Tag: Grief

Today’s been tough.

On By Katy DalyIn My Disability TruthLeave a comment

Some days needing help is hard. I think that the people that don’t rely on the help of others everyday of there lives, look at those of us that do, and think we have it easy. And I won’t lie to you, some days it’s nice to not have to do things for myself, but most days are neural that’s just the way things are. Today however has been very difficult for me.

For the first time in a very long while I very seriously did not want to be disabled today, I did not want to be me. I struggled massively with these emotions growing up, to admit such can be a bit of taboo within the disabled community but it is my truth, at least for today, at least for now.

Honestly, I started this post several days ago, in what I guess was the peak of these feelings, but I honestly couldn’t bring myself to finish writing it or to post it at the time. There still hanging around but seem to be somewhat simmering down in me again.

Even though I have been disabled my whole life, these emotions can sometimes take you by surprise. It’s almost like I’m constantly grieving something if that makes sense. Abstractly this feels weird to explain when you’ve always been disabled, they may assume it’s your norm and so should not be difficult to deal with. But no matter how long you’ve been dealing with whatever you’ve been dealing with sometimes it just hits you, sometimes it’s just hard.

All this aside today, I will be going out with my friends. Here’s hoping it helps me feel a little bit more, insert other taboo word, ‘normal’.

Honestly I can’t say that this is okay, as such, because it isn’t. If you’re struggling, when I’m struggling it’s not okay. But I can say that it is okay to feel however you feel about something, and I hope you feel better about it soon.

Personal belongings.

On By Katy DalyIn Writing Prompts2 Comments

What personal belongings do you hold most dear?

I feel like I’m supposed to answer this question with an accessible aid, like my most obvious one, my wheelchair. However for me this just isn’t true.

While my wheelchair is of course massively important to me and necessary for my life, she’s called Betci. Quick side note: I know that’s not how you spell that name usually, but I decided as a child that that’s how her name would be spelt and so that’s how it’s spelt.

I’ve often said that for me I’d be more lost without my phone than my chair. As this is how I access the world, through the Internet, in a way that is most accessible to me.

This is part of why I get frustrated when people make ignorant statements like ‘phones are bad’ or ‘social media is bad’. As to me this just simply isn’t true, but I’m getting distracted.

So I could say my phone is one belonging I hold dear, because of what it allows me to do. And the same would apply to my wheelchair. But there are also other objects or belongings that I hold dear that I don’t require in the way I do my phone or my chair.

One such object is my Winnie the pooh Teddy, pictured below.

Image Description: A yellow modern Winnie the Pooh Teddy, wearing its traditional T Shirt with the text ‘Winnie the Pooh’ written in yellow text. The teddy is also wrapped in a grey scarf with a small see-through bag visible.

Now this teddy comes to most places with me at the moment, since my mother’s passing. Usually wrapped in a child’s coat to keep it protected. This is a slightly older photo and there are now these items as well as several more wrapped around Winnie in a variety of ways, that are personal to me as they relate to my mum. So in many ways, Winnie is multiple belongings that are important to me. The teddy itself also has significance, but that’s not something I wish to get into right now.

I don’t know how long I will carry Winnie with me. All I can say right now is that I will carry him with me for the conceivable future.

Let Winnie be your reminder that you should do whatever makes you comfortable in a situation no matter what other people may think.

Tattoos are weirdly accessible

On By Katy DalyIn BlogLeave a comment

What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?

The first picture is a picture of both my dogs, the second picture is a picture of my existing tatto, and the third picture is of my Winnie the Pooh Teddy.

I got my first tattoo in December just gone, in memory of my mum, and it was a weirdly accessible experience. I say weirdly not because the way it was made accessible was weird, but simply because I wasn’t sure if the experience would be accessible to me at all.

I wasn’t sure how my body would react to a tattoo, and all the accessibility requirements in the world being met, which they were, would not have changed how my body may have reacted to getting a tatto. I worried about this, that my body wouldn’t play ball, and so I wouldn’t be able to get a tattoo that I really wanted.

Sometimes as disabled people are bodies are the reason that something is inacessible to us. And this can be a very difficult reality to for us to accept.

But luckily it went well, very well. And I now want another tattoo.

I’m debating between paw prints for my dogs, with there names in them or something Winnie the Pooh, what do you think?

I had to say goodbye to who I thought I was going to be.

On By Katy DalyIn Writing PromptsLeave a comment

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 💜

Finishing my dissertation

On By Katy DalyIn Writing PromptsLeave a comment

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 💜