What Does Disability Pride Really Mean?: Discovering Disabled Pyaar

By Nu Misra, Revival Disability India

A lot of us have started our work out of the sheer isolation of our rooms, of crippled bones, of strife and lifelong grief, of restlessness, and being continually told that your disabled body is wrong, that it’s just wrong and not supposed to exist in this world. So we make a pact with the able-bodied world: a pact to somehow be better, do better because our disabled ways are thought to be lacking and not enough.

Disabled bodies existing in a capitalist society are often made a spectacle for the able-bodied gaze during Pride Month. We can’t help but give in to a capitalistic collaboration, some money here and there would help us buy our medicines for a month and will help us survive. We work with people who don’t understand the complexity of our histories, how solidarity and nuance were born out of the gentleness of our disabled kin, and what we have survived to be here today.

Against a purple background is an illustration of a green cauldron with the label “Disabled Pyaar.” Above it are different “ingredients”: a watery eye with the label “grief”, a heart with the label “love”, a spoon with the label “learn to put ourselves first”, a bottle with the label “honouring disabled needs”, a container with the label “discard of ableist codes of self-love”, and a cup with the label “reclaiming the language of disabled intimacy.” Credit: Ritika Gupta.

At Revival Disability India, we insist on the values of Disabled pyaar: Love. How do we hold ourselves together while holding our communities together as well? How do we deal with pain, hurt, failure, competitiveness, and loneliness within the community? In our effort to escape an able-bodied world, we often think the answer lies within the disability community. But does the movement make space for every kind of disability activist?

So, what is disability pride really about? Disability Pride is about acknowledging grief: for disability is not all joy and laughter and peace. Far from it. It’s about not being able to reach the bathroom in time because your crippled bones don’t succeed in carrying your body every time to fulfill the most basic of needs, it’s about the shame and terror that comes with a speech disability, it’s about blaming yourself for involuntary movements like drooling and tripping and limping because we’ve been taught that we should be embarrassed about our movements. But Disability Pride is when your disabled friends pick you up when you fall and then laugh at you, and include you in the conversation despite you not being able to pronounce words that begin with the letter “D”. Sometimes, It’s self-destructive, it’s ugly, it’s self-loathing. It’s about murderous rage against the violence your body faces every day, it’s about questioning your mortality and your belief system.

But Disability Pride is also about maddening love. When I think of disability pride, I think of a giant bench that accommodates everyone. Some of us are painting on the bench, some of us are watching our favorite show, some of us are sitting by ourselves with our headphones on, some of us are chattering happily and laughing while our crutches rest beside us, and some of us are closing our eyes and smiling peacefully. It’s a chair with soft, soft cushions and a space where we all feel loved, and held together and never apart.

We write stories about Disabled friendships, Disabled loving, Disabled grief for our future generations so that they know we’ve loved, lived, and grieved to the fullest of our disabled breaths, we’ve protested from our beds and we’ve written stories in blood-soaked countries surrounded by genocide: from India to Palestine — Disability pride is keeping hope alive with our rage.

About the author

Nu Misra (they/he) is a trans non-binary disabled person and founder of Revival Disability. They like sitting on park benches like some people like morning walks.

Find out more about Rewriting the Narrative here.