Content note: This page discusses disability and injury in a non-graphic way.
I don’t talk much about how I became disabled, not because it’s a big secret, but because it’s messy, layered, and honestly, not something I always have the energy to unpack. But as I’ve been writing more about slowing down, listening to my body, and what accessibility actually looks like behind the scenes, I’ve realized there’s some context that might help. Not the whole story, and not the hard details, just enough to understand how fast things can change, and how adapting wasn’t a brave choice so much as something I learned one small step at a time.
The short version is this: I was in my mid-twenties, living a very physical life, when a farm injury changed my body in ways I didn’t expect and couldn’t just push through. What followed wasn’t a single dramatic moment so much as a slow realization that my leg wasn’t doing what it used to, that pain was no longer temporary, and that the version of independence I’d always relied on was slipping out from under me. I didn’t wake up one day knowing how to live in a disabled body. I figured it out the same way most of us do: awkwardly, stubbornly, and with a lot of trial and error.
Living in a disabled body reshaped far more than how I move. It changed how I think about time, energy, help, and what “enough” looks like on any given day. It’s why I move slowly now, why winter hits harder, why accessibility isn’t an abstract concept for me, and why rest isn’t a reward…it’s a requirement. I didn’t arrive here gracefully. I arrived here by necessity, by listening when my body finally made it clear it wasn’t going to be ignored anymore. This page isn’t about everything I’ve been through—it’s just here to explain how I got here, and why I live the way I do now.