What Disability Pride Means to Me
Hi everyone and happy disability pride month!
I’ve been seeing a lot of posts lately that have been discussing people’s complicated emotions around disability pride. Those feelings are 100% valid; if you don’t feel like celebrating this year, you absolutely don’t have to. It’s hard to have pride and disability joy when you are struggling, when internalized ableism strikes, when people are mean. I hope that through continuing to celebrate disability pride, uplifting disabled people, and raising awareness about how to be inclusive, we can create a world where more people feel disability pride.
Pssst: There are a bunch of resources at the end of this post!
Here is what disability pride means to me, personally:
I'm proud of the life I have and the person I am, even with chronic fatigue and other disabilities that cause me to feel like I’m battling my brain and body.
I am proud of my self-love. My autism can make parts of my life very difficult, but I also love my brain. I love my special interests, my sensitivity, my detail-orientedness, my ability to take people at face value without inserting assumptions, and more. It has taken me a long time to learn how to love all of me, even with my difficult parts.
I’m proud of how I have advocated for myself and my needs throughout my life. Of course there have been times when I suffered in silence, when I stayed quiet for the benefit of others, when I’ve ignored what my brain and body need, but I am very proud of the times when I have spoken up.
I’m proud of everything I have accomplished as a disabled person. While I feel shame and guilt about things like not having a full time job and struggling to keep up with hygiene or household tasks, I know that I have worked hard and I’m proud to be here.
I'm proud to be part of the wonderful disability community. Y’all are so kind, empathetic, intelligent, funny, and a bajillion more positive adjectives. I am so lucky to know so many lovely people in our community.
I'm proud to be working toward a more inclusive and accessible world. Every day I learn something new about how to be more inclusive, how to make my content more accessible, and just how to be better in general.
How to celebrate disability pride
If you want to celebrate disability pride this year, here are some ways you can get involved!
Support disabled authors by buying their books, requesting libraries purchase their books, and sharing their social media posts. I have compiled a list of disabled authors here!
Brush up on your inclusive language with this blog post.
Work on adding more accommodations into your life with this list of accommodations for writers and editors and by purchasing my Self-Care Guide for Writers (editor version coming soon!)
Hire a disabled editor and/or sensitivity/authenticity reader! For example, me hehe
More blog posts are coming, as well as a podcast episode featuring me talking about being a disabled editor! I hope you have a wonderful disability pride month <3
