Uncertainty in the Grey
What I Wish You Knew About Living With Disability: Part 2 of 3
The last question we asked our adaptive yoga students was to share an insight they wished everyone knew about what it’s like living with disability. We’d love to hear your thoughts, please do share them with us in the comments section below. Also, we’d love if you shared our substack with your friends and subscribe so you never miss a publication. Thank you!
December 2024 Prompt:
Discuss an aspect of living with disability you wish everyone knew about and understood? Why would this be so meaningful to you?
“I reached for language to hold an experience that had taken over my life and I reached wretchedly, unstoppably because I needed that mess to be held by something other than my own body. It was so heavy to carry around. Pulling it out word by word, sentence by sentence. Putting it into a form other than my own flesh did something to metabolise it.” Johanna Hedva
When I think about explaining or trying to make others understand the experience of having a disability words always fail me. It’s like I’m constantly trying to straddle that line between telling people it’s really hard and my life’s not terrible. I feel like to other people life is more black or white and I have taken up permanent residency in the grey. However, when I think about what I wish people knew, I think once again of that grey area. I have a congenital condition and so perhaps, in some ways we all got stuck in a mindset of thinking that it’s static, that it’s always the same no matter what. Even I have been guilty of assuming this from time to time. Of course, that’s not the way it is.
The body is full of surprises and so every day, or week brings a new challenge and I must figure out how to navigate it. One day for example, I can pick something up off the floor, the next my balance isn’t good enough or I’m too tired to trust my balance so I can’t. This has been the most difficult part to explain to the people in my life. I wish they understood the level of uncertainty that comes with living in this body.
Every day I have to figure out what’s possible again and again.
- Laura Hallissey
Laura this is so beautiful. I can so much very relate to the uncertainty and the grey. Thank you for putting this into words!
Beautifully put. Thank you.