Disability Pride Month

         For those who don't know, July is Disability Pride Month.  It's a time to celebrate the way others like myself were created.  You read right, I said celebrate.  I have an interesting relationship with that concept and I wanted to talk about that in this weeks post.  It's coming out a day late because I wanted the time to really get my thoughts together, that's also why it's coming out at the end of July and not the beginning.

        For starters, everyone who knows me or has read my posts the last few weeks know that I grew up with a very lucky childhood.  Parents and family who love and support me, awesome friends, but one thing that makes it kind of unique.  For context let me explain something I've observed over the years.  You see, on average the disabled community and able bodied community don't really mix.  Media is probably the best example of this.  I challenge you all to think of any piece of entertainment or media that involves a disabled person... hard to come up with stuff right?  Of course there's the based on a true story movies, those are awesome, but there needs to be more.  I talk about this because I feel like people in the disabled community were almost forced to stay with each other and not branch out because media has in a way told us we don't want to associate with you.  

        Now I'm not trying to get on a soap box because that isn't me, I'm explaining this because in order to capture my experience as a disabled person as authentically as possible, that observation needs to come to light.  Now you see, this whole segregation didn't really bother me because I never really grew up around people like me.  I can count on one hand how many disabled friends I have, and I see them about once a year at most.  The friends I grew up with and that I still have to this day are all able bodied people (makes it fun to run over their toes ;)).  Most of the time I'm grateful that I wasn't treated any differently, it made me forget that I am different, but as I get older I find myself battling the two parts of myself.

        Because I never grew up surrounded by other wheelchair users or other disabled people, and was told that I'm no different than everyone else, I wrestle with moments where I want to stand out, show off my chair, show how I'm unique.  On top of that, never seeing a girl who looked like me in the media, made me feel like one of the things that makes me, me, shouldn't be celebrated, and the older I get, the more I want to.

        Being disabled can be freaking rad and should be embraced.  Over the last year or two I've been on that journey to own that part of myself and even shed a light on it.  That's one of the reasons I have this blog, to talk about this part of my life. To show who Rylie is, disability and all.

        Having said all that, I don't regret anything.  I love how I grew up and I wouldn't change it for the world.  Everything happens the way it's supposed to.

        Alright that was probably the longest post yet.  I hope it was an interesting read and next weeks post will be much lighter, bye!