The Future Is Disabled

A Book Review

You know those books that change your life? For many of my generation, it was Harry Potter. That wasn’t the series for me. The Future Is Disabled on the other hand? LIFE. CHANGING. This book is written (and read) by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha. Their reading of this book brought it to an entirely new level.

I am in my Justice year in this collective Chariot year. I have been drawn to this genre of radical, future thinking, dreaming, and planning this year especially. As a special education teacher who is also hyper-mobile and diagnosed with ADHD (along with having the joyous combination of anxiety, depression, and PTSD), I like to think of myself as a disability advocate. I advocate for my Autistic brother, and have since we were little, and I advocate for my students. After reading this book, I am realizing that I need to take my advocacy farther. I need to be invested in Disability Justice (DJ), but not in that White, co-opty way. Instead, I need and want to look to QTPOC leaders, voices, the suggestions, the people who have started DJ and moved forth with it.

One thing that really moved me and spoke to me at a deep level in this book is how accessible DJ and mutual aid are and should be. They do not need to be the weight of the world on your shoulders. They can be checking in on those in your immediate care and/or community. Small acts of care, love, and kindness are the embodiment of DJ. Individuals still need care while the systems are being changed. We need people to fight for system changes, and the disabled folks in our lives need care at the same time.

This book has me reflecting on my school year and how grateful I am to understand sensory processing issues, sensory overload, and executive dysfunction. It has given me the empathy to treat my students, who are far more impacted than their disabilities than I am, with compassion and dignity. Even when admin and the district want my room to run like a GenEd room, despite it being a SpEd room, I stand by my students’ needs for extra transition time and extra time for breaks. I stand by my decision to allow my students to nap, eat, hydrate, and get their basic needs met as they need before they are made to learn. I stand by my decision to allow my students to eat in the classroom instead of the overstimulating cafeteria that also has music class in it at the same time.

My district, which has no a/c nor plans to keep us or the kids at healthy temp levels in the heat, has decided that custodial staff are not to open the windows of first story classrooms. So I have volunteered to go around to classrooms and offices to open up windows when I get to work at 645. These are small, yet impactful ways, that I am able to step out of an abled-mindset and into a DJ mindset. Bend the rules, break the system with consistent small acts of rebellion.

I am an avid hiker, and I love to be out in nature. I actually started walking up my local, extinct volcano when my pain levels were at an excruciating point. I would sit down and just start silently weeping as my shoulders and hips subluxed, sometimes at the same time. I went to a doctor about it, and he told me to do a handful of exercises. I tried them, and I did them diligently for a month until the pain got so bad that my legs felt as if every minute someone was hitting me with baseball bats. It turned out that he prescribed me the worst possible exercises for my body, as my body has significantly less muscle tone than many.

So instead, I tried walking on the steepest inclines I could find on that extinct volcano. As I would walk up, trying not to cry but knowing I needed to tighten up my loose joint, I would repeat to myself over and over “I am protected. I am safe. I can do this. I am okay. I am okay. I am okay.” I would reward myself by sitting at the top under “my” tree. That tree is where I made a lot of my first spiritual leaps. It turns out that I was ok, and that nature was the cure I needed. Ok, not quite a cure, my hips sublux while I teach all the time, but it was a balm, a form of healing that hugged me close.

How and why is this related to this book? Accessibility. Where I live, there are very few accessible trails. There are green space parks that are accessible to a point, but there are very few accessible accessible hiking trails or even playgrounds for kids (and adults!) to play on, to be free within. I have thought about this before, but reading this book brought it to the forefront of my mind again.

For me, I wonder what boards and politicians need to be spoken to and how we can get the awareness and support out to the public in a way that will see it as a valuable investment. Obviously, nature and access are always valuable, but I also am not naive to the PNW cold shoulder and apathy that comes to living in 9 months of gray rain. Nor am I naive to the fact of my state being founded as a Whites Only state and the culture of fear, judgment, and. hate it has created.

This book has made an impact on me. A deep one. There are so many things I want to talk about and touch on, but I need more time to process all of the information. I have quoted the author many times in the post. There are so many more that also resonated.

The rawness, the realness, the sincerity, but also the hope of this book resonated deeply for me. I want to leave you with one last quote.

I also want to remind you that disabled lives are lives. Disabled people are souls who need love and care like the abled-bodied souls who often receive far more love and care. If you have a person or people in your life who may be feeling isolated due to their disability, reach out to them. Check on their hearts. Check on their needs. Take the time to research about their disability if you are not quite sure what it entails. If you are a disabled human in need of love and care, know that I see you and am sending it your way. Comment your needs below. Maybe we can get a little mutual aid train going here on Substack.

Wishing you well this week! May your life offer what you need in this moment.

With love,

Aventurine ✨