Something Big and Brave

On Monday night, I stood in front of about 70 people and shared my disability story in the style of the Moth podcast. I was terrified to do this, but am SO grateful I did it and so proud, too. I was thankful to have so many friendly faces in the crowd! I'm grateful for the push I had from two of the coaches who encouraged me to finally tell my story this way. Evelyn, who I speak about in my story, was one of the coaches and is a close friend. The theme for February's State of the Story was Learning to Live through Loss.

Before the performance we spent four sessions working together as a group learning how to craft our story and getting feedback from one another. It was a powerful, intimate, vulnerable and transformative experience. I'm so grateful my body and mind were up to the task, including memorizing my story for the performance. Here is the recording for those who are interested in hearing a condensed version of my journey. My title was "Don't Take No for an Answer" and my quote was "I wanna see feisty disabled people change the world." (Judy Heumann) All of the speech is here (it's about five minutes) but the first line is missing which is "Some disabilities are invisible."

I hope you'll take a few minutes to listen to my story of loss and learning to live with loss.

Blessings,

Emily