From Eight to Twenty-Eight: Changing My Perceptions of Mobility Aids
Ableism is a reality everyone in the disability community will experience in their lifetime. My first memory of ableism happened when I was eight years old. I remember going out in public and randomly receiving “gifts” from people without doing anything to earn them. Around this time, I only used my manual wheelchair when taking longer trips, since I knew that walking would be difficult. Every time I used my wheelchair, I felt strange. My internal ableism attacked me from many places. I didn’t feel right using a wheelchair because I felt more “normal” in my walker. I was able to blend into society more easily when I walked around. Society’s negative and pitiful views of my mobility aid influenced how I saw myself.
On several other occasions when I went to my local indoor amusement park, I received free stuffed animals just because I was out and about, like a normal kid. Initially, I thought these gifts came from a place of kindness. However, many of them came from places of pity and misplaced charity. I usually identified the kind individuals. They were the people who would talk to me directly, explain their experiences with disabled people, and ask questions that I felt comfortable with. Other adults used the gift–giving as a teachable moment. They bypassed my feelings and invalidated me as I tried to say that my disability was not anyone’s story to tell except mine. It took a few years to understand why this dynamic felt so harmful.
When I was a kid, receiving gifts just because I was disabled made me feel valued as a member of society. I accepted things without having to work for them like everyone else. I knew children with disabilities were living their lives and having fun like everyone else. Still, it made me wonder why some people think that people with disabilities want free things. The experiences of receiving free gifts at the amusement park made me want to understand society's views on people with disabilities even more.
As a teen, I took my frustrated feeling out on my mobility aid and not on society’s negative views of me. I began to see my wheelchair as something that made people pity me and not see me for who I was. Internally, my experience made me isolated. I didn’t feel comfortable sharing my story. I didn’t want to be seen as inspirational for just being me and having dreams, and I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me. I didn’t feel like I had a choice about when I wanted to share my story. Nowadays, I see the experience differently.
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As I have gotten older, from age 18 to age 28 now, I look back and understand what these ableist experiences have done to me in the long term. Incidents like this gave me a need to find my definition of worth and success and to be seen beyond my mobility aid, which people felt limited my path to success. Today, I am still not comfortable sharing my story as an inspirational message. However, I want to use my story as a tool to create a greater understanding of disabled experiences.
I have now accepted my power wheelchair as an extension of myself. I am still learning to feel like myself in my chair, but I’m on an empowering journey to becoming more confident. I can now look at my walker and power chair as partners, as they have helped me discover who I am.
I hope stories like mine are becoming less common for children with disabilities today. People with disabilities are living and thriving in our communities, and they deserve to have equal opportunities to interact with society and prove what they can do.
Saphire Murphy is a graduate student at the University of Toledo who will graduate in May. She is studying Sociology and Liberal Studies. As a woman with multiple disabilities, she is passionate about the importance of representation for people with disabilities in everyday life.