disability, feminism and campagining

Statistically, there will come a point in nearly all our lives when our body stops behaving in a “normal” way and doesn’t stop. Sometimes it’ll be sudden, some times it will creep up on us, and for some it will have simply always been that way. The thing that we have in common is a sense of loss for that normality, and a completely human need to grieve for it. This post is going to be primarily aimed at those that have acquired a long-term condition/impairment or had one worsen, as that is an area I have experience in.

Loss can be categorized as either physical or abstract, the physical loss being related to something that the individual can touch or measure, such as losing a spouse through death, while other types of loss are abstract, and relate to aspects of a person’s social interactions.

We all grieve differently, it’s far more complex than just feeling sad. While yes, some do feel sad, some also get angry, some withdraw, some cling, some seek justice, some seek to keep the memory of the past alive, some hunt for meaning, some wish to campaign for better, some choose to support others, some try to make a new normal as quickly as possible. Most will travel through a mixture those different states before “recovering”. Of course recovery is an odd one when what you are grieving is an abstract loss of normalcy. Gone is the “normally” functioning body and/or mind, gone is the normal way of doing certain things, gone are the “normal” expectations about how you fit into the world be it with friends, family or with your paid/unpaid work, gone are you hopes of being “healthy”, gone are the ways you learned to navigate certain challenges, gone are the dreams you had that relied on being able to function “normally”, and most hurtfuly, gone (or at least severely dented), is the idea that you are “normal”. Continue reading →