What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?

I lost my mum last year. Like everyone who looses a parent, I never thought I would have to say that sentence.

My mum has always been a big part of the work I do. She spell checked everything, she let me explain it to her 100 times. She was always behind me.

You may have noticed there was a spelling mistake in the web address for this blog, I fixed it now. But if I had my mum that would have never been there.

So my mum was a big help with the start of my masters dissertation, but I’m really struggling to get it finished without her. In all honesty I’m struggling to find the motivation to even try.

But what does this have to do with inacessiblity? I wouldn’t be writing about this here if it was unrelated.

As a physically disabled person, who is academically capable there is a lot of pressure for me to do well in academia. I’ve had this pressure from able people who say I shouldn’t let my disability hold me back. And from disabled people who say I owe it to the disabled people who can’t succeed in academia, to succeed in academia.

Both sides of my life, both halves of the whole, mean well and they just want me to succeed. I want to succeed.

But sometimes that’s a lot of pressure.

One of the reasons I was initially pushed away from active activism for disabled people when I was young, was because of the pressure.

But without my mum sometimes it feels like I’ll never be able to navigate the pressure again.

I used to pride myself on never having missed a deadline. But when mum got sick I obviously took a break. And that break meant that I missed the initial deadline. I missed a deadline and the world did not end. And honestly sometimes that feels a little rude. The world should have ended when I failed as a disabled academic, when I missed a deadline. The world should have ended when my mum died, right?

But it didn’t, and this deadline still looms over me. I don’t want to fail when I’m so close to succeeding. I really hope I won’t but I’m honestly not sure right now.

If the world were more accessible to me I wouldn’t be forced to put all my eggs in one basket like this.

My deadline is the end of April, wish me luck please. I feel like I need it.

Miss you forever mummy 💜