Disability Pride Month

Being as there are only a few days left in July, I want to take the chance to draw some attention to Disability Pride.

Happy Disability Pride Month!

I’ve been following Molly Burke, who has a very extensive library of videos on her YouTube, although she's also on just about every platform. There is no possible way for me to do the topic justice, so I encourage you to check her out! She collaborates with many other creators, so you can find lots of people for your knowledge journey. My personal favorite was her recent collab with a deaf gal named Jessica Kellgren-Fozard. Deaf, lesbian, and has other non-visible disabilities. She is equally as enjoyable!

Disability is many things. Most of the time, you can’t see them. Wheel chairs are merely a fraction. In fact, you can still walk and be considered paralyzed. Blindness doesn’t mean blackness. Deaf doesn’t mean silence. There are a range in all categories of disability, and everyone experiences it differently. From mental illness, to physical, to whatever. There is no one size fits all. So, if you are able-bodied, the best blanket statement is to simply deal with each individual as that: an individual. Better to ask, than look like an ass.

I am a lover of fantasy. Always have been. However, the mainstream fantasy has always had a pretty standard image. You know the one. A strong, strapping male, master of his craft. Picks up a sword and suddenly is the best. It stopped sitting well a long time ago. I admit, I started straight skipping paragraphs to get past the parts that made me roll my eyes. If you ever do that with my stories, tell me!

There was one book I read in the last couple of years that irked me. A blind master, living alone in the woods, still able to hit a moving target with a bow and arrow across a great distance when they were attacked. Super cool, right!? Except, it wasn't. It's nice on paper. But, that’s why fantasy has felt tired to me. There’s too many of these incredible people.

In my trilogy, Sonder's Song, there is blindness. But, I wanted to do it right. A gradual blindness, and the character having to adjust his life. Maybe he can still call someone out because he recognizes their footsteps, but he's also going to turn to the wrong person. Or he can compliment a piece of jewelry, but only because he can see bright lights and uses the process of illumination to see that it's a necklace.

That’s cool. That’s a nod to the true experience of blindness. Still swing a sword if he has to. But have him turn to address the wrong person right after.

Hopefully I can continue write many authentic experiences.

My hope and dream as a writer, is to find ways to be inclusive. Tactile covers. Copies of signed books that have a raised signature. Audio books, ebooks, maybe even go crazy and have large font books. All of it, if the people want it. Reading has always been such a love of mine. There's something so special about a physical book in your hands. Personally, might as well make them universally designed… because who doesn’t love a tactile book? The jagged pages are 👏 a 👏 mood. But not in braille… that’s a utilitarian language, and no one wants to sit there and read a book in braille... nor store it.

I could honestly go on.

But, to any of my readers who have a disability: I hope you have either found a way to be comfortable and empowered in your disability, or someday find that place 💙 I am so glad the internet has given you all a platform to have a voice. You have an ally in me.