Sometimes I wish I could be less snarky and just embrace the soft voices and flowy fabrics of the typical healing spaces. I would love to see a barefoot woman with wild hair and loose clothing and a beatific smile and accept the positive vibes she offers. But I can’t get past the cynicism. I…… Continue reading When your body is your enemy
Like a lot of activists and community organizers, I got into the game to solve my own problems. I had experienced unjust treatment and as part of my healing journey I wanted to create justice by changing things for other people. This is a beautiful impulse, but if you stop there, you’re going to be…… Continue reading My liberation is bound up in yours
Back in the day when I used to say, “I’m an activist,” there were always a number of people who interpreted that to mean: confrontational. A lot of people would expect me to be really harsh towards people who don’t share my beliefs. They would react with surprise when I wasn’t spoiling for a fight,…… Continue reading Blame the System
I really get why medical misinformation is so seductive. After 23 years of living with a stigmatized chronic illness, I’ve got stories about medical trauma that would curl your toes. I could talk all day about paternalistic systems and medical bias and the overall failures of the medical system. All the times I was called…… Continue reading How to Spot a Con
I’ve learned this lesson twice, once through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and once through Quality Management: “Yesterday’s solutions are today’s problems.” The problems you frequently address in both therapy and in business often spring up from doing things as they have always been done, when the present circumstances are very different from past circumstances. Like trying to…… Continue reading Different Solutions for Different Circumstances
As a disabled person, I have a real beef with Manifesting. The Secret, the Law of Attraction, all that kind of stuff gets really dark really fast when you’re sick. Nobody deserves to think that they’re sick because they brought it on themselves with their mind. But it’s seductive to believe. It’s nice to think…… Continue reading Creating Your Reality
When we’re born, we learn about the world through the people close to us. If our adults tell us Santa is real, we believe them. We only stop believing in Santa when enough of our peers or enough of our media content gives us reason to believe something else. If the systems that we’re born…… Continue reading Looking Through a New Lens
I come from a family of storytellers. We would spend hours sitting around telling stories the others weren’t there for or were too little to remember, full of moments where it was clear we were who we were from the beginning. This is the one my family would tell about me: My dad was a…… Continue reading Habits with a Purpose
I spent most of my life in what felt like a pit of shame and self hate. People would tell these stories about what the surface looked like, or an oasis of self love they could see off in the distance, but from the bottom of my pit, all I could see was blinding sun.…… Continue reading A Ladder Out of Self Hate
I started engaging with the disability community when Atti was a toddler. It was starting to become clear that he was going to be significantly impacted by Cerebral Palsy and my work as a community organizer showed me that if you need to meet some needs you should talk to the people directly affected. So…… Continue reading Lessons from the disability community