I have struggled with medical issues my entire life, but until I had my son Atticus I never would have dreamed of calling myself disabled. There’s a reason for that. We are all fed so much bigotry and fear and ableism about what it’s like to be disabled and who that label applies to. We are kept in such a place of scarcity that we have to perform our ability to capitalism to keep us from being cast out, and we are told and tell ourselves all kinds of things about health and disability that are fundamentally untrue. The actual definition of disability applies to SO MANY more people than are using it. If you have a health condition that limits a major life activity…welcome to the club, friend! You’re disabled!
I started participating in the disability community so I could learn how to parent my son, and was shocked to find myself among peers. Peers with deep and hard won knowledge about how to navigate your own body’s individual needs in a world that is hostile to them.
It was among those peers that I first heard the term “Dynamically Disabled.” That describes people like me, living with chronic conditions that fluctuate in severity or in the ways in which it limits me depending on a whole host of factors. Some days I can function with a level of ability that seems “normal,” and a whole lot of other days I can’t get out of bed. I have had to learn to build self care practices that reflect the dynamic nature of my abilities. If I held myself to a certain exercise routine every day I could only fail as soon as a day came when I wasn’t up for that routine.
What I’ve been learning through disability is that my body’s needs might be more acute than someone else’s, but the solutions we find to cope with disability apply to every person with a body. You might live with a chronic condition that makes the label of Dynamically Disabled apply to you, or you might just be a human being with a human body that is capable of different things on different days because that’s how biology works. But regardless of labels, the point is that you will be more successful at reaching your goals if you build your humanity into them.
The strategy that has been the most productive for me is one I call “Dynamic Habits.” I’ve read all the books about habit formation and goal setting, so I use the strategies that work – like habit stacking, keeping a streak alive, and morning routines – but built to be flexible. I have a version of the habit that I can use on hard days, and a version of the habit I use on good days. I can keep the momentum going without sacrificing my body to the habit. The habit is supposed to serve my body.
Some mornings I only brush my teeth. That is my minimum acceptable standard for personal care on my hardest days. On other mornings I do a full skin care routine. Neither one is a failure or better. They are both acceptable options and I use them as necessary. It’s like I’m setting a habit that is really a block of time and within that block of time, I choose from tasks that will meet the requirements.
When I needed to set a breakfast habit, I needed to find something that I could always eat at that hour which wouldn’t create a whole lot of work in meal planning and prep and grocery shopping because I know those are barriers for me that would derail everything. So I eat the same breakfast every morning so I don’t have to shop for anything else or make decisions in the morning.
Too often the instruction we are given about goal setting or forming habits boils down to “make yourself do it.” But if that worked, why hasn’t it worked?
There are reasons you are struggling to enact these self care habits and those reasons have to be accounted for before any habit is going to stick. You will have different needs, different resources, different abilities, different interests at different times in your life and even day to day. There is no virtue in doing the same thing every day for no reason. The virtue is in taking care of yourself. So find a way to do that, that is actually achievable.