Her daughter spilled out next, her plump old pug under an arm like a football, her long hair catching the sun.

The noon sun was warm and bright, and the lake was glass.

Her daughter pulled the sunglasses gently from her mother's long blond hair and settled them over her nose.

“We’re the only ones here,” she mused.

Her mother turned in a full circle to survey the surroundings.

“We’re the only ones here!” She yelled, and her daughter laughed.

“What do you think, Lovely, should we check this place out or what?”

She turned to engage the dog in the special affectionate tone she reserved just for her. She responded by turning in a few circles and bolting off down the dirt path.

Her brother stayed behind to fire up the grill, while the girls caught up to the dogs.

She kept pace with her daughter, the path wide enough for a car so she had plenty of room to veer slightly off course while gazing up at the trees: Desert Ironwood and Palo Verdes, Arizona Sycamore and Velvet Mesquite.

The streets of her hometown were named for these trees. As a girl she would fly down Mesquite on Rollerblades, knobby knees bent to distribute her weight; glide again then up Oak, stroking one able, agile limb further up the hill than the next.

She would climb them too, the trees. Should she reach a branch and find it unyielding she’d scramble atop it, scratching bare summer skin on bark, hurling herself into the leaves of the giant Mulberry trees in the front yard of her childhood home in Autumn.

Daddy called her a tree-hugger; she’d cried when roots were cut once, to make way for sanitation piping.

She had felt ashamed.

In the trees she felt a comfort, a belonging. She would step lightly on the exposed roots of the base and wrap her arms about the trunk.

And the endless chatter of her mind would silence, the nervous energy of her spirit settle.

Drinking in their beauty now her soul is no less at peace.

The sky was bright blue and the sun shone through the trees making the leaves appear neon in nature and almost iridescent. The slight breeze playing with the branches gave off an illusion of glitter.

The cicadas screeched and sparrows darted. Later there would be half a dozen species of dragonflies on the water.

Ahead of her now, her daughter’s own head was tipped to admire the trees, and she would occasionally bounce off the path to scramble up into one; she was fourteen now but so unlike her peers who seemed so immersed in social media; she preferred the wild abandon of nature to society like her mother.

The road wrapped the lake and Lovely stopped to poke in some bushes and she sat for a moment in the shade of a giant Cottonwood and turned her face to the sun.

All year the skin on her cheeks is kissed by the sun. The comforting warm wraps her in its welcome and she’s known to chase it from the shadows. She never grimaced at the glide of perspiration down her back all her years of labor. To be afforded the opportunity to work under it had always been a blessing to her.

She hadn’t been so proud of the carbon footprint she had dug so deep into her precious Earth during her time in the trades. Certainly it was selfish, she imagined, to enjoy a world you were destroying.

Yet all her life she’d felt peace outside, and like this, in nature. At home. Grounded.

As a child she’d cavorted about the gulch near her neighborhood, her worn sneakers forging paths between Brittlebush and Manzanita. Always, a dog at her side then too.

“Let’s go see about that lake!”

This time she took off first and the dogs and her daughter were quick to catch up.

At the picnic site they ate, and her brother took Lovely for a swim.

She wondered briefly if her family knew she was content. Sometimes she noted earnest hope in their eyes. She often told them she was without envy. She felt no less connected to the enchanting world than she did as a girl.

Returning, Lovely shook cold droplets on her, as she squealed, trapped.

The cool drops smelled of moss and mud and childhood.

“Some of the leaves are changing,” her brother said, plucking a yellow one for her.

Closing her eyes she felt the delicate veins of the leaf, still warm from the sun, still warm with life.

The sun was soon to sink. They watched the shades of orange and red slip out of sight behind the mountains. She thought their shape resembled that of a dolphin; her daughter saw a tiger in the sky.

“You guys ready?” Her brother put out the joint they’d smoked.

Her daughter caressed her mother’s upturned cheek with the leaf one more time and she smiled as the girl tucked it between the fingers of her left hand lying supine in her lap.

With a tap of her head, she navigated her power wheelchair to the van ramp.

Loitering lazily near the door to my shared room, she's still in her night cap, coffee in hand. She glances disapprovingly from me to my roommate before disappearing into our bathroom to shower.

If she were kind, I’d have requested a blanket. If she was indifferent, I’d have noted my catheter bag needed draining.

But she decided she hated me the moment she laid eyes on me, so I say nothing. Let her enjoy that coffee and a nice shower and likely she’ll berate me less during my morning care routine.

To her, I’m a body. A body with fluids and without motor function. A body she’s not paid enough to take care of at a facility that doesn’t give her a day off.

In the perspective of those who exploit her labor, and my disability, I’m not even a body, just a name, a Medicaid check.

Of course some caregivers are in it because they care. I’ve gotten lucky with multiple. If not for their tender care, humanity, dignity, and grace, I would certainly be at risk of internalizing the perspectives of the caregivers who hate me for my needs.

At first, perhaps, I wouldn’t have begrudged them any degree of neglect or cruelty. I hated my broken body with its supine and stubborn limbs more vehemently than another person possibly could.

I’d wrapped my worth up tight in motor function and pretty privilege until life swept my feet out from under me.

Even now sometimes I bite back the urge to point to the contributions that able body made to the world.

This body birthed and raised a child.

I worked in the trades; she lacked nothing.

But in the years since punching my ticket to the margins of society with only a parking pass as incentive, I’ve cultivated a new sense of pride in my work.

I’m late for it now, my deadline to turn in a piece for the law firm. And this book I’m writing isn’t going to write itself.

But the caregiver is still in the shower, loud gospel music floating into my room, disturbing my terminally ill old roomie and she cries out.

Finally it’s my turn. She’s allowed my catheter bag to fill up, and the bed is soiled. She scowls at me.

“She pissed the bed again,” the caregiver grumbles loudly, announcing to her coworker in the kitchen. The whole house probably hears. My cheeks burn with shame as if I’m a naughty child, but the embarrassment quickly fades to indignation.

I’m not a naughty child. I’m an adult with valid contributions to make in life. I just need a little extra help.

Those who shame people for needing help should truly be ashamed of themselves.

It's unsurprising, however unsettling, that those obligated by employment to meet those needs do so with a chip on their shoulder.

The owners of the facility are primarily concerned with the lucrative aspects of long term care. They hire immigrants on temporary visas, promising some kind of American experience that doesn’t involve around the clock catering to this entitled woman who can only move her head.

She grumbles at my body while she dresses it.

My arms and legs are stiff and contracted. She knows moving slowly is less painful for me. She hurries.

“You’re not the only resident here you know.”

As if she gives a damn about any of us.

My limbs wouldn’t be so stiff if I had access to regular passive range of motion therapy. At the last facility it had been denied entirely.

Physical therapy was for restorative therapy services, insurance said. Prevention of deterioration wasn’t covered.

I tried to appeal to the rushed aides but they seemed to have been taught that stretching me was an unnecessary “extra”, something done “if there’s extra time” but there never was.

This part of my care isn’t “extra”. That’s not equity.

Finally I called the director of nursing. I explained that just a few minutes of stretching made a huge difference and I could see I was already deteriorating. My hands were balled in fists and my knees excruciating to bend.

“You know, you’re going to deteriorate anyway,” the director of nursing retorted.

In that moment I felt so small, so helpless. I didn’t matter to the world. My pain didn’t matter. Let me suffer. My body? Just let it cripple up. No one cared.

Tears stung my eyes and indignation dripped from my tone when I found my voice to reply.

No, not at all. I am well educated in spinal cord injury and contracture and spasticity can absolutely be prevented with adequate physical therapy. Range of motion exercises are a vital part of quadriplegic care and make a big difference in our quality of life.

As she attempted to avoid accountability for the neglect and subsequent deterioration in this way I could only think with horror of the people who don’t have the voice or the words to demand proper care. Were their needs neglected too, comfort not considered?

My rage against the machine that sorts people who are different into cold little boxes away from mainstream society is nothing short of righteous.

Upon advocating for my right to bend my knees and spread my fingers, I realized that deteriorating is what happens in understaffed facilities.

Without a federal standard for “residents per aide” and “time per resident” in nursing facilities of course the health and the bodies of the residents are going to deteriorate faster. When State insurance doesn’t cover passive range of motion for non ambulatory residents those individuals will deteriorate faster.

The biggest problem of all is the monopoly the institutions have on long-term care. That’s why I’m here. Life would look much different if my government benefits had covered adequate home and community based services instead.

So many long nights of suffering and morning guilt trips would have been avoided. The muscles in my arms and legs would have experienced less atrophy. My tailbone would not have been compromised from the pressure of extended hours in bed. My self worth and pride would not have been stomped on by overworked, understaffed caregivers.

I do not report the neglect because I know how far it will get me with management. Last time I complained about the long hours confined to bed, management had gas-lit me with accusations of lacking appreciation for corners they’d claimed to cut for me.

So I ignore her even as she makes me her punching bag.

“Look at me, I’m sweating.”

Now she’s mad I don’t want the air conditioning unit by my bed turned on. My body can’t regulate its temperature so well. I’m in extreme discomfort, shivering, teeth chattering.

She switches the unit on anyway.

She will insult my character as a person repeatedly if I display impatience or anxiety or if I act entitled to care. I wish I had thicker skin. At least I’d be warmer.

When the tears come they aren't for theatrics but she berates me for them.

“You need to think about your caregivers.”

I close my eyes. I do. I love my caregivers and sometimes they even love me.

If there’s one thing disability has taught me it’s gratitude.

I have gratitude for the hands of even the cruelest caregiver but there’s a special place in my heart for the compassionate ones, and the ones who see me.

Caregivers seem to either see me as a strong and capable woman who has rolled through the fire and lived to help drag others through it, and they respect me and tend to my needs with concern and take advantage of my knowledge and everything I can teach them- Or they are frustrated and uninterested because they see me as nothing but a burden: mouth to feed, ass to wipe, way too many pillows to adjust at night.

There will always be caregivers in whose perspective I will be nothing but a burden. No amount of friendly charm, shared anecdotal wisdom, self-deprecating humor, or patience and compromise on my part will make them see me. Their job could be much more rewarding; I love to teach my caregivers new things, make them laugh, inspire them. Many turn into longtime friends.

I have a lot of love for my caregivers who see me as not a broken woman with nothing left to give, but an ambitious, driven and relatively young woman with a lot left to give, a life ahead of me and goals, and a productive and busy mind full of anecdotal wisdom. Those who look at me like my life is over and I don’t matter anymore if I ever did anyway, see me as nothing but a broken body with a life behind me- they would likely be exactly that in my shoes. I don’t need weak people like that as my caregivers.

I’m not a nightmare to take care of. I’m a nice lady who can be interesting and fun to talk to while caregivers perform my routine care. Being guilt-tripped for expecting paid caregivers to do their job efficiently is not a problem I should be forced to face.

I was institutionalized at 37, victim of the national caregiver crisis but my residency is temporary. I’m in grad school and working with vocational rehab. The goal is independent living, and the capacity to pay for quality in home care. It’s a yard, a dog, a van. It’s a career. It’s being part of the world out there.

For now, I pass my days outside under a towering pine tree. I stay busy at putting forth good into the world. I volunteer for nonprofits and write for humanitarian organizations. I talk to my therapist and practice cognitive skills to shape a positive perspective and view of myself.

I love this body that “pisses the bed” if a caregiver doesn’t do their job right. I’m entitled to quality care. Every single person in a country this wealthy should be. I’m over here pulling up my bootstraps with no hands; I won’t let my character be diminished by people who my government holds accountable for my care. I’ve bit my tongue to save my ass but my voice demands an ear now.

I’m resilient and relentless. I’m compassionate and sensitive. I’m proud of who I am. Hanging onto her and believing in her in the face of doubt, discrimination and downright neglect has been challenging.

But I’m here.

Out in the sun under my tree I breathe easy.

I remind myself that other people’s opinions of me aren’t necessarily valid. I hear my Mama’s voice reminding me that all that matters is what I think of myself. I recall the words of my favorite philosopher Marcus Aurelius who said to be your own spectator and seek your own applause.

Then I spend the morning paying these ideas forward because that’s who I am.

I just need a little help.

My favorite local diner’s lights defy the blizzard, too. My brother pulls the van into the lot but doesn’t cut the engine yet. My daughter scrambles to locate the blankets, proceeds to tuck them around my body in my wheelchair.

It’s operated by applying taps to a head rest, with my head. We use what we’ve got.

Life hasn’t slowed with the storm, local college coeds accustomed to the ice and acquainted with their breath on a visual level most mornings year round. Tonight is no exception, a handful of handsome, half-drunken frat boys eager to open the door to the diner for us and let us take the next available table.

“We’re in town for the metal show,” my brother volunteers.

We look the part too; I’ve got on my leather and spikes, fresh pink in my hair.

I pull my power chair up alongside a table because I can’t get my legs under it.

Outside the window Route 66 streams by us in a steady river of red, orange and white light, distorted and fuzzy from the fog and flakes.

I’d hated driving in this community, I recall suddenly. I relate this to my teenage daughter who was just a small child then.

“Always too many cars and not enough space.”

“Or buildings,” she adds, too quickly for the response to be a premeditated dig at my prior construction career; her innocent and ancient connection to Earth always reminded me to get in tune with mine.

I miss the jobsites though; I miss the grind. I miss driving the forklift down the highway in the snow, gloved fingers gripping the wheel.

I built a fire station here a lifetime ago; and North Country Medical Center over on Fourth Street. I had worked on the new gym for the high school on the nearby Navajo reservation and worked at the local steel fabrication shop, watching the snow fall outside the big garage doors and keeping warm by the exhaust of my welding machine.

My career was ripped from me with my spinal cord injury a year ago, as rudely as the motor and sensory function below my shoulders had been removed in an instant with the crush of my C4 vertebrae.

I’m determined to let the disability deter me from my adventures exactly as much as I let my gender and a little bit of snow scare me back in my day.

Facing the challenges of complete quadriplegia make walking the steel welding a torch feel like child’s play though.

I’d be lost without my precious family.

My daughter orders breakfast for dinner. She doesn’t care that she’s not old enough to attend the show, at just 15. She’s ecstatic because I let her boyfriend tag along, and they’ll be unsupervised while we’re at the concert with my friends.

It’s probably not the smartest decision I’ve made as a mother, even lately, but the dynamic between my daughter and I is forever altered with my disability. The caregiving roles are reversed. I lack the finances and resources to afford me the opportunity to lean on her less. I give her so much responsibility with my care, it’s hard not extending her adult autonomy in other areas of her life where she probably needs me to do the opposite.

“Are you excited Mom?” Haley stabs a waffle drenched in syrup and waves it at me to get my attention.

I open my mouth to answer, and my brother, distracted by his conversation with our friend Ian who has arrived, sticks a French fry in it. My daughter and I laugh but he’s still oblivious.

I am self conscious about eating with assistance in public. But I’m determined to normalize this life. I refuse to hate my life. I have too much pride.

“I am SO fucking excited,” I assure her, and my excitement is no fabrication.

Otep is my favorite artist. Her words descended to the Hell my mental illness dragged me to so frequently and they resonated with my crushed soul, soothed it somehow, lifted it back to the light, alchemized my heart from cold hard stone to steel refined in fire.

She found me again, supine and terrified, self worth shriveled, spine crushed. She reminded me again, of the hidden spring of inner strength: yes, that same one my brother’s old Greco-Roman Stoics spoke of; that burning light within that Christ touched on in the Gnostic scriptures; that ancient energy of Gaia- Mother Earth and my ancestors.

Even now, I call on it.

We use what we’ve got. I’ve still got my connection to this universe, even if I can’t wrap my arms around it or grab it by the balls anymore.

Despite my eager excitement, I’m exhausted from breathing in the mountain air. The cold exacerbates my neuropathy. My arms and legs scream and stream with fire. My muscles spasm involuntarily. A foot taps obnoxiously on its footrest, threatening to spill off it completely until my daughter discreetly presses her hand to my knee to calm the tremor.

“Should we go?” My brother asks.

My blood pressure has risen. In a flash the heats crawls up my face, which begins to drip sweat.

Any minute now and my heart will begin to pound hard as if I have just ran a marathon.

Yes, there it is.

With the adrenaline comes indignation, with the suffering, self pity.

The journey alone had been overwhelming. The cold is cruel and vicious to strike so certainly upon my arrival. And now, my parasympathetic nervous system works against me too. My body, missing all memos from the brain, has given the mind a certain message:

Nope. No amount of will can power a body so broken.

Tears sting my eyes.

I see the look exchanged between my family and it pulls more pain from my chest. How I hate letting them down. How I hate listening to a body that makes no effort to listen to me.

But if my blood pressure keeps rising, I’ll be in the hospital.

We will head back to the hotel for a bit. The opening acts will take forever anyway. Maybe my symptoms will subside.

My brother starts the van and runs around to throw open the big double doors on the passenger side. He pushes the button to lower the wheelchair ramp.

Nothing happens.

“Grab it here, bro, shake it!”

My brother and Ian struggle to fight the ramp.

My teeth chatter uncontrollably. The sweat on my face feels frozen. At least my blood pressure has dropped.

The teenagers huddle close to me like bodyguards, holding my thick Apache blanket tight around me so the wind can’t whisk it away. Our breath hovers in front of us, a collective cloud.

At last the frozen lift gives, and with a cheer of relief we pile in, the heater running so long it’s warm inside already, and I’m thinking, I’ve got this.

At the hotel our golden retriever, Lovely, bounds out of the room and into the blizzard to greet us the moment the door to the room my brother rented before dinner is opened.

Inside we smoke a joint.

The cannabis calms my nerve pain and anxiety. I’m ready to do this.

“You don’t have to push yourself if it’s too much.”

Yes I do.

But no, it isn’t.

In the parking lot at the club where I met frat boys a decade ago, Ian bangs on a back door.

In seconds bouncers rush out, equipped with a tarp. Sheltered all the way, I’m ushered into the venue, the bouncers parting the crowd like the Red Sea, one yelling into my ear:

“How close you wanna be?”

“How close can I get?” My voice is lost in the noise but he reads my eyes.

“Let’s get her front and center!”

The crowd greets us like old friends, loving on my hair, fist bumping my supine hands.

The accepting, loving atmosphere that is prevalent in the heavy metal community isn’t understood by outsiders but I’m at home among the misfits, perhaps even more so now.

I feel Nicole’s arms around my neck before I see her face. Our delighted shouts at each other are immediately swallowed by the room: Quirky, crazy Nicole in her unicorn leggings, and sweet Levi with his long curls and bohemian scarf- my dearest friends.

My heart soars. My spirit flies. My body is just along for the ride.

Being mindful of gratitude is new for me. It’s ironic; I appreciate life more now than I ever did when I was able and agile. Perhaps it is the perspective that the near death experience had lent.

I’d been wide awake in the aftermath of the car crash. For too many long moments I lay with my face in my lap and a mouthful of hair, the driver screaming that I was dead, as I doubled over motionless.

I’d wanted to scream out to the whole world that I most certainly wasn’t. It sounds impossible but I felt real gratitude as I waited on paramedics to cut the car apart to get me out.

I knew I’d broken my neck. But I hadn’t stopped breathing.

And I hadn’t hit my head.

I hadn’t hit my head!

I could still be a mother. I could still communicate. I could still learn. I could still write. I’d figure it all out.

In the months that followed as I had fought to regain the autonomy just to breathe on my own though, there were many dark moments in which I struggled so significantly to find the light I managed to see somehow from my initial position in that flipped SUV.

I considered myself a corpse, called myself a ghost in a shell.

I’ve come so far because of the people who convinced me I was more than that. I convinced myself of my worth, put myself to work. I write with my teeth.

We use what we’ve got.

I’ve got my mind, and my mouth. I’ve got my ears, lean into the lyrics, resonate with the beat, release with the screams.

“Alright mother fuckers! I want every last one of you to jump the fuck up!”

Suddenly my heart plummets. Certain verbs still slap my face with harsh reality.

Run, walk, climb, swim, dance, hug, jump.

I can’t jump. Not even when my favorite artist in the world says how high.

But then she looks right at me. She grins and extends her arm straight out to point at me so no mistake is made.

“And you. I want you to bang your head!”

The crowd of metal heads around me roars in approval. My brother raises my arm above my head and Nicole manipulates my fingers into devil horns.

We use what we’ve got.

I bang my head.

I’m no ghost tonight, no corpse. I’m seen. I’m loved. There’s still adventure in this world within my reach. There’s still the sun on my face and the snow in my hair. Dopamine for my brain and music for my taste.

I was ashamed of my body, limp and useless and shapeless. I hid away in dark rooms.

I snorted with distaste when friends encouraged me to view the videos posted by the disabled community online.

“Inspiration porn,” I dismissed.

“Exploitation,” I snapped.

My heart was too heavy to hold on my own though, and it existed in pieces as shattered as my vertebrae.

I was an island amid a sea of arms and legs that still moved at will and command; I alone sat like a stone while the world happened around me.

But one can only wallow so long in the depths of misery alone; misery loves her company after all.

I didn’t dare seek it in spinal cord injury circles for fear their stories would terrify me, or alternatively, that I’d be rejected by members who were further along on their journey toward acceptance.

I clung instead to the life I’d led on legs, with a hopeless hope that was surely as evil as Nietzsche said. My prognosis was permanent, the vertebrae crush complete.

Outside of affordable medical advancement, I’d only be capable of moving my head, neck and shoulders, for the rest of my life.

Adverse to reaching out to other minds trapped in bodies, afraid of both what I’d find and what I'd covet, I dragged my able bodied loved ones into my Hell instead, until gradually they crawled their way out only to leave me alone again.

Philosophy found me deep in the flames; the Stoics promised they’d polish my stone to a gem, but that it was going to burn before it felt better.

Stoic philosophy challenged me to stay in the present when I wanted nothing more than to shut myself in the memoir I was writing of my past.

In my mind’s eye I watched the woman I was do everything I couldn’t. From my place supine in bed I’d see her cross the room on able legs, throw open the curtains with able arms.

I imagined her back on the jobsite, romping the forklift too fast, tying off to a steel beam three stories up, welding under nothing but the blue sky. I saw her on the open road flying up the coast, saw her dancing in her little black dress, swinging my daughter up onto her shoulders. How I missed her muscles, her autonomy, her life. I’d be happy just to go to the bathroom normally again.

Upon embracing concepts of acceptance and perseverance found in philosophy, and upon floundering to find my place in a world again, I felt ready to connect with my peers in the spinal cord injury community.

I was ready to join the club.

I wanted to be inspired.

And I felt like I finally had something to give back to my disabled community.

Connecting with a community of individuals, especially women, who felt exactly the same way brought so much solidarity and relief to my world.

Tiffany and Shannon were just like me: single moms with teenage daughters at the time of our injury. Monica used to be in construction and missed the grind, too. Then there was Jenn, a gun control activist following the shooting that left her paralyzed, and Gina, who just got her law degree without her hands, and Jordan, who had sustained the same level of injury as me, a teacher!

Every member of the spinal cord injury social media support groups I began joining had a before and after story to tell.

A body changed, a career lost, a lifestyle limited.

Some of us are further along on our journeys. I let them inspire me.

Some of us are miserable and just need the company. I provide it more than I seek it. Quietly, I want to be one of the inspirational ones.

I start small. Words of affirmation. Empathy, straight up sympathy; both a far cry from the pity able bodied people have to offer.

Perspective is different when you’re technically both drowning; one might just float a little better.

It wasn’t that sympathy from my loved ones didn’t feel genuine, not exactly anyway. But how genuine could you be from the shore, on legs, warm, dry? You don’t know that cold, black abyss. Surely there was a hierarchy to suffering, I staked the claim privately.

The inability to lift a hand and scratch your nose. The body’s inability to regulate its temperature, always too hot or cold. The flaring autonomic dysreflexia that brought racing heartbeats and cold sweats. The long days in bed when caregivers didn’t show, the institutionalization when COVID-19 hit.

No, these things you discuss in circles of trust where pity is left at the gate and empathy binds us in solidarity through our suffering.

Where we can curse the staff that neglect our care, curse our bodies that ignore our will, curse our friends and family who don’t understand. . . Because anger is OK and it needs space to breathe. Because we understand one another’s right to a quality life and expressed entitlement. Because we share an incredible and profound traumatic loss.

In these private places healing and growth doesn’t always look like anger. Sometimes it’s hilarious.

One of my favorite philosophers, Seneca the Younger, a Greco-Roman Stoic, said “Draw further back and laugh.”

If you zoom out enough, the absurdity of many a challenge faced cannot be denied. Our support groups are rife with inside jokes, self depreciating and politically incorrect.

We share sarcastic memes about the marginalization and ableism we encounter. We laugh at the weird things our bodies do. We post photos when we fall out of our wheelchairs. We love when comedians target us, but our own people do it best.

Emotions aside, the online community is also a huge resource for accessing tools for daily living.

We tell each other all the tips and tricks we’ve learned for making life easier and ask specific questions seeking advice.

As I began growing on my personal journey I shared the philosophy I learned but I wanted to help more. I began to research government benefits and legislation so I could help members with those tough questions too.

That’s when I was recruited by a nationwide nonprofit and offered a position in mentorship outreach coordination.

For a long time I thought I wanted nothing in this world more than my able body back.

While that’s probably still true, it isn’t a picture I think of often. That picture is different now.

She’s reflected back at me in courageous eyes and immobile bodies.

Women who throw back their heads and laugh because we can still do that.

Wheelchair warriors in every sense of the word without a hint of inspiration porn or exploitation.

Iron minds in broken bodies.

Hands that lift each other up, no motor function required.

Wheels that rolled out of the fire, clearing the path for others to follow.

I’m in good company with human rights activists and disability advocates, authors and artists and individuals who prove autonomy is possible.

I wish I had participated in the club when I first became an involuntary member, following that unlucky car accident a decade ago now.

Now I appreciate my place in the community. I’m validated by the work I do within it. I’m supported in my personal life by dear friends I’ve made within it. My community celebrates my successes, sits with me in pain, and occasionally still drags me from Hell.

I’m a better person for it.

Sometimes I marvel that I am a better person for this disability. Prior to it I hadn’t been too concerned with giving back to anyone.

Perhaps it’s no wonder I was such an island.

But when all you have left is your mind, and all you have left is your character, you want to grow; you’re desperate for visibility and identity and validation.

You want to understand and be understood, heard and needed.

I’m grateful to my club for providing that space, from solidarity between two moms, to 100+ wishes of wellness in hard times in community groups, to trading tangible tools for doing this disabled thing, we’re all in this together.

I’m not looking at pictures anymore. I look in the mirror and I’m proud of this body that quit on me; inside there’s a strong mind that didn’t. If that’s inspiration porn, I’ll let it pass.

Check out my memoir on Amazon