So I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately. And about disability pride, and history.

I guess the best place to start is here: I identify as disabled. Strongly. Very strongly.

And the reason I do is that I see the legacy of disability history, and what people have fought and died doing so that I could have basic rights, rights that we still have to keep fighting over.

That overrides any qualms I have about the way people hear the word disabled.

I respect and sometimes use the framing “with a disability” (although in my case it’s for grammar reasons, generally). I don’t like to use it as my main identifier and I avoid it in general.

It makes me feel like my disability is separate from me. Like I need breathing room.

And you know what? I get that. For some folks, the breathing room is where life blossoms. That’s okay.

I just...I have a hard time personally with the idea that I need to not be defined by things that make my life a challenge. I’ve been thinking about why that is.

I think for me there’s a thing where there’s been so much *stuff* that’s happened-so much identity building around the communities that I’m a part of, like...it’s a part of me, sure, not all of me

But my communities saved me, over and over again

It feels like an alliegance. Like saying, “I claim this identity as an integral part of who I am. I would be a different person without it.”

For me, that feels different than saying I carry it with me.

I think cure culture comes into this too, for me, to an extent.

Like, I imagine that if I were someone who wanted a cure for one of my disabilities, it would shape what I used. I’m not, though. I have no desire to cure any of my disabilities, unless you count my migraines, or my eating disorder.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m naïve.

I think that when you spend your life with society being shaped against parts of you, one of two things happens. You work to be make yourself work mostly within current structures-or you work real hard to change the world so you can work in it the way you are.

I’m in camp change