I miss my mum of course, but this is of course not an inaccessibile situation, unless you believe that the world is completely inaccessibile when you loose someone you love, and honestly I’m trying to figure that out. But as a disabled person they’re other things I grieve, and struggle to say goodbye to.

Describe the last difficult “goodbye” you said.

There was a point in my life where I thought one day I would suddenly no longer be disabled. This was because there was so little representation of adults with my condition, I literally thought it was something that you grew out of when you became an adult.

So at some point in my life I had to say goodbye to the person I thought I would one day be. I had to accept my limitations, more accurately the limitations placed on me by the world I live in. And revaluate what I want to achieve within the realm of that.

I don’t like that the word limits me. But I owe it to myself to recognise that these limitations, and to not allow myself to feel guilty for not overcoming them.

Within this, I faced several goodbye within myself, several elements I had to let go of. The idea of being a dancer, the idea of being a parent, the idea of being able to live independently, the idea of being a teacher as my primary source of income. These are all things I wanted for my life that I have had to let go of.

As disabled people I think we need to allow ourselves to deal and process our disenfranchised grief. There is no shame or devaluation from any emotions. And I believe pretending that I don’t feel them, as I tried to do for many years, doesn’t actually mean I didn’t feel them.

This mantra applies to so many areas of my life, which suggests I am dealing with a lot of goodbyes to myself and a lot of areas of grief and disenfranchised grief.

Whatever you feel about a situation is valid, and you should be allowed to feel that without guilt. You are allowed to struggle, I am allowed to struggle with saying goodbye to who I thought I could be and who I wanted to be.

Miss you forever mummy 💜