When you think of the term “disabled,” you may think of a close family member, someone you spoke to at a disABILITYsa or the San Antonio Community Resource Directory volunteer event or maybe you have never met someone with a disability and just have an idea of who they are. However, solidarity doesn’t end with volunteering for a day before returning to your able-bodied group of friends for a hike. It starts with able-bodied individuals making a genuine attempt at truly understanding what it realistically means to be disabled.
A concept often overlooked by able-bodied people is the strength that eclipses the disability. True allyship and inclusivity require ongoing self-reflection and acknowledgment of one’s abilities and privilege. Able-bodied people don’t contain the strength attributed to being unwillingly nestled in a circumstance that is alienating and degrading at times. The experience of living with a disability goes beyond my words in this column.
In the memoir, “Every Cripple A Superhero,” Christoph Keller brilliantly lays out the existentialism and absurdity that supplements living with spinal muscular atrophy, a physical disability that slowly progresses throughout one’s life. Being an individual with a neurodegenerative disease, this book surprisingly opened up aspects of myself that I had never really considered. Keller describes a past and present version of himself: “Walking Me. Rolling Me.”
Then it occurred to me … I advocate, create and write for those who are more or less disabled than me, yet I am still in conflict with the part of myself who is deeply afraid of losing the ability to walk, all while steadily waiting for my disease to worsen. The most pragmatic part of this state of mind is that all I did to warrant a congenital disease, complemented with expensive leg braces, deformed feet and existential conflict, was to be born into a world where the majority of people are not like me.
It has become more apparent to me that there are a great majority of problems with not only physical inaccessibility but also social acceptance and understanding that extend beyond the individual. We need to reach out to disabled people. We need to learn how to love disabled people. We need dedicated planning for both on- and off-campus events for each disabled member attending Trinity. Best explained by the late Dave Hingsburger:
“I didn’t forget my disability … I was in a place where disability had a different meaning to those around me. It didn’t mean that I was worth less. It didn’t mean that I deserved the harsh light of uncompromising attention shone on my life, my weight, my relationship. It didn’t give permission to be touched or talked to or interacted with differently. I was Dave in a chair, and that’s it.” – Dave Hingsburger (1952-2021).
To actually foster an inclusive community, able-bodied people must actively listen to and amplify disabled voices rather than let them figure it out on their own. I challenge you to truly get to know someone with a physical or developmental disability. Understand their struggles and their strength. The next time you sprint to class five minutes after it starts, think about them.