This Quote From "Suits" Hit Me Hard

I've always loved watching legal dramas. Ask me how often and at what age I started watching Law and Order (all of them, but especially SVU), and the answers will be "multiple times a week as a comfort show" and "probably too young." 🙃

Last fall, I was watching Suits for the first time (I don't know why it took me so long), and a line from a season 8 episode hit me enough to need to rewind it.

"True power is not pretending to be what you're not, it's admitting the truth of who you are."

For over 30 years, I hid the neuromuscular disability I was born with as much as I could. Growing up, and even through university, I didn't know anyone else with a disability.

I thought I mostly did a good job of "passing" as able-bodied, and I spent a lot of energy rejecting a part of myself that I couldn't change.

I didn't think I was missing out on anything by hiding it, and up until 4 years ago when I first spoke at Speaker Slam, I had no plans to ever share it publicly.

But it's when I finally started accepting this Thing about myself, that I used to consider one of my biggest secrets, that I started to finally recognize the strengths that I had developed from living with it too.

Accepting my disability and recognizing my strengths didn't get rid of my difficult situation though - I still have a disability. And I still have hard times because of it.

And, just because I'd finally accepted it, didn't mean I was happy about it. But I did find something that helps.

That's part of what my TEDx talk, "How can we fit in without losing who we are?" is about - the different ways we try to fit in, why they don't work, and what can actually help once we finally accept our Thing that we can't change.

Because acceptance is important...but it's also not enough. This talk explains what to do after the acceptance - because that's not the end of the journey.

You can watch my talk (which crossed 14,000 views today, so I'm excited to see where it can go from here!) by clicking on the YouTube link here - thank you so much! 🙏🏽✨🎉