Pagans With Disabilities & Chronic Illnesses

This is typically the time of New Year’s Resolutions. New Year’s Resolutions can often feel imposed upon us and restraining. Nearly always around diet, health goals (working out more), and in some way changing who we are.

What if our New Year’s Resolution revolved around acceptance. Radical acceptance a description of who we are and where we are at? This type of acceptance is especially important for persons with disability. I am going to encourage you to either focus your resolutions on acceptance of your self, your health, and your life AS IS.

Most of us don’t want our disability to define us and our capabilities. So we push – often too hard – and in doing so are worse off. I haven’t met a disabled person yet who is lazy and unmotivated. We have to be motivated. We have to find a way to do things that everyone else takes for granted. We figure it out with typically less resources and support than our abled bodied counterparts.

In order to do anything productive in our lives, as a disabled person, we must always be striving and reaching and overcoming. We can’t stop or slow down or the illness or disability will define us and shackle us to less than we want to and hope to be.

Most disabled persons are overachievers, but their achievements aren’t recognized or acknowledged because they succeed at “passing” as not disabled. So the achievements and obstacles that have been overcome are relegated to “not that bad” or “not that hard” regardless of how much stress and strain is created in appearing “normal.”

What if the disabled said, “FUCK THAT,” and radically started advocating for our needs. What if that was our New Year’s Resolution?

Instead of saying, “No I can’t do that.,” expose the truth and say instead, “No, I can’t do that because I am limited by the disability I have.” Or when someone asks how they can help, we actually ask for the help we need. We use a language other’s need to learn. “I can’t do XYZ because I am out of tokens (or spoons).”

Make people come to have an understanding of the struggle in real time that the disabled face and overcome or need to pass on in order to make it through.

My best friend is disabled and when she was looking for a job she was very forthright about her disabilities and limitations. I thought she was crazy. Eventually, she landed a great job that has accommodated her challenges and set backs caused by her many disabilities. I am not saying it is the greatest of situations. I am saying because of her bold decisions on the front end she can start all conversations with, “Before you hired me I told you about my disabilities and limitations; .and you said you would accommodate and work with those.”

What a radical way to live. As our gay and lesbian sisters have done, those of us, especially with disabilities not easily recognized, need to come out of the medical closet and step into society as our radical selves. We need to find ways to incorporate this radical acceptance of ourselves and our limitations into conversations with the abled bodied world. We need to be a bit more vulnerable in our presentation in order to make the point…. disability rights are human rights.

It won’t be easy or even readily accepted, and we must start somewhere. Radical acceptance and living is a good place to start.