It’s been a while. Between the pandemic, my final years of graduate school at Berkeley and finishing my dissertation, moving to Seattle, completing my 12-month pre-doctoral clinical internship, all the social and political unrest of the last 2.5 years, and family health challenges and stressors, I have not had the energy to write this blog. I have had many ideas and moments where I felt the urge to put words on the page, but I was also so, so tired. With the completion of my PhD, the reluctant acceptance that the pandemic isn’t going anywhere and that the world will continue to be relentlessly chaotic, I am coming back with renewed momentum and direction.
After a much-needed break and vacation, I plan to resume regular programming with twice-monthly posts about ableism, now extending beyond academia to medical settings. My full-time clinical internship across hospitals and clinics has inspired me to prioritize pieces about ableism in medicine, especially in mental healthcare. The more medical environments I have had the privilege to work in, the more I have encountered structural and attitudinal barriers to effective training and care. I have desperately sought stories, examples, and mentorship for how to cope with these encounters and challenge these systems, and will feature some of my favorite recommendations, readings, and resources. I yearn for more voices in this space, and so I will also offer my stories and experiences to shed light on how pernicious, pervasive, and pesky ableism in medicine can be.
I intend to write more pieces that are both clinically and personally focused. I will offer explanations of the skills from therapy that help me and my patients navigate disability-related experiences. I will share about finding meaning and forging identity while being in a disabled or sick body. My professional interests have been evolving and I have been finding joy through cultivating my passion for providing disability-affirmative mental health care. I have observed so much utility in applying evidence-based strategies from empirically-supported interventions for mental health to disabled communities and for dealing with complex medical needs. The skills for balancing acceptance and change, regulating emotions, tolerating distress, and effective interpersonal communication and relationships are well-suited for many of the common disability-related experiences (well, and for all experiences being in an ever-changing body, let’s be honest). The strategies and insights from my clinical practice and my experience as a patient in therapy have been instrumental to my coping with and fighting against ableism (and other systems of oppression), and I aim to include practical and intimate examples in this blog as well. Ultimately, I hope I can highlight some of the learning and growth that I have observed personally and professionally that inspires me to do this work, all the while acknowledging that I am humbly on this journey too.
For now, I am going to continue resting and recharging by veraciously listening to books, exploring the Pacific Northwest on meandering dog walks and hikes, connecting with loved ones, and crafting. Stay tuned for more musings on ableism in medicine, the therapy strategies I have found helpful in navigating disability-related experiences, and stories about meaning and disability identity beginning in August.
Until then, here’s a sample of what I’m reading related to disability justice and medicine:
- Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism by Elsa Sjunneson. This book is equal parts memoir and popular science and speaks to the misrepresentation of disability in media. To quote Goodreads, “As a deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her.”
- Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judy Heumann. This is the personal story of one of the most influential disability rights activists in US history who was instrumental in efforts ranging from the Section 504 sit-ins in San Francisco to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I’ve only just started listening to this one, and I have a feeling I’m going to devour it!!!
- Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled by Nancy Mairs. This is an intimate memoir about living with MS and advocating for disability justice
- Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gatsby. This hysterical memoir by an award-winning comedian and queer woman diagnosed with autism and ADHD late in life is all about truth-telling.
- Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad. This deeply moving and personal memoir details Suleika’s experiences with cancer from diagnosis to remission and recovery. She also writes a wonderful newsletter you can subscribe to that offers narratives of her ongoing cancer journey and reflective journal prompts.
- The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice by Fredrick DeBoer. While this book isn’t advertised as a work of disability justice, the exposure of stigma and discrimination based on intellectual ability highlights the rampant ableism in education and society at large. On the same theme, I also really loved The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Paige Harden, which asks provoking questions about what equality means in a world where we are all born inherently different.
- Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes, Again, this isn’t advertised as a work of disability justice, but by highlighting the state of caregiving and the capitalistic pressures that reward productivity above all else, Garbes’ work beautifully speaks to some of the challenges of being in a body and needing and giving care.
