My Life Day: Four Years Since I First Shared My Disability

"I'm currently terrified and will be for the next 3 days, so if you catch me squealing (more than usual), that's why...!"

That was in my caption for a post the Friday before my first virtual Speaker Slam speech (on a Monday), where I'd talk about living with Central Core Disease, the muscle disability I was born with, publicly for the first time ever - four years ago today.

I first learned the concept of a Life Day from Seated Perspectives last year.

In the disability community, it's an anniversary of the day a person acquired their disability or survived a major medical event, marking the day they began adapting to a new way of living.

But I was born with my disability, and I don't fully remember the day when I was 20 and was finally diagnosed.

So to me, my Life Day feels like the day I opened up about it for the first time.

In my speech, I'd said how I tried to hide it for 30+ years because "I couldn't deal with the idea of people knowing and seeing it as a weakness, when I just wanted to be seen as normal" and that when watching a TV show, I was struck by the line:

"There is no normal, there's just us and what we do with what we've been given."

Hearing that line and including it in that speech altered my brain chemistry.

Six months later, I did a second speech, qualified for the finals, won 2nd and was catapulted into talking about it on stages, podcasts and media interviews.

From barely knowing a disability community existed, to connecting with people who share my same disability or live with others.

From being scared to talk about it, to now speaking about disability inclusion to organizations, doing a TEDx, and helping others embrace the element of themselves they're avoiding too.

There's a lesson I've been learning the last four years, that I hope others can learn as well:

Embrace what makes YOU.

You can run from it (well I can't run, haven't you heard I have CCD?), you can resent it (I def have), and you can grieve the ways you feel it limits you.

But when you finally start to face it, you can see how it helped shape who you are, recognize the strengths it gave you, and find your people who understand. And I think that's beautiful ✨💞