Decided to start the new year as a goddess. 🌟 Palm Springs was lit.

Learning to love your body in all its stages is an inveterate adventure without a disability. But add a disability to the equation, with an atypical or anti-mainstream body, and you’ve got a lot more noise to work through.

When you have a disease or disability, it can feel like your body is just a medical orb-if you have a rare disease a medical oddity-with everything that’s “wrong” with it perpetually pronounced like a neon sign from consistent medical barrage, but also a society who says, “What’s wrong with you?” because we’ve been conditioned to view differences as wrong.

The journey to self acceptance and self realization is never-ending. While it’s true, society can be ignorant about many things, I also think much ignorance isn’t necessarily malice, yet proof of a shift in times and thinking which requires catching up. If we had enough grace, honesty and self awareness then we’d admit we have our own ignorances, because no one can truly know everything about every identity or culture. So while we bawl at society to accept us, I encourage us to also remember we can’t live by how others think, nor incorrectly project that telling society how wrong they are will make us feel more positive about ourselves. These are two parallel paths on their own journeys.

The work to educate a society who isn’t aware group consciousness is changing IS important, but the work on yourself is almost more important cause there will always be ignorance and inevitably someone who doesn’t accept or include what you are, no matter how enlightened a society becomes.

As Seneca said, “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality” and I’ve found, yes, some of how we feel about ourselves IS influenced by society, but more so how we view ourselves, and it’s my bet many times we think worse of ourselves than the outside does.

It’s not other people’s job to love you, it’s ours and ours alone.

Looking forward to new adventures and growth this year. Follow me and let’s see what happens! #kamswheelstravel

*I post travels; mini memoirs and disability and accessibility musings on Instagram @ Instagram.com/kamredlawsk