Advocacy

A personal reflection on why emotional expression can be physically expensive when you are chronically ill, and why quiet does not mean okay.

I’m grieving the realization that the independent future people imagined for me wasn’t based on my actual support needs. It was based on what they could see, what they wanted to believe, and what systems are willing to recognize.

I entered nursing home care because I needed to get out of an unsafe situation quickly. But the crisis also forced me to face a bigger truth: I may need full-time long-term care, even if a nursing home isn’t the right setting forever.

Being seen as highly verbal and good at writing made people assume language was easy for me. It wasn’t. This piece is about the hidden labor behind producing words, the harm that assumption caused, and why AI can be language access rather than thought replacement.

When you’re multiply disabled, conservative Christian, and an AI enthusiast, every community rejects part of your identity. No single space accepts the whole stack, so I’m building the infrastructure myself.

The common assumption is that multiple disabilities are additive: two disabilities means twice the difficulty. This is wrong. Disabilities compound multiplicatively, and accessibility design that ignores this causes active harm.

A personal account of my experiences as a blind, multiply disabled student in a residential school setting, highlighting systemic failures and their long-term impact on health, functioning, and safety.