Home. Finding home. Coming home.

“I am looking for friends and allies, communities where gawking, gaping, staring finally turns to something else, something true to the bone. Places where strength is softened and tempered, love honed and stretched. Where gender is more than a simple binary. Places where we encourage each other to swish and swagger, limp and roll, and learn the language of pride. Places where our bodies become home.”

-Eli Clare. 

This quote has stayed with me for the last 7 years, it hit me in the chest the first time I read it. I carry it around in the marrow of my bones, in those places deep inside ourselves where truth lives, where healing happens.

I spent my childhood exiled from my body, trying to create as much distance as possible from what it actually feels like to live inside this skin, how it feels to have my muscles tense uncontrolledly.

I wished daily for a normal body. I wished for it mostly because I was subjected to painful procedures by doctors and daily painful therapy by my mum in an effort to straighten this bent body.

But clearly I was never meant to be straight. *Ladies*

All the medical interventions achieved was years of feeling profoundly ashamed and disconnected from myself. The idea that I could feel at home inside myself was unthinkable to 16-year-old me, that I could feel pride and love my body, just as it is and not wish to change it, that my body would become central to my identity and life’s work in disability rights.

Home.

Calling this body home is an ongoing act of resistance and resilience when society tell me in a myriad of ways that I don't belong. From the buildings I cannot access, to the god damn stairs that are everywhere, to the gawking, gaping and staring that I am subject to every time I go out in public, to the inaccessible trams that map this city which I cannot access, which tell me clearly I do not belong, that I am not equal, in this city which I call home.

Home. 

Finding home. 

Coming home.

She says "I love how you have a sound, that is different to how everyone else sounds. The turn of your tires, the touch of your hands to your wheel rims, a soft sound of metal, muscle and skin moving together. I love that I can hear you coming home, wheeling up the ramp, moving about the house and know it is you and it is familiar and beautiful. I love how you move in your chair, and how your body has a rhythm and sway to it that is just yours."

She

She calls me home, into the sinews of my muscles which bend and curl, says she loves how un-straight I am and names the parts that refuse to be straightened and kisses them, draws them out into the light.

Love

Love should push you to the edges of yourself and give you courage to go to those edges, to do the things that expand you and make you grow, but it should also give you a soft space to land, a sense of comfort and belonging and acceptance. It should call you home.

I am no longer ashamed. I am proud.

I have found reclamation and pride in the experiences and knowledge of other people with disabilities as they find ways to reclaim their bodies too, as they call their bodies home and do so proudly, boldly and unapologetically.

I want to end with a poem called You Get Proud by Practicing by disability activist Laura Hershey:

If you are not proud


For who you are, for what you say, for how you look;


If every time you stop


To think of yourself, you do not see yourself glowing

With golden light; do not, therefore, give up on yourself.


You can get proud.



You do not need


A better body, a purer spirit, or a Ph.D.

To be proud.


You do not need


A lot of money, a handsome boyfriend, or a nice car.


You do not need


To be able to walk, or see, or hear,


Or use big, complicated words,


Or do any of those things that you just can’t do


To be proud. A caseworker


Cannot make you proud,


Or a doctor.


You only need more practice.


You get proud by practicing.



There are many many ways to get proud.


You can try riding a horse, or skiing on one leg,


Or playing guitar,


And do well or not so well,


And be glad you tried


Either way.


You can show


Something you’ve made


To someone you respect

And be happy with it no matter

What they say.


You can say


What you think,

though you know


Other people do not think the same way, and you can keep saying it, even if they tell you


You are wrong.



You can add your voice


All night to the voices


Of a hundred and fifty others


In a circle

Around a jailhouse


Where your brothers and sisters are being held


For blocking buses with no lifts,


Or you can be one of the ones


Inside the jailhouse,


Knowing of the circle outside.

You can speak your love


To a friend


Without fear.


You can find someone who will listen to you


Without judging you or doubting you or being


Afraid of you


And let you hear yourself perhaps


For the very first time.


These are all ways


Of getting proud.


None of them


Are easy, but all of them


Are possible.

You can do all of these things,


Or just one of them again and again.


You get proud


By practicing.



Power makes you proud, and power


Comes in many fine forms


Supple and rich as butterfly wings.


It is music


when you practice opening your mouth


And liking what you hear


Because it is the sound of your own


True voice.



It is sunlight


When you practice seeing


Strength and beauty in everyone,


Including yourself.


It is dance when you practice knowing


That what you do


And the way you do it


Is the right way for you

And cannot be called wrong.


All these hold


More power than weapons or money

Or lies.


All these practices bring power, and power

Makes you proud.


You get proud

By practicing.



Remember, you weren’t the one


Who made you ashamed,


But you are the one


Who can make you proud.


Just practice,


Practice until you get proud, and once you are proud,


Keep practicing so you won’t forget.


You get proud


By practicing.