspiration porn is a term coined by disabled writer and activist Stella Young to describe the way media and culture often portray disabled people as objects of inspiration for nondisabled audiences. Instead of showing us as full, complex human beings, these stories reduce our lives to “feel-good” lessons, often framed around pity, overcoming, or exceptional…