Recognizing Our Shared Human Frailty

For Disability Pride Month, Nicole Calma-Roddin, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology and counseling, talks about her experience as a disabled person and what that means to her.

There are so many things I want to tell you about disability. For instance, disability is relatively common. According to the CDC, 27 percent of adults in the United States are disabled. I feel I should say something about ableism. Ableism is so baked into our culture that—as a disabled person—I’m still learning and working to be more anti-ableist myself. I want to tell you about the social model of disability and why it’s so important. Instead, I’m going to tell you about what I’m celebrating about disability lately.

Of course, every disabled person’s experience is different. For me, I have been disabled for most of my life. I started using the word “disabled” tentatively less than a decade ago on forms asking about my disability status. I’ve only started identifying as being disabled in the last five years. The more I embrace my identity as a person who is disabled, the freer I feel. Being disabled means I don’t need to do things the way everyone else does or try to fit in a mold that never seemed to fit. Maybe none of us should be trying to fit into a mold anyway.

In my experience, being disabled has meant learning to be patient. I’m bad at this, but I have had to learn the pacing that my body and mind need. As someone with a dynamic disability (a condition that can fluctuate in severity and impact), this pace is different from day to day and sometimes hour to hour. I don’t always get it right. And it can be frustrating. But disability has taught me to learn to listen and pay attention to my needs. Everyone has needs, whether they have a disability or not, and we all can learn to listen to our needs and the needs of others. We all can learn to honor these needs as valid and important. In disability culture, though, this is just more common.

My disabled friends and I know what it’s like for our bodies to be unpredictable or to feel inconvenient. Sometimes, one of us has a high pain day when we’re supposed to get together or video chat. It’s disappointing, but plans get rescheduled and follow-up texts are sent to see if they’re feeling better. There is comfort in knowing we’ll be met with grace and care.

Sometimes, my disability highlights my interdependence. This might look like someone else driving me to a doctor’s appointment or my husband checking a food’s ingredient label for my allergens when I’m experiencing fatigue. None of us are independent, though, even if we often like to think of ourselves this way. We are all able to survive only because of the efforts of others growing our food, building the streets we drive on, and creating the technologies that allow us to connect to others and find information using our phones.

To me, being disabled means recognizing our shared human frailty while simultaneously affirming the value of each life. The more I connect with the disability community and embrace my own disabled body, mind, and life, the more I want every body and mind to be seen as valuable and to be treated with dignity, making me more committed to justice and a world where we all can flourish.