A little confession

Sometimes talking to nondisabled people is hard

Hello,

Let’s start with a confession: I’m finding it increasingly difficult to speak to nondisabled people about disability.

Caveat One: I don’t mean this in the context of writing or public speaking. This is literally my job and I love it. I always want to write and speak about disability. I mean in the pub, on social media, in random interactions when I am just trying to live my life.

Caveat Two: There are many people in my life who are exceptions to this rule. (In fact, there are so many that possibly it’s not so much a rule as a vibe.) If you think you are one, you probably are. I just mean generally.

This is difficult for me because a) I am a natural blabber, b) I usually love talking about disability everywhere and with everyone, and c) it somehow feels mean to not give people as much benefit of the doubt as I would normally. But it is nonetheless true. I just don’t want to explain things that should be, well, overwhelmingly obvious if only they’d ever given it any thought.

In fairness, I don’t think this is the fault of any of the actual people I have talked to about disability recently. I think that l am just carrying around a lot of hurt and exhaustion from the last few months/years(/decades?) and finding it increasingly hard to put it aside when I have these conversations. I’m only reacting emotionally, which isn’t a good thing, and the analytical, journalistic side of my brain is alarmingly MIA.

Readers of this newsletter will know I have been capital-T Tired now for a while. I thought this was just because I had been too busy over too long a period of time, and that rest would make me feel better. In other words, I thought it was a physical issue. But I have had to admit that I have now done a lot of resting and I still feel - pardon my French - shit. So I have had to reassess.

My friends keep telling me I’m burnt out. So the other day I googled the signs of burn out and mentally ticked off the entire list. Oh, I thought, perhaps herein lies the problem. It has all been a bit too much recently and my brain has had enough.

It’s not really about the amount of work I have or haven’t been doing. It’s about the emotional toll of trying to get people to understand or care about disabled people, the emotional toll of having to ask for basic dignity, respect and support, and the emotional toll of dealing with the hate-filled backlash. And in the particular context of talking to nondisabled people about disability, it’s the weight of not really knowing who you can trust to be on board. At the moment, I am too worn down to find out.

As an activist, this is far from ideal. We make change by having emotionally rich but taxing conversations with those who do not yet agree with us (this is undoubtedly why burn out is so prevalent among the people who do this work). There is no point preaching to the choir. I really want to be an effective activist, so I really hope my appetite for educating and persuading returns soon. I am in need of it.

But I also think there are ways of working for a better world for disabled people that perhaps ask less of us or are at least a bit less exposing. While we need to reach nondisabled people, we can also build spaces, projects and conversations for ourselves. This type of activism, centred on community building, is just as important but, crucially, much nicer to do. As much as I beat myself up for my retreat from the work of talking to nondisabled people about disability, I think it’s ok to find refuge in the work we do for each other. And, luckily, my enthusiasm for that hasn’t dimmed at all.

Let’s hope September arrives like a breath of fresh air.

Lucy