therainbowgorilla:

yourg4mem4sterth3whit3r4bbit:

shyocean:

vaspider:

taylortut:

heyatleastitsnotcancer:

vaspider:

heyatleastitsnotcancer:

vaspider:

Jesus am I tired of Tumblr’s gatekeeping of solidarity movements. If you asked someone at an in-person cripplepunk meet-up to provide a list of their disabilities to you so you could validate if they’re the right kind of cripple for you, you’re the one who gets kicked out, not them. Hell, if you asked for a list at an online meet, I’d boot you, too.

The idea that there’s some hard bright line which exists between all disabilities of all other organsanddisabilities of this one organ is bizarre and unhelpful. It also perpetuates the “but mental disabilities are different” mindset which leads to “oh but mental health coverage is optional, different, and can be shunted off into its own little box.”

I have a disability where one of my organs doesn’t function properly bc it doesn’t make enough of a certain kind of juice, which makes it difficult for me to do certain things which I need to do to function. I have to adapt my life, change what I eat and how I move my body, take medications and rely on others for assistance with my condition. If I don’t do that, this condition has been known to kill people. Is that diabetes or post-traumatic stress disorder?

I have another disability in which my nervous system doesn’t behave properly, and that causes me great difficulty in my life. I have had to change what I eat, the medications I take, how much coffee I drink, how I rest, and how I deal with the medical establishment. This disability and its diagnosis has profoundly affected how I live my life, and I require assists and accommodations to live my life as I choose. Is that disability ADHD or physical damage to my spine from the tumor which compressed my spinal cord & left scars behind when it was removed?

Do anxiety and paranoia and insomnia and depression count if they’re symptoms of celiac disease? If not, why not? They’re disabling effects of an autoimmune disorder. And regardless, it’s because body not act right so… wtf? How about my memory issues that come from damage from a medication used to treat the pain in my legs?

Solidarity movements are reciprocal, y'all, and I’m exhausted of “you must be this queer/this trans/this disabled to come in.” Maybe I’m just too fucking old and too fucking tired to listen to this week’s Discourse ™️ about who trademarked what term when while actual problemsexist.

I know it probably seems like you’re doing something productive to you, but I assure you, you’re not. If your issue is “these specific people are being dicks,” deal with those people being dicks, and don’t ascribe their dickishness to their disability. The problem is they’re being a dick.

If your issue is instead “but this isn’t as disabling as what I deal with” or “I have that disability and it’s not as bad for me as my other disability” or “but it feels good for me to draw a line between disabilities of this one organ and every other organ,” then it is you. You are being the dick.

Perpetuating the non-existent line between “physical” and “mental” disabilities helps absolutely no one. It places mental disabilities by default in a “not as bad” category and an “all in your head” one, which … like, do I need to explain to y'all why functioning labels and categories aren’t helpful in disability movements? Why are we resurrecting this shit and giving it new polish?

To be clear, I am not interested in debating this, so trying to tell me how your no-brain-problems-allowed approach is right and good, actually, is a waste of your time, because there is absolutely no way to convince me that trying to keep certain kinds of disabilities out of a general disability solidarity movement based on the organ that disability centers in has any use whatsoever. The line between “mental” and “physical” disabilities is blurry as fuck and trying to fence off all brain problems is not okay, especially since y'all don’t mean that because a lot of things which are caused by the brain acting in a non-standard matter are considered “physical” disabilities.

Jesus, y'all make me tired. This bullshit is the least punk thing ever.

I’m not disagreeing but Tai, the creator of crippled punk, specifies its for it is for physically disabled people specifically here

Obviously mental illness is an issue in the brain which is a part of the body. I’m just stating what the founder of the movement intended. And they felt very strongly about following those tenants of it.

Tai sadly isn’t here to tell us how they wanted this to play out though but I do know I want to honor their legacy the way they wanted it to be.

Here.

I am stating that the creator of the movement disagreed. They are not here to clarify so I can only use their old posts. It doesn’t matter to me but it mattered greatly to Tai.

The issue here is that mentally ill ppl with no mobility restrictions cannot reclaim cripple. It’s not the same as disabled. I have a physical disability and I would default to the opinions of someone with less mobility than I have on the term cripple. If the full time wheelchair users told me not to use it, I would say we can’t. Its not just a movement, it’s a slur. It’s a reclaimed slur.

No. You are wrong.

I am out of patience for having to say this over and over again so I’m gonna say it real big and real loud so hopefully I don’t have to say it AGAIN:

Cripple is a term which historically has been aimed at all disabled people. It was never confined just one kind of disabled person, even if it was more commonly used for one type of disability than another. Expert witnesses in court cases called people with personality disorders “mental cripples.” Epileptics like my father were called cripples and confined to “madhouses.” The phrase “mental cripple” appears in censuses, medical journals, patient files advocating for lobotomies, New York Times articles, and many other “professional” medical and legal settings. The 1981 “cripple tribunal” in Dortmund, Germany, was a protest against poor living conditions in long-term care facilities and psychiatric hospitals!

Please do even ONE CURSORY GOOGLE on Bedlam, the term “mental cripple,” Rosemary Kennedy, Nellie Bly, and the modern-day protests against “warehousing,” and then fuck off and stop putting this very incorrect shit in my notes.

You are wrong, and I am tired of saying this nicely.

The idea that there’s some historical “split” between mental and physical disabilities is wrong wrong wrong. We were all referred to as “incurables” and “cripples,” and sometimes the fashion was to use “cripples” for all other disabilities and “lame” for movement disabled people, as in contemporary translations of Victor Hugo’s writing.

Those articles, by contrast, are not from the 1800s! Nope! One of them is from before my birth, most of the others are from within my lifetime, and the definition of cripple is current!

Now please fucking stop. You are right, this ISN’T acceptable. It’s not acceptable to lecture someone on something you could REALLY REALLY EASILY VERIFY to be wrong if you just did ONE Google search.

You are wrong. This is not a debate. This term has been used for all varieties of disabled people and may be reclaimed by any disabled person.

Goodbye.

Okay, this is for the people replying to OP and gate keeping.

Look, y'all, Crip theory exists and it is good for you. It’s good for all of us.

It focuses on the intersection of queer theory and disability studies, which are both academic disciples focused on civil rights, etc. It goes back to at least 2006.

I mean Wikipedia is not a pure source, but even it will tell you that the term includes mental disabilities. Further, when we say abled or able-bodied, we don’t mean disabled people. People with disabilities are disabled. All disabilities.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crip_(disability_term)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple

There are so many good sources out there, so many people with a huge range of disabilities writing and thinking and doing the activism since the 1960s that gave us the ADA. And they have been reclaiming cripple and crip.

It’s not that one person is the progenitor, even if they coined a term for a popularization and refinement of a massive existent movement that’s been going on for decades. Instead of getting stuck on one person’s blog, please connect with the larger set of work that exists.

Honestly

https://dsq-sds.org/

Is such an incredible free source of work.

Also, in addition to cripple being used pretty much in place of ‘disabled’, people keep acting like there’s only strictly mental disabilities and strictly visible invariable ‘physical’ ones where limbs cannot be used at any time or something very obvious and hard around the edges. And when you try to point out that other conditions are physically disabling they try to reframe it like you’re arguing that chemical imbalances are technically physical too.

And this has always seemed to be in absurdly bad faith.

Ignoring, still, that cripple gets thrown at any disabled person and has historically (and not just out of ignorance of how to be ignorant properly), and setting aside the lack of hard line between ‘physical’ and biochemical, which doesn’t exist in a human body… Setting aside all that….

You know there’s a whole group of disabilities that are very physical and only have what you would consider mental effects as secondary symptoms at best, that aren’t as straight forward as a missing or ‘broken’ or impaired limb, right? Like physical disabilities that are primarily physical include chronic conditions, autoimmune, MS, Parkinson’s, Distrophe, fibromyalgia and other neuromuscular disorders that mean your body doesn’t work right or you can’t always move or coordinate your limbs properly. Many of these conditions are variable day by day and come with variable ability and function.

And yeah, tell me where the line is between your brain and other organs controlling your nerves and biochemistry which in turn controls what your limbs do, not by intent or filtered through cognition, but purely physically.

Like these are actually the majority of disabilities, not counting the likely prevalence of depression and anxiety, and they are largely physical. And they are also largely not what gate keepers think of when they set up hard lines around the term ‘cripple’.

Is someone in a wheelchair for FND instead of a spinal injury less physically disabled? What about for chronic fatigue or pain? If pain doesn’t count what about the person who’s in a wheelchair despite that they could technically walk but the nerve damage in their legs makes it too painful? At what -stage- of neuromuscular degeneration do you get to claim the term ‘cripple’? When you can’t walk easily? Or when you can’t feed yourself?

Is it the mechanism of ‘injury’ that counts? Does it only count if it happens in battle or an accident or from birth? What about other injuries? So it’s the end result? So what about your immune system destroying nerves or other tissue? A virus maybe? Does impairment to the senses count? How much impairment is required to count? Is someone in glasses more crippled than someone with chronic fatigue?

Does a war vet with a missing leg who’s ableism is alive and well because they ‘earned’ their right to accommodations “fighting for this country” (#not all vets) do more for the movement than someone who’s spent 1/3 of their life in bed or a chair from a condition you wouldn’t consider ‘crippled’ by being allowed to use the label?

What about the person being berated by their family and their society, for being a “cripple” because they can’t stay standing due to connective tissue pain or something like POTS? Do you really think gate keeping them helps? What severity of POTS even would you let in? None? Not even the person who can’t sit up without fainting for two months out of every year? Do you not consider them physically disabled? Fainting from shitty connective tissue not providing blood pressure is a… mental disability to you? Not a physical one that has secondary cognitive effects?

So where’s the line? If you can use the limbs half the time or more you’re out? Not allowed to rally and participate and reclaim? More like 80%? Or do you have to not be able to effectively use a limb 100% of the time to count as a ‘cripple’? Is it a question of whether a person has a mobility aid or not? What if they can’t afford it, or tough it out more because of barriers, or what if it isn’t conventional or doesn’t look like a mobility aid or acessability device to you? What if it’s common enough for ableds to use sometimes but without it they wouldn’t be able to feed themselves? (Straws, simple walking sticks that you wouldn’t consider a cane because they don’t ‘look’ like they ‘need’ it, or carts so that they can keep their balance while walking and be able to carry anything home, etc…)

I don’t care what any ‘originator’ says. Trying to cut our community up along these lines is useless and harmful. I have a list of diagnosed physical conditions 7 or so long by now, all of which affect my ability to function physically and I have had the term ‘cripple’ (and gimp) used aggressively against me, and usually I leave the debate on whether to apply the term to myself alone because I’m too tired to argue and there isn’t much offline impact for me, but I resent this idea that I cannot be part of the cripple punk disability rights movement and community because my disabilities don’t seem physical enough to gate keepers because of their own biases about what physical disability looks like. And moreso I resent other people like me being faced with the same.

We had this debate 5-7 years ago about the word ‘gimp’ too, and idk his to tell you this but no abled people as a group have ever made distinctions about types of disabilities when using this kind of language, first because there are no lines, but foremost because of their “us vs otherness” mentality, and the people constantly encouraging us to this kind of infighting are the enemy.

Go spend this mental energy letting everyone you know know that they don’t have to pay medical debt to private institutions under a certain income level, or spreading awareness about how mobility aids can be acquired and what they’re useful for.

If someone want to put a “this machine runs over ablists” sticker on their mobility cart, and one that says cripple punk, next to the one that says “this machine eats fascists”… Why the ever loving fuck are you trying to debate semantics and technical definitions to stop them?

“You can call yourself an ally just don’t claim the term yourself u.u” … … The term that’s used against them and historically against people like them to dehumanize and other them that’s a rallying point for other disabled people like them… …They can claim being an ally to other similarly disabled people, but can’t call themselves ‘cripple’ or ‘cripple punk’ because of your current understanding of what counts as a physical disability or your idea of how limited they are, even if these terms are used against them… ???? Fuck off.

Gatekeeping doesn’t help anyone, it’s just exhausting the energy of people who largely by definition have more limited energy. You can simply put this hill down and move on. It’s not too late to go find a better hill. Just walk away and move on to greener hills that are actually of tactical interest in the rights movement. There isn’t even actually a hill here, you’re looking at the curve of the earth or some shit.

I want to talk about a perfect example of a mental disability that is also a physical disability at the same time, to show how “mental” vs “physical” disabilities aren’t as clear cut as some people think.

I have Autism/ADHD. The disorder I’m going to talk about is sort of a subset of that.

It’s called Sluggish-CognitiveTempo(SCT). Not many people seem to know about it. It’s not technically on-the-books yet, as it’s still being studied, but it’s a “mental” disorder that most definitely causes me severe physical disability as well. I definitely consider it to be both.

Because of my SCT, I am Slow. A word that I am reclaiming here, not to insult myself, but just as a point of fact. I am by no means dumb, but it takes me a much longer time to process information than it does for most other people.

And as a result, my physical movements are also slow.

Take for example, the fact that I love to cook.

A recipe that would take 20 minutes tops for a non-disabled person, may take me 2 hours to prepare. Between getting distracted, my slow mental processing, my executive dysfunction, and my physical slowness, it takes me SIGNIFICANTLY longer to do things in my every day life. In turn, this means I expend a lot more energy doing things because I’m working on them for longer. Which, in turn again, leads to me being always some varying level of tired all day.

For another example, just… showering.

You know those articles and campaigns and ads that always told us to take shorter showers to save water? I’ve heard many abled people can take 5 minute showers???

HOW!?

With my SCT, I’m lucky if my shower is just 15 minutes! So if I don’t have 15 minutes, I can’t shower. Don’t ask me why it takes me so long, because I legitimately don’t have the answer to that other than “brain slow, body slow”. It’s just… How it is, for me.

I have to budget my spoons and my time SO carefully. I’m likely to run out of spoons before I’m done doing what I wanted to do, simply because it took me so long. And I can’t judge time either, because I can’t predict how much time I am going to take to do a thing (since it varies). So trying to budget my spoons and time is incredibly difficult.

All of this, especially when paired with my other disabilities, means that it’s incredibly hard for me to get a job. I can’t be fast due to my SCT. And in this capitalistic world, nobody wants a slow person. Mentally OR physically slow. And I am both.

I cannot separate my SCT into a mental or a physical category, because while it is technically labeled as mental, it severely disables me physically as well. It is BOTH.

Trying to draw a line in the sand saying “mental disabilities don’t count!” is both historically inaccurate since cripple has been used against mentally disordered and mentally ill people for ages, as the above posters brought up,

AND

it ignores and erases the fact that most mental disorders/illnesses can cause physical symptoms that can be disabling if severe enough. And even the opposite can be true.

The reason I’m saying all of this about my SCT disability is to show that it’s impossible to cleanly cut between “mental” and “physical” disabilities. Because then tell me, where on that arbitrary dichotomy does my SCT lie?

I hope this helps explain why being exclusionist about disabilities is arbitrary, wrong, and harmful.

Making a little bit of income every month has greatly reduced my stress. 

Before I started “working” online two months ago (I use the word working loosely because I mostly use survey sites and “beermoney” apps to make money), I was constantly stressed out about money. I knew that not being able to work because of my chronic illnesses was nothing to be ashamed of, but that didn’t change the reality that not being able to support myself financially was incredibly stressful. 

I’m not making enough money to support myself yet, but each month I’m seeing my income increase as I learn more ways that I can earn money from my bed without tiring myself out too much. A few months ago I didn’t believe that was even possible. I’m worrying about money less and less and my mental health is improving a lot. 

It’s incredibly sad that anybody has to worry about how they’ll put a roof over their head and put food in their mouths. I wish things weren’t this way. But if anybody needs some help figuring out how they’re going to make ends meet with limited spoons, or just wants to vent about their financial stressors, I’m here for you… just reach out to me over chat. 

When you ask a fellow spoonie how to get your doctor to send you for an upright MRI because of concerning symptoms that are being ignored (asked because this person has my condition, has had an upright MRI, and subsequent spinal fusion because the upright finally showed the full picture), and they say you shouldn’t dictate your care and should trust your doctors and just let them steer your care If I do that, I will literally get no care. My doctors do the bare minimum, and aren’t interested in trying to look deeper to find out why I feel like shit constantly. And I see people in my position all the time.

No hate to those of you with good insurance, good doctors, and an actual treatment plan prescribed by your doc, but some of us have doctors that ignore symptoms, don’t bother to even read your records, and generally treat you like a fraud. I have been have severe migraines with neck pain and pressure in the base of my skull like you would not believe (and then my fucking eye started protruding during one), and my supine MRI showed nothing, likely because, as many zebras know, supine MRIs can hide instability.

FIGHT FOR THE TESTS YOU NEED. if your doctors aren’t listening, but you can’t just pick up and find another doctor, ADVOCATE for yourself, don’t let them tell you that your concerns are invalid, and DON’T let them ignore your symptoms. Doctors don’t know everything, as much as they want you to think they do. I had a doctor, who had practiced for like 20 years, tell me that EDS was treated with steroids. This man clearly A. Hadn’t bothered to look over any of my paperwork, because I specifically stated my condition and that steroids were not good for people like me and B. Clearly hadn’t continued his education since his med school graduation. If high school teachers have to do continued education, doctors can read some fucking updated studies.

DOCTORS WORK FOR YOU. You pay them, sometimes hundreds of doctors if your specialist doesn’t take insurance like mine, because they are supposed to do everything they can to find out what’s wrong. If they ignore it, yell about it. I know I fucking will.

nyadcircus:

Basic Respect for Cane Users

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION]

Pic 1: A title card that says ‘basic respect for cane users’.

Pic 2: Not all cane users are: physically weak, slow, elderly. Some cane users can: run, lift heavy things, ride bikes, skateboards, etc. Cane users are not all the same.

Pic 3: Do: move out of the way for someone using a cane, give your seat to a cane user on public transport, offer to carry something for your friend or co worker with a cane, ask cane users what their access needs are, treat cane users with respect. Remember that not everyone with a physical disability uses a mobility aid.

Pic 4: DON’T: touch cane users without their explicit permission, make assumptions about whether someone ‘really’ needs their cane, give unwanted advice about someones disability, make a cane user feel bad or like they’re an embarassment. Remember: people might not use their cane full-time, you can’t know if someone is faking.

Lemme just say it again for the people in the back, GET OUT OF THE WAY OF PEOPLE WITH CANES/OTHER MOBILITY AIDS. I cannot even begin to count how many times people have made eye contact with me and then just. Continued to stand/walk into my way. Or shove me. I will hit you with my cane. And I will not be sorry.

breaking: bottling all your feelings up and letting them stew and boil actually isn’t a mark of strength

[ID: a 4-page comic in illuminated manuscript style. /1: Text: “O, to be strong as the lion” Panel depicts the lion rampant, a heraldry symbol of a lion rearing up and roaring. /2: Text: “who suffers his pain /without a single complaint.” Panel depicts the peasant character standing to imitate the rampant lion pose, looking unimpressive but determined. /3: They continue the pose, but they look worried as they start shaking and sweating. /4: They lean forward, dejected, with tears in their eyes. Text: “wauUGh /But it HURTS though!” /ID]

i just got a pair of smartcrutches to try and i was wondering if anyone had any advice for using them? my physical therapist showed me how to walk with them, but idk the best way to carry things with them, or what to do with them when i’m sitting. they fall over when i try to lean them on things! i was also wondering if anyone has found a way to attach them to a manual wheelchair. feel free to message, send an ask, or reblog this! thank you in advance!

osmanthusoolong:

A piece of advice to anyone who’s been considering, avoiding thinking about, or waffling on:

Get the fucking cane.

I am very serious. Get the cane, get the assistive device (I’m going with cane here, because simplicity, but the device you’re thinking about goes here), do it. If you’re thinking “damn, if these Symptoms get much worse, I’m gonna need to get a cane”, you already need the cane. You’ve probably been in a state that would be improved by it for a while.

I get it, though. I had other disabilities, including physical ones, prior to Getting A Cane, and I heard this advice from other people and I thought “okay, but my situation is not that bad, and I’m sure I’ll know when it’s really bad” as I lay awake half the night in pain because of a short little walk that afternoon. It turns out, I am not immune to internalized ableism either, like I’m a person in an ableist society or something.

I thought “this is gonna be a hassle, and they cost money, and people will be weird about it”, and learning to use it did take a minute, thankfully mine was pretty cheap, and yeah, some people are weird but most importantly: fuck ‘em, I did in fact need the cane. I can do a lot more now, and probably could have prevented some damage if I’d gotten it earlier and it looks cool.

Stop putting it off. Stop worrying about unpleasant people being unpleasant. You don’t have to suffer at the highest pain/difficulty/etc to be allowed to get the cane, you’re allowed to get it now. If you only need it sometimes, that’s okay.

Get the fucking cane.

side note: a bicycle can be an assistive device. thats just what i know from my personal experience but i assume a great many other items that arent technically manufactured for disability assistance specifically can be assistive devices if your specific issue happens to be alleviated by them. and this applies to all of those too

(my case is that my feet hurt after putting weight on them for some period of time but my legs and sense of balance are fine so i just need a means of locomotion that has me off my feet. sure my butt is sore if i havent used a bicycle in a while but that is NOTHING compared to how sore my feet get even if i walk the same distance every day. anything longer than 5 minutes to get to is radically improved by a bicycle even if it introduces new logistical problems for where to leave it and stuff)

chronic illness has this really fucked up dichotomy where you spend your life trying to find some sort of purpose but end up using all of your energy doing so

ogrefairy.com/shop is now officially live!! Please come on over and check it out if you have any interest in prints (or a couple stickers) with disability and/or fantasy themes.

Now Shipping to USA and Canada

This is my debut as a small business! You can feel free to use the discount code: WELCOME for 10% off your order.

Please boost I would really appreciate it!

[ID: a banner stating “Michaela Oteri, ogrefairy.com” with my self portrait. followed by 6 images
First is an image showing the first 5 of my disabled cuties, now available as coloring pages both digital and physical. the next image is the second batch of 5 disabled cuties coloring pages
The next row features a Disabled Beauty Portrait simply titled “Confident” and a Disabled Beauty portrait of me. My self portrait
Last row is a #CripplePunk drawing of my best friend and I and a romantic painting of a vampire and a human (the human has a prosthetic leg) titled In Love With A Vampire

All of these images are linked to and further described on my website!]

Cripple Punk is very important to me and really helped me come out of my shell and embrace being more confident as a disabled person. I originally learned about this movement in 2016 and it was the entire inspiration behind my Disabled Beauty Series (Formerly CripplePunk Portrait Series).

Cripple Punk (cpunk) as a movement began thanks to the late Tyler Trewhella and is all about disability rights that reject inspirational portrayals and infantilization of those with physical disabilities.

[ID: a digital drawing featuring two disabled people. The first is thin with short orange hair and many facial piercings and missing their left leg. The second is fat with longer hair that is braided and purple on the ends. they have glasses and also have some piercings. They are holding a forearm crutch at their side. Both people are white and sitting and are dressed in black with many patches, many disability or pride themed. Above them is the hashtag #CripplePunk]

For the past while I have been working very hard to create work for AdobeStock which is a large part of why you haven’t seen much of anything from me. I am working to create art that represents disabled people of all types and backgrounds and body types as well as work that speaks to our experiences!

It is a daunting task but I am very proud of the work I have been creating.

[ID: two digital drawings side by side. The first depicts a woman in a wheelchair kissing the person beside her. She is white with brown hair. They have dark skin and short dark hair. They are both wearing hoodies. The second is a black person with very dark skin and eyes closed sitting in a chair and leaning their arms on their forearm crutches. The backgrounds are abstract with pastel colors.]

Speaking of commissions here. This money is for my turtle fund. I am adopting them from my PCA who can no longer care for them and they badly need to be rehomed. Just about all of the money raised will be going to their care because right now I just cannot afford the expenses and they need a better chance. Please help me give them that!!

Here are examples of my Disabled Beauty Series!

[ID: four digital paintings.

The first depicts a queer and punk black person with dark skin standing with the aid of a forearm crutch. The colors are very vibrant and the background has a ring of pills

The second depicts a white woman in a red wheelchair. She is dressed in all black outside of her yellow scarf. The background is yellow and covered in an assortment of yellow flowers

The third depicts a woman with tan skin who is standing with the aid of a cane. She is wearing a white flowy dress and the background is adorned with pink fairy lilies

And last is a digital painting of Stacey Park Milburn. She is a smiling chinese american woman sitting in a power wheelchair. She has a trach and glasses. The background is filled with a lot of very vibrant flowers of all sorts.]

I have been selected to table a week-long virtual fair featuring all sorts of sick and disabled artists from May 22nd-28th.

Once the event is live you will be able to go to the website and select a “table” (I will be under “Ogrefairy’s Table”) and you will see all the works that that table has for sale! I will be offering free shipping on all orders! So be ready to support some small business artists next month okay?

I’ll be posting about this again when it gets closer to the date but for now you can follow Sick And Disabled Virtual Craft Fair @ sadzcfair on insta and facebook or go to their website, sadfair.com, for more info and updates.

At last! My profile for #AdobeStock ’s Artist Development Fund program is public and I can show you all of my hard work! 150 images created over the course of 7 months.

[ID: screenshot of a photo of me reading “Michaela Oteri, Illustration, Massachusetts, USA, Artist Development Fund recipient, 2021”]

disableddyke:

shout out to people who grew up thinking they were stupid or lazy but were actually just disabled. i love you. we’ll be okay <3

timemachineyeah:

timemachineyeah:

timemachineyeah:

timemachineyeah:

The thing about my chronic pain and fatigue is people sometimes accuse me of “never doing anything I don’t want to do” as a form of laziness, but what they miss is how I also don’t do the things I do want to do, and how I’m doing things I don’t want to basically constantly by doing things like: getting up, answering emails, feeding myself

“You never do anything you don’t want to ”

The other day I microwaved leftover steak. Do you know how sacrilegious that is. You don’t microwave leftover steak. You sear it and bake it so it tastes good. But I did not have the energy for that, I could not make myself do that. So I did something I didn’t want to do and microwaved it and I did something else I didn’t want to do and ate microwaved steak. I’m doing as much as I can. You’re just mad that I’m not prioritizing the things you want me to do.

What I wanted to do was cry, what I did was eat some protein. I am a paragon of discipline, actually.

My family also accused me of not having enough discipline when I left the church.

Then they left the church and learned the things I’d known all along and suddenly it was clear that a decade of mediating conflicts between us and holding my tongue had taken incredible discipline that was entirely invisible to them. That I was constantly compromising and making extra effort in ways that they were not equally matching.

They may never understand my disability in the same way (I still don’t!), but the same principle applies.

chronic-pain-culture-is:

shoutout to people who struggle with hygiene due to disability. i mean every aspect of hygiene- people who struggle to shower for weeks or months on end, people who don’t, won’t or can’t brush their teeth for whatever reasons, people who struggle with using the toilet, incontinent people, and everyone else who has ever been made to feel bad for being “gross”, for having any kind of odor, looking “bad” or unkempt- you are disabled and these are symptoms of your disabilities. fuck every single person who makes you feel like these are personal failings. you have more pressing things to worry about. fuck people who make your body their business.