Wednesday, 21 November 2012

What is Disability Revolution?


Introduction

My life was not meant to be like this, to turn out this way; perhaps that is the case for everyone but I went from being a fit and healthy twenty-eight year old law graduate working for a governmental agency to a thirty-five year old unemployed nobody with a disability.


The Revolution of a Life

If you cannot tell from my words above, having a disability hurts me mentally as well as physically: so not only have I had to come to terms with living with a disability but I have had to come to terms with having the ‘disability’ label too. But, perhaps, now or from now on, everything will change: this blog will be a revolution of my thoughts, from denial to acceptance and beyond, that I can and I will realise my potential because of my disability rather than despite it.
 

The Revolution of Pain Management

My disability is chronic pain; silently hidden but constantly violent, like a rabid rodent crawling through my insides, aggravatingly gnawing at me, making me reliant on medication and ripping out hope of freedom, happiness, a life; or so I thought. For Disability Revolution will also be a diary of my attempt to overcome the pain, or at least tame it: taking on and living to a new program, one of absolute pacing, rest (but not too much), exercise and using distraction and relaxation techniques.

 
The Revolution of Society

As I have battled myself to accept my fate (as only you can do, for that is what fate is), so too have I had to fight to overcome the barriers, challenges and stigma of the disability ‘label’, even with what I felt was having a favourable background. So Disability Revolution will be the voice of anyone with a disability, to revolutionise the widely held views, or what some might say prejudices, on disability: to prove that disability is nothing but a mere weakness, difference, a foible of humanity.

 
The Revolution of Politics

If my disability has taught me anything, it is that it could strike anyone at any moment; I know because it happened to me, though you would not think so from the shameful rhetoric of this coalition government and its right-wing media accomplices. So Disability Revolution will campaign against the tyranny raging against those with disability, who label everyone with a disability and claiming benefits as a malingerer, using rare examples of abuse of the system as the norm rather than the rarity they are.

 
Conclusion

So… ‘I’m gonna start a revolution from my bed…’


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