Mobility aids exist to support our body's needs, so why would people view them as a negative?

Sometimes my adventures look like the happy, smiling photos I usually share on here, and sometimes my adventures look like this.

Sometimes it feels like being disabled means being exposed to the world at all times; my body on display for incessant public comment. Sometimes it's unbearable. Sometimes it's just too much.

In honor of Disability Pride Month, here are a few book recommendations for both disabled and non-disabled folks to learn about the history, the movements, and the lived experiences of disabled people.

Today I’ll be reviewing a few of the forearm crutches I have used over the past 7 years: Millennial Medical’s In Motion Pro’s, cheap generic drugstore crutches, SideStix, and Cool Crutches.

There are many valid reasons to use mobility aids besides a total loss of function. Here are my reasons.

When the world tells you that once you are no longer able-bodied, your life is not worth living, yet you still find a way to live a beautiful, happy, fulfilling life... How could I not feel proud?

The biomedical model’s limitations, combined with its influence on our society, has led to extensive consequences for the patients whose cases fall outside of its narrow scope.

It can be difficult to find reliable or easy-to-read information about my illness, so in this blog post I put together a quick introduction into what CIRS is, how it is diagnosed, and how it is treated.

How three visits to a garden showed me how much my outlook on life with disability had changed.

There are as many unique experiences of disability as there are individuals living with them. In this article, I will offer insight into the particular challenges I face and the privileges I hold in an effort to demonstrate a few of those differences, as well as some common misconceptions about what it means to be disabled.

I learned the hard way that sexism is still common in the medical world: the myth of “female hysteria” remains pervasive, women’s pain is often dismissed, and to some doctors, the only thing that matters is a woman’s fertility.

We need to learn to resist the urge to offer unsolicited and oversimplified medical advice for complex, incurable, chronic medical conditions.

In a world full of ableism, choose to be an Anna.

This body is strong. It is powerful, resilient and unstoppable. It is capable. It has gotten me through hell, and it is now getting me through the journey back.

I don’t have a body. I have an amorphous blob of pain floating somewhere beneath my head. It hurts so loud that my ears are ringing. An orchestra of nerve endings vibrating in excruciating symphony.

I don’t want to be pitied and I don’t want to be an inspiration, but those seem to be the only two categories in which people with disabilities are placed.

Severe illness can be traumatic, both for the person experiencing it, and the person who is forced to watch their loved one suffer.

Here, I offer a summary of my 15 years with MALS, Endo, CIRS, and cPTSD. It has been, as Francis Weller calls it, a rough initiation.

This account is a love letter to the younger me and anybody else who needs to hear this: It won't always feel like this. It is possible to enjoy the outdoors with disabilities. And every life has value, no matter its challenges.