For most of my adult life I couldn’t bear to call myself disabled, even though fibromyalgia means living with significant pain and exhaustion. Growing up in the eighties, and later watching disabled colleagues and clients treated as difficult or needy, meant I saw disability as something that happened to other people, not to me.
The turning point came in a training session at Brighton & Hove City Council run by neurodivergent trainers, who introduced four models of disability: medical, social, charity and celebratory. It gave me language for something I’d spent a lifetime avoiding, and helped me see the tenacity, empathy and solidarity that come from living with a disabling condition, not as deficits, but as real assets worth celebrating.