On the Type of Writer I Am

[Image Description: A pair of hands is showing typing on a laptop. The laptop keys are black and the body of the laptop is silver.] Image Source: Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Disability and Determination is a weekly newsletter about my experience navigating life with a rare disability. If you like this post, feel free to give a click on the ❤️ symbol below. This will help me get discovered by others on Substack. To be notified of future posts, drop your email in the field at the bottom and click the Subscribe button. If you’d like to further contribute, I also offer a paid subscription option (that includes extra monthly content), or you can Buy Me a Coffee ☕ I’m glad you’re here ☺️

I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing style here. The first thing I want to say is that I am definitely not a journalist. I was a Journalism major for about a half a second in college before I switched to Creative Writing. So I think that tells you a good amount about my style right there.

My goal is to tell my story as I see, feel, and experience it. I’ll occasionally delve into a more journalistic or pop culture type of piece, in which case I’ll do the best fact-checking I can. But for the most part, with my full-time job, other responsibilities and things going on in my personal life, I just don’t have time or energy to devote to writing things that involve the need for a lot of research and fact-checking. It’s not my “brand”, if you will.

What I write here is almost purely how I feel. It may not always be factual, or something everyone agrees with, or maybe even “right”, but it’s my experience and feelings as I’ve had them as a disabled person and woman living in the world. I used to have a really good memory, but as I’ve gotten older, things have started to slip away a bit so I may not remember things as well as I used to or the same way that other people do. Sometimes I can still remember how I felt though. Feelings seem to stay with you in a more powerful way than memories sometimes.

I’m an emotional writer too and will never pretend to be anything else. I’ve often been shamed or put down for being “too emotional” in my life. When I was discussing gun control with someone once, they told me they “deal in facts and not emotions” as if my emotional response was somehow less than because I hadn’t read every single fact on gun ownership. In present day, I embrace that I’m very in touch with my emotions and usually have no problem expressing them (in writing or in person). I think it’s healthy to feel what you feel and get it out so you can move on. I don’t really give a flying eff if that makes me “too emotional.” Living in this world right now and being disabled is an emotional experience. Mental health is an emotional experience. Those are facts themselves.

I want people to come here and—even in the smallest way—feel the emotion I’m writing, even if it’s not something they necessarily agree with. Writing about the experience of disability in terms of facts and statistics is super important, but it’s the emotional part of it that I really want people to get a sense of: the good and the bad…the ups and the downs.

I also want people to feel free to share their experience, even if it’s different than mine. There’s so much binary thinking out there, even among people living with disabilities. You’re supposed to think or feel this way or that way about certain things and if you don’t, you’re a “bad” disabled person. I think disability—like anything—is something we all experience differently. We’ve all had different circumstances both related and unrelated to our disabilities. Some of us—like me—are still unpacking our internalized ableism. We’re all entitled to feel how we want about our own disability and even the topic of disability. That doesn’t mean we don’t have room for more growth or understanding…I know I still have so much to learn about other people’s experiences and disabilities which is one of the big reasons I’m so thankful for Substack and social media. I learn so much from everyone else’s stories every day.

I know it’s important to have a focus here on Substack so there’s mine in a nutshell. The emotions, questions, ups, downs, frustrations, and joys of being a person living with a disability, as I’ve experienced it. I hope you’ll continue to join me on this journey.

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