Why “You don’t let your disability stop you” is nonsense
Half rant/half informational post about why saying that is a rude. Besides, letting my disability stop me from things is smart, actually.
It’s not just how rude it is to assume things about my life that makes this particular observation curdle my blood.
It’s that it’s factually incorrect, first of all.
But we’ll get to that.
Someone said to this to me, weeks ago. And it was still tickling my brain because yes. I do let things stop me.
And then they were all “I don’t let racism stop me.” Another Black person. Like “the sky is blue.”
I wanted to say:
I bet it stops you from doing things that might get you killed.
Although on occasion? I hope you test those things out for yourself. Maybe you’ll be the exception that proves the rule.
Maybe? Not.
However, they didn’t deserve any more of my words, and I didn’t deserve to have to dwell in a negative feeling if I didn’t feel like unsheathing my sword for every little battle.
When you’re chronically ill and have fatigue issues, you start to realize what sucks out your energy the most. And you learn that sometimes you can’t afford to process emotions or talk too long or sometimes even just get distracted.
I needed that energy in order to keep moving that day, and made a note to ruminate later.
But today? I only have medium pain and have been blessed with near-normal energy.
So today? I want to start putting this statement to an end.
Why? Because it’s also harmful. We’ll get to that too.
Of course, most people mean well when they say things like this, where thought may be something like
“they were able to surmount this challenge, I believe in you, and I think of you as better than this person, which makes me think you can do this too.”
Still problematic (you’re measuring your loved one against another person who may have different circumstances, less or fewer obstacles, a different condition/symptoms/tolerances/access to help).
Yet even that is better to say than “don’t let your disability stop you.” And the like.
As I always say, if you genuinely mean well?
You are also open to feedback regarding how to do better. So even if you’re doing great, even if
- you’re a disabled person yourself who says this all the time,
- have a loved one who is disabled,
- or are completely able.
What makes this rude? Your subconscious view of disabled people.
The first thing wrong with this statement goes back to a common and distinct point of view, primarily from people who are not disabled.
In our community, we call you abled, or when we’re specifically talking about mobility and physically accessibility, able-bodied.
As a person who is abled, you’ve been conditioned by the world to see disabled people as lesser than, or not having abilities in general rather than specifically.
And as such, you make the assumption that being disabled is a negative. Disabled people internalize these views — you don’t have have to be abled to be ableist.
It follows naturally, if you see disability as a negative fact, rather than a neutral trait or as medical data, that you make remarks like “you don’t let your disability stop you.”
As if disability is the problem here.
It’s not.
The problem here is that we are framed as a disposable item, an aside, a burden on society, to be pitied.
Or when people actually have the common sense to behave decently to us? Inspiring, which can be equally loathsome.
You, the abled, are the ones who have decided that the fact that we have disabilities are a negative, to the extent that you are disgusted by them.
We’re not exactly jumping for joy to have minds and bodies that are literally unable to operate the same way yours do. But we don’t see that as our personal failings as humans or as reasons to be pitied.
We see it as an issue to work around. Being born short may restrict your chances to play professional basketball. But it doesn’t have to kill your dream if you have the talent or develop the skills.
To other people, it looks impossible, but I’m sure to Spud Webb, that was just… his life. He’s 5 foot 7 and was not only a professional basketball player, he won the 1986 Slam Dunk contest.
To us, our mental or physical struggles may not be cause for celebration, exactly. But we treat them more like biological facts than reasons to judge ourselves.
I have brown eyes.
I need a cane to walk.
I was born with black hair.
I have a spinal disorder.
I’m a cis het woman.
I have fibromyalgia.
I have 4 other chronic conditions as well as a chronic cancer.
I am disabled. I own a business. I was born with 12 fingers, I now have 10.
You have your troubles with how you were born into the world, I have mine, plus the fact that 90% of the world builds structures as if they would not like me to exist in them.
What’s wrong with not letting your disability stop you then?
Because again, the default identity of the majority of Americans, the abled, frame “letting something stop you” as a negative.
Some things should goddamn stop you.
When you’re walking? Walls should stop you from proceeding as you would with doors.
Being drunk should stop you from driving.
Some things are not smart to do when you have a disability and even can make them worse.
That is not bad. I mean it isn’t good either. But this is just… a fact. It doesn’t need a value adjective.
Either build and retrofit the world so it can’t stop us or give us the needed accommodations without commentary or judgement.
You can’t have both, even if we’re on our way from the former to the latter.
We have the right to be everywhere any other person is. And society is not treating us or our tax dollars as equal if those accommodations are being then.
So if a person is disabled, especially with the world the way it is? It is none of your business what stops them and when or how.
It is NOT a compliment to say that to people.
It is a judgement of someone whose life you don’t know.
I let my disability stop me and I’m proud that I finally do.
Before I used to hide my disability.
Not everyone can, but I did.
I was ashamed not to be considered equal. I was afraid of how people would treat me.
I’m already a Black woman, an indigo winged unicorn in my chosen field. I’ve seen how they treat sick people, even cancer patients.
I remembered my past mistakes, mostly as a teenager. I was afraid that I would not be able to bear how worse it would get, with my mental health the way it was at the time.
And it turns out, part of the problem with my mental health was feeling alone and stigmatized all the time, without the language to express how I felt, especially to well meaning people.
So I suffered, alone in this overachiever hell I built for a decade. Going to back to back family functions one weekend and having to call out sick for almost a week.
Working at my regular pace and needing to spend practically the entire weekend in bed.
Three to five nights a week of no social life. Bed, work, physical therapy or doctor, home.
Not wanting to be in a wheelchair for pain because “my legs still work” and then not being able to explain to my boss why a back problem made it hard to do the weekly tech onsites for the department I supported.
It took a lot of hard work, community love and inner emotional resetting to realize that I’m not the problem.
In most other first, second, and even some third world countries, there are provisions for my situations. Most are law but some are apparently common courtesy, according to the shocked expressions of my lifelong abled white work colleagues and acquaintances abroad.
During that time of trying to hide and fight through the pain, the pain got worse.
I might be the reason my body got more broken.
I definitely overworked myself and have burned out from my original career, where I made a near six-figure income working a few days a week.
It’s hard for me to make the high end content or coaching, and maintain the contacts that would have guaranteed me a five figure week every quarter or so. I’m lucky now if I clear five figures a year.
So yes, now that I know better than to listen to the nonsense of working myself to death? I let my disability stop me. It’s my only hope of ever earning even a regular income again.
I’ve been rejected for disability multiple times, it’s not a train you just jump on whenever.
And if you get it? It’s not enough to cover even just the utilities in a modest place for a year. You’re not only supposed to live off that, you’re not allowed to save or live above the poverty level.
So I love letting my disability stop me.
Stop me from pushing myself to perform “hard working” for you.
Stop me from putting my ego & image over my health.
Some things? Should fucking stop you.
I let cancer stop me.
It was the right, smart thing to do. I’m pretty sure I would have died if I didn’t.
You don’t let [insert difference we have no right to judge here] stop you is a common thing we say that we
MUST
STOP
SAYING.
Especially when it comes to
- health issues,
- income levels,
- racial,
- gender,
- gender assignments/choice or sexual orientation,
- and any other issue where you can’t easily be in the other person’s shoes.
Even healthy people aren’t supposed to be working 60 hours a week.
So much of this is based on what the idea of what a “productive member of society” is.
Aren’t we more than machines in the system of work?
How can you work 60 hours a week & be a great parent & lover & caretaker of your own parents?
How did we all get hypnotized into this lie that has made zero people better off?
The wealthy mainly get wealthy through investment, not hard work. So even if that’s what we’re chasing, we’re wrong!
The next rung down from them, the rich, live below their means and work smart. Not hard.
Some things. SHOULD FUCKING STOP YOU.
If you don’t “mean it like that?”
What are you saying it for?
Who is going to run the world when we’re all sick or dead?
For fuck’s sake.
Let shit stop you if it’s supposed to stop you.
At least question whether the world is better off if you enjoy life and rest occassionally.
Trust me. I have cancer. There’s way more things I wish I had let stop me? Than not.
We know when we’re drunk- don’t drive.
But we can’t let our bodies rest when they’re tired.
It’s terrible what we’re doing to ourselves. It’s literally disease-causing.
At least as awful is what it does to the people we love.
Let yourself be stopped once in a while.
And for heaven’s sake, keep your judgement of what other people do to yourself. Worry about your own life.
Start an advice column, start a blog, or join Quora, then you’ll have plenty of people asking you what to do, instead of butting into the lives of people who don’t want your input.
1 in 5 people are disabled.
The majority of us work and hide it. 1 out of 3 Americans has some kind of chronic condition.
Can we all please start making sense with our lives, before it gets to 1 out of 2?
Parts of this essay previously published at threadreaderapp.com and on Twitter.
