Editor’s note: This is Pat Flewwelling’s first post with the Spoonie Authors Network. Welcome, Pat! Grampa used to park his car umpteen kilometers away from work and then bike the rest of the way. By then, his hip was about 75% disintegrated, and he used a cane. In his off-hours, he worked for Gideons and … Continue reading
Welcome to our first series of 2020: Internalized Ableism. In the upcoming weeks, a SpAN contributor will share about how ingesting ableist narratives has affected their life. So, a general content note about this series is that it includes themes of internalized and externalized ableism. For decades, I’ve managed some type of chronic pain. I … Continue reading
My body is twitchy. A tiny increase in pressure, a centimetre difference in a sidewalk slope, even a minuscule shift of someone’s buttocks on the sofa cushion beside mine can cause waves of pain to fire up my spine, sliding my bad hip out of place and burning through my thighs and calves. I wince … Continue reading
I love genealogy, especially since I discovered my late father descended from English kings, including Richard III—although I did have to delete his father’s line in 2012 (see article from The Guardian). This is relevant because my father’s family includes a lot of people with scoliosis, just like Richard III, or as I call him now, … Continue reading
I am a fan. A lot of us disabled people are fans. We are already socially ostracised, so many of us don’t fear being stared at or judged. At the time of writing this post, I had just spent the weekend at Fan Expo Canada, a venue that I have attended for several years, to … Continue reading
