Why Disabled People Are Expected to Be “Inspiring” All the Time
There is a strange pressure placed on a lot of disabled people that often goes unchallenged because it is disguised as praise. We are expected to be inspiring. Not sometimes. Not naturally when a real moment happens to be moving. Constantly. People want us to be brave, uplifting, resilient, grateful, and positive in ways that make disability easier for everyone else to look at. They want a version of disabled life that teaches a lesson, warms the heart, or restores faith in the human spirit. What they often do not want is the full truth. They do not want the anger, the burnout, the boredom, the grief, the bureaucracy, the pain, the money stress, the access barriers, the exhaustion, or the emotional flatness that can come with simply trying to live in systems that were not built with disabled people in mind. That is part of what makes this expectation so exhausting. Disabled people are often treated like we are acceptable only when our lives can be turned into something motivatio...
