Why Disabled People Don’t Need To Overcome Their Disability.
A number of hands shot up, my eyes darted around the students. Trying to settle on my first interrogator.
I’d just finished my talk to a room full of high school students and I had asked if anyone had any questions.
“Yes?” I nodded at the young man halfway up the lecture theatre.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glanced at his friend, and then asked, “how did you overcome your disability?”
Overcome.
The word seemed to reverberate around the room, I could see it echoed in all of the other students faces. A questioning, a judgement, a curiosity about the story I had just told them.
My body responded the way that it always does when I hear the word “overcome.”
I felt my hackles rise up, my fight response kicking in. As though the word itself is a threat. And then my heart sank. Deeply. I feel disappointed. Disappointed that words and terms such as overcome, despite, even though and in spite of are still used with such abandon when talking about disability.
“I didn’t.”
My response confused the boy. I had just spent 45 minutes talking to the students about how I went…
