Lynn Pedotto interviews Katie Frank about sexuality education for children with disabilities.
16:37 min
CLEAR ALL
Based on the historic New York Times series, About Us features intimate, firsthand accounts on what it means, and how it feels, to live with a disability.
1
Early in her career, Katie Pryal learned that being a professor isn’t easy if your brain isn’t quite right. “I was a junior in college when I finally realized that I was different in a way that my medically inclined parents would call ‘clinical.
“If I didn’t fight, who would?” Judy Heumann was only 5 years old when she was first denied her right to attend school. Paralyzed from polio and raised by her Holocaust-surviving parents in New York City, Judy had a drive for equality that was instilled early in life.
People are disabled in countless different ways, so there are few practical tips that will apply to everyone. Yet a few key things can improve your experience.
In the beginning, it was difficult to let myself rest, even with the ultimate doctor’s note. I felt like I still had to push past my (extremely limited) capabilities. I had to practice slowing down and allowing my frailties to become visible even when I had the choice to hide them.
I couldn’t keep “proving everyone wrong” and still do all the things I wanted to do with my life.
For some of the 61 million Americans with disabilities, the ability to work, learn and socialize from home has been an unexpected expansion of possibility.
We know that up to 90 percent of all individuals with MS report that they have experienced fatigue, and more than 50 percent admit it is their most disabling symptom. This “invisible symptom” is the most common cause of disability.
A few months and many deaths ago, I woke up exhausted, again. Every morning, I felt like I was rebuilding myself from the ground up. Waking up was hard. Getting to my desk to write was hard. Taking care of my body was hard. Remembering the point of it all was hard.
One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture.