Surprise!
For those of you who don’t know, July is disabled Pride Month. If you can’t already tell by the date that I am writing this post I’ve been procrastinating it for almost the entire month as August is quickly on our heels, but if I didn’t post about this I would be ignoring a part of who I am and letting another chance to educate people slip through my fingers.
What is Disability pride month? (I took this straight from Google so this definition is not my own.)
“Disability Pride Month occurs in the United States every July to commemorate the passing of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in July 1990. The celebration has received support worldwide, including in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and other countries.”
The ADA (The American’s with Disabilities act) was passed to end discrimination against people with disabilities.
Now, every person with a disability is going to have something different they want to say, something different they want to educate people on, different beliefs…
With that being said,
Everything I say in this post is my opinion. Every person with a disability has their own experiences, their own thoughts, and their own ways of advocating for themselves and their community.
This is mine…
I always find myself conflicted when I want to post education on disabilities or my specific disability because there is so much I want to say.
The words “disabled” and “disability” or “Cerebral Palsy” if we want to go a little more personal are not bad words. It’s actually more offensive when people don’t use them or use them in correctly.
How do you use the words incorrectly? By viewing them as negative things, by using the words in a form of sympathy rather than what it actually is—which is—just another part of a human being that makes the person who they are.
ASK QUESTIONS!!! Why are people so afraid to ask questions? It’s not offensive. If anything, it’s exciting to me that people want to know more about that disabled community or about my disability in particular because in that—I’m educating that person. This is how people without disabilities can become active allies within the disabled community.
You can’t be an ally for something you know nothing about. I think what’s hard is people outside of the disabled community don’t “celebrate” us. Most of them praise us as if we deserve an award for being born with a disability.
News flash: if anyone ever tries to give me an award for just living my life I’m going to give it back because that is another way people feel like they are being inclusive when they are actually excluding us.
People outside of the disabled community are going to stay ignorant unless people with disabilities are willing to educate and in turn have non disabled people listening.
This picture above is a picture my friend Sarah took of me a few months ago. I remember when she started snapping photos of me walking with my walker not really wanting her to. It wasn’t embarrassment, it wasn’t insecurity… it was that I don’t want people to focus on the walker, the wheelchair, the cain, the way someone looks or the way they walk. I want people to focus on the person and the person’s heart.
At the end of the day it isn’t possible for me to make that happen. People are always more likely to look at the outward appearance. People with disabilities just have to work a little harder to prove them wrong.
I also remembered thinking that day with my friend while we were taking pictures, “we’re taking pictures specifically for my blog where one of the main topics I speak about is disabilities, so why wouldn’t she take pictures of me using my walker too?
I can’t control what people think. I can’t control how they act, I can’t control that the world is not accessible, but I can do my best to educate others on how you can help—how you can help make this world a better, kinder, more accepting, more open minded, more embracive world.
Happy Disability Pride Month
Disclaimer: these thoughts and opinions are all my own and are neither right nor wrong. Each person with a disability is entitled to their own opinions about their disability/disabilities and the disabled community in general, and we all deserve to be heard.
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