Happy International Day of Persons with Disabilities Day!

“To be different is a gift. To be ordinary is common.” - Aída Salinas

We are not where we need to be with disability equity and justice, but times are changing with more disabled voices sharing their human perspective to more ears willing to listen. In the meantime, it’s important to build this same advocacy within and work on self acceptance and how we see ourselves and body.

How can you love a body that’s different? How can you love a body that puts you in constant pain and utter fatigue? How can you love a body that doesn’t work like the typical? How can you love a body that feels like it’s slowly dying? How can you love a body that makes you feel mortal weakness to its core?

This search to find love for such an entity can sometimes be daily, but the only thing I’ve landed on is you can love your body, however it comes, because it’s you. It’s the only body like it in the world, sheltering all of who you are—years traveled and learned. And this a beautiful thing: to remember in all of human history you’re the only copy. So how can I have so much resistance or loathing for what is, for what and who I am?

I’m grateful for my body. I’m proud of what my body has accomplished, where it’s been, her resilience, her softness and vulnerability. We may have a complicated relationship, and she doesn’t always do what I’d like, but I’ve learned life is about adapting rather than controlling everything around us. We often think life is supposed to bend to us but it’s our job to bend to it. It’s in this bend where our true selves flower. This is our artistry in life.

Disability is a beautiful perspective. It’s easy to love your body at its strongest, but it’s human to feel it at its weakest. This is true strength to me.

As a disabled person, I’m more connected and know my body more intimately than when I wasn’t disabled. I’ve witnessed its power, whether it’s in the degradation of my body and pain or its supple pleasures; something disability has made me screamingly aware of. When you’re aware of pain, pleasure is given a new dimension.

One of the things I love about being disabled is it opened my eyes to various abilities, lives and stories while redefining what the human spectrum looks like or words like “ability”. There’s nothing in life I value more than perspective and mine has completely been tilted. I realize how oversimplified and erroneous disabled were advertised to me back when I was not disabled, some 26 yrs ago. But I’ve found it’s an amazingly dynamic group filled with variety and veracity; tales of innovation, love, lust, joy, style, heartache, adaptive spirit, journey, triumph, grit, self-acceptance, talent and human insight.

It’s been a journey of self acceptance to love this body and I’m still on it. Anyone who claims to have completed any journey is probably not being honest. Self acceptance is life-long, so don’t get discouraged if you’re not there yet. None of us are.

Though disability, and a seriously progressive one at that, isn’t always easy, I wouldn’t trade these fragments and more elevated kaleidoscope of thinking when it comes to life and humans. I’m grateful for the mind and the differences my disability, exploration and struggles have created. It has made a whole person out of me — full of stories, viewpoints and wonder. For this I’m forever grateful. To the international disabled community, keep strong, keep light. We’re gone just the way we are.

#kamswheelstravel @ Instagram.com/kamredlawsk