The Disability Rights Movement is an integral part of US American history. This post is a very, VERY short summary of what it was/is, with the best videos out there on it, and some suggested resources for more information. Read more and investigate the links at the end of the post! *Note: this post was…
This is a post examining the cultural value of disability, as seen through the lens of Star Trek and a cross-cultural comparison (Hmong/America If you want to hear me reading this, just click the link below. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the story of a fiercely frustrating cultural clash, the crux…
Learning to parent a child with a disability is a lot like learning to run – you learn to breathe, pace yourself, push on. And it’s not a race, it’s a relay
“Our lives begin to end the day we are silent about things that matter,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a personal essay on how this can apply in life
Tips from a disability ally
A post for when you want to say the right thing because you are a disability ally.
This post is about why your use of the word “retarded” actually makes you look stupid. his is not a post about being politically correct and if you say anything about “being pc” I will reach through the computer and sprinkle legos all over your floor in the middle of the night, so don’t say I…
From foundations and grants to books, bikes and benefits – a big list of places that can help out with free stuff for kids with disabilities
Special Needs and Disability I’ve got to admit that when I joined the “special needs” community a decade ago by way of giving birth to my daughter with Down syndrome, I was confused with all the “special needs” this and that. “Disability“, I was and am completely used to, both as a person with disabilities…
Hurricane Harvey has wrecked devastation throughout the Texas area. It has been downgraded from “hurricane” to a “tropical storm” but has stalled over Houston, bringing over 23 inches of rain. There are people with disabilities stranded in their homes, unable to reach the roofs. Portlight, an organization that works with people with disabilities in disaster…
Sara Weir is the President of the National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS), which is the organization that spearheads and financially benefits from the Buddy Walks ®™ . NDSS claims to be the “leading human rights organization for all individuals with Down syndrome,” and yet in the face of the loss of Medicaid, they have been, for…
Dr. Brown’s current picks, including books for younger readers – don’t miss it!
The most common myths about disability are talked about here
“Wheelchair bound” is a commonly used phrase, but what does “wheelchair bound” mean exactly – because wheels are devices used to move, not bind
“Speechless” is the new TV show that takes on some of the toughest issues in the disability community, laughing all the while.
Profile of Neil Jacobson, a professional with a disability. He retired from a Senior Executive position with Wells Fargo to start AbiliCorps. Get to know him.
“How Do You See Me” that was recently released for World Down syndrome Day. It aims at promoting Down syndrome acceptance, but with so many in the disability community questioning the message, I don’t see it as an overall win. But they did get one thing right.
It seems like I dropped a bomb with my last post about The Mighty. That’s cool, getting a conversation started is something I believe in doing. The only part of it that I feel the need to talk more about is the one point that a lot of people seem to have misunderstood. And that…
As a parent of a child with Down syndrome and as a woman with a disability, I straddle two worlds: the community of people with disabilities and the community of parents of kids with disabilities. Add to that the fact that my main disability is deafness, and I am in a whole ‘nother sub-community within…
3 years ago or so I started a site called “Two Thirds of the Planet”. It was called “Two Thirds of the Planet” because the site was all about disability, and that’s what they say, you know: that two thirds of the planet has a connection with disability in some way. Well, (like many of…
There was a great post out last week by Carly about moms who blog about their kids with disabilities, or “special needs” as it’s popular to say here in the U.S. Her post was excellent – it’s here – I think you should take a minute to read it, if you haven’t already. I’ll wait….
Andrew Pulrang, disability blogger and podcaster, is featured today in Voices from the Disability Community
Restarting the “Cool Cats: Voices from the Disability Community”, in which people with disabilities are featured. The point of this is to share different slices of different lives. For people to hopefully connect over shared voices, experiences or disabilities. Please welcome Eliza Riley! Getting to Know You Your name: Eliza Riley What’s your connection with…
The gay rights movement and the disability rights movement both started around the same time. They were fighting similar battles, struggling for equal civil rights, for justice, and for an end to discrimination. Some 40 years later and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that gay marriage is legal, while people with disabilities still face…
Wheelchair Mommy Disabled Momma Cripperella Hedgehog Blog: Riley’s Mom Walks Funny The CP Mommy Words I Wheel By That Crazy Crippled Chick MeriahMeriah Nichols is a counselor. Solo mom to 3 (one with Down syndrome, one on the spectrum). Deaf, and neurodiverse herself, she’s a gardening nerd who loves cats, Star Trek, and…
About Society for Disability Studies The Society for Disabilities is exactly that: a group of (primarily academic) people that study disability as a subject. They splice and dice it in every imaginable way: from sexuality to employment, from neuro-divergence to deaf issues in rural India. I mean, you name it, they’ve got it covered. I…
Katherine and I are presenting at SDS this year on Deaf Identity. We really wanted to talk about it because we have so many questions ourselves, about what is means to be deaf – or Deaf. She wears cochlear implants, I wear hearing aids. She is fluent with ASL, I am not. Neither of us…
You all know how much I loathe the way people use the term “special needs” interchangeably with “disability”(my post about that is here ). The term was originally an educational one, designed for kids with extremely unique learning needs. Plenty of people who have real educational “special needs” do not have a disability and plenty of…
4 years ago, I wrote a post called The Choice to Suffer. In it, I was talking about how caring for an elderly man in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s helped me to heal. I was about as wounded as a soul can get when I met him, and he taught me how to hold hands…
About disability pride, overexposure, and the brilliance of Frida Kahlo, as seen in a visit to her home in Mexico City
A new proposal by a state senator seeks to make it criminal to abort a fetus on the basis of its disability or gender. Since women rarely abort in the United States on the basis of gender, it appears (as David Perry aptly stated), as if gender is simply a smokescreen for the real Trojan…
When people say that they don’t associate the word “disability” with me or with Moxie, I think they mean it as a compliment. It certainly has that tone. “I don’t think of you as having a disability!” I’m not insulted by these statements. I sense the love for us behind the words, I don’t take…
I am an adult with a disability. I have a child with a disability (different from my own). And I am a professional educator. I have come to loathe the term “special needs”. I feel like it’s a watered-down euphemism for “disability”, originating in the educational sphere and has since been misused all over the…
So, when my friend Heather’s daughter went viral in her Target ad, she decided to do something staunchly in the way of a true ally for us with disabilities: she reached out to Katie of Changing the Face of Beauty and asked what could be done to include EVERYONE with a disability in a media/ad…
I heard that Stella Young died while the sun was setting on our camp on the coast of Sinaloa, Mexico. The sky was exploding in a multitude of colours, all bright, all fiery. Like she was herself – bright and fiery. It hit me hard. I lay awake with my children sleeping on and around…
I’m not a political junkie and my brain isn’t particularly suited to understanding the processes of politics. But there are some things that I know – as a person with a disability, as the mother of a person with a disability, as a professional who worked with disability and employment for a decade. One of…
Difficult conversations are the uncomfortable conversations, and I think, the ones that we often shirk by the very nature of that discomfort. But they are usually the ones that we need to have. I think this whole conversation of assisted suicide and killing children with disabilities is one that is extremely uncomfortable. And one that…
Mikey and I agreed that after my heavy solo-parenting gig of the summer and also solo-care of our chitlins during stretches when Mikey left the farm to buy a truck (or visit friends), I deserved a break, a Momcation. Like, a real momcation, without even one child with me, completely solo. So I signed up…
I love Elvis, I really do. I think his voice was simply magic, like the male version of Karen Carpenter, it’s liquid velvet on a rainbow. Anyway, I was watching “Elvis on Tour” the other night with the kids and I was watching how everyone reacted to him. Sure, he was wearing a cape (!!!),…
Hey! We’re back! First, THE BOOK. We have about 6 people who said they are in (and I’ll be emailing everyone this week to get started). Now, if you have a post or two that you’d like to see in the book compilation, that’s fine. If you have the whole series that you’d like to…
There is a story that is going seriously viral right now, about an Australian couple that had a surrogate mother in Thailand grow them twins. When one of the twins was born with Down syndrome and health complications, the couple apparently abandoned him and went on back to the Land Down Under with their one…
On my own journey in growing disability pride and overcoming ableism
Hey! We’re back! Moving forward with the 3rd Annual Summer Blogging Series with the optional prompts A quick recap: Week One: My Connection with Disability Week Two: Coming to Terms with Disability Week Three: A Letter to My Younger Self Week Four: Talking Raw, Talking Real: Challenges Related to Disability * all links are still…
BLOG HOP WEEK THREE! This week in the 3rd Annual Summer Blog Hop series aimed at creating community and sharing voices between the disability and disability-ally (- parents, friends, etc) segments in our shared tangerine of life. About: The Blog Hop is a space where you can drop the URL link to a post you have…
Summer Blog Hop Series: CHALLENGE! This is our third Summer Blog Hop Series and there are three ways to participate: Follow the OPTIONAL narrative arc by following the writing prompts (which are listed HERE ). Re-working older posts that you have written or just posting the links to those URL’s is an awesome way for some of us to…
I’ve been in service dog training for this past week and I have one week to go. I’m talking 9-5 training and it’s hard catching up to a dog that is smarter than I am. I’ve developed a little Q & A in anticipation of some of the questions you might have about service dogs…
My deaf/disability connection.
Summer Blog Hop Series: CHALLENGE! This is our third Summer Blog Hop Series, and I want to kick this up a notch. How about it?! Let’s try and follow a story arc. Let’s try and write our way through the whole arc of our connection with disability, and then let’s gather the posts at the…
Ableism: discrimination or social prejudice against people with disabilities. Also called disability discrimination and disability oppression. Ableism is to disability as racism is to race. Ableism is someone not giving me a job because they see my hearing aids, someone else saying that ADHD is made up to get extra time on tests, it’s people reaching out to push…
The British have The Best campaigns, seriously. This new one, “End the Awkward” had me outright smiling – check it out – First, you take a quiz to see how awkward you are – it’s here . I ranked “ambassador of cool” but I doubt that’s hard to pull because the questions are a little achingingly…