Hello,
It’s the very end of Disability Pride Month. Due to a combination of being extremely busy and a little ill, I haven’t been able to mark it in any special way. Instead, I’ve been thinking about the small, personal moments when disability pride shows up.
And I’ve been thinking about dancing.
Two things in particular have made me ponder the joy of dancing recently. One was reliving my glorious youth by hitting the dancefloor with my beloved uni mates at one of their weddings last weekend. I was so happy to be with them all, sandwiched as ever between the girls, hand-in-hand with each of them (my secret energy-saving trick - their moves animate my arms), singing and laughing and feeling like no time had passed at all since we were young and together and anything was possible.
The other thing was a beautiful DPM Instagram post from one of my very favourite people, the author Rebekah Taussig.
Everything Rebekah writes fills me with a profound sense of being known, and this post was no different. Every sentence in her caption thrummed through my body, through all its sites of pain and triumph, and I thought: “Yes, that is what pride is.” If dancing is living, and being visible is protest, to be a disabled person and dance in a room full of strangers is to claim life for yourself against everything that says it is not for you - to embody a pride so fundamental it moves a body you are so often trying to still.
On that dance floor last weekend, I thought about all the times I have been self-conscious about dancing and done it anyway. For some reason, I faced that specific self-consciousness long before I faced most others, and doing so means I have countless happy memories of dancing with people I love: at uni, at weddings, in kitchens and clubs and, once, outside the Brixton KFC at 3am. I thought about how glad I am that, somehow, despite the stares and the gawping I often attract, I have always found my way onto the dancefloor. And for that, I am proud of myself.
I also thought about the fact that having a good bougie is one of the few ways I can enjoy using my body. So much of my existence seems to be taken up by the mental load of navigating a disabled body through an inaccessible world or trying to combat people’s assumptions about what living in this body is like. It’s not that I am unhappy with my body, it’s just… using my body is hard work, you know? Not coincidentally, the things I most enjoy - reading, writing, chatting to friends - are almost purely intellectual pursuits. But when I’m dancing, I’m not coaxing my body into doing that which it does not want to do, nor am I trying to ignore it while I do other things. I am moving it for the fun of it. In a world that says I shouldn’t, in a world that thinks I should hate it, I am finding joy in my disabled body. And I’m proud of that, too.
Dancing is only possible with music. Reading Rebekah’s post and seeing the second photo she included - where she is dancing with her gorgeous little boy - it occurred to me that, for disabled people, real, proper dancing, where you smile and spin and forget everything and everyone around you, is only possible with pride. So maybe in some sense, disability pride is our music.
Belt it out for everyone to hear. Happy Disability Pride.
With love,
Lucy
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