Sometimes the most powerful conversations need only a message, not sound, not words, not speech, just a message. We went to the mall after work today because I’d been so sedentary all day and wanted some physical movement. We arrived, we parked, we went in. As we moved through the mall the bag on the […]
I don’t mean to bore you with my take on life with a disability but there are themes that are ever present in our lives. If we were a symphony we’d be ‘Bolero’ where the same melodic strain repeats itself over and over but faster and louder each time. So, here we go again. We […]
A few days ago I had to go down to Service Ontario to renew my driver’s licence and my health card. When I got there the line up was out the door. I had made time for this and though I was tempted to just come back later, later usually turns into “Oh my gosh, […]
We were going to meet friends for lunch, Joe wanted to pop up to the room to drop off stuff we didn’t need. I pulled over and waited, not realizing that I had backed into place beside a luggage cart. As soon as I saw it I fled and parked much further away. I sat […]
Okay, at this conference I presented on Disability Informed Treatment (Support) which asks service providers or clinicians to firstly acknowledge disability in a real way and then to see the disabled person in context of the system that supports them, the society that rejects them, and the power dynamic you are in with them. It’s […]
The conference I am at is spread over two hotels with sessions happening in each. The morning session I had chosen yesterday, the one following the keynote, was in the other hotel. To get there I had to go out and push up a fairly steep hill for a fairly long way. I made it […]
Joe and I had to do laundry when we arrived off the boat in Vancouver. We found one that was near a gay bookstore, so Joe went to do laundry and I went to browse around the store. The book area of the store has fairly narrow aisles but I was, if careful, able to […]
Something kind of wonderful happened on the flight over from Toronto to Vancouver. I’ve been a wheelchair user for a little over 12 years. While I didn’t lose as much as I feared I’d lose, I did gain more than I expected. They never talk to you about that part. I feared I’d lose my […]
Today is International Coming Out day, which is a day designated to celebrate people within the LGBTQ2S community who have self identified as members of that community. Today Facebook made it an option for those of us who have done so to mark it as a life event. Event? Event? Coming out isn’t a singular […]
The one day, during my time off sick, that I felt strong enough, and motivated enough, to go to the gym was a Saturday. The girls were spending the weekend with us and love to go swimming on Saturday morning and, at their insistence over time, it became a ritual, it’s just what we do. […]
