muscular dystrophy

Depression and Suicide Do Not Come Standard With the Progressive Disability Package

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment
A few weeks ago, Alice Wong asked me, a fellow person living with a progressive neuromuscular disease (NMD), how I would respond to someone with an NMD who was saying they wanted to commit suicide.  This was my answer.

Depression is not a standard feature of living with a neuromuscular disease (NMD) or other progressive disability.Depression & Suicide Do Not Come Standard With the Progressive Disability Package Depression is not a standard feature of living with a neuromuscular disease (NMD) or other progressive disability. Do people living with disabilities also experience depression? Yes. Anyone can have depression and you are no different in deserving treatment and relief for it. Thinking that you alone can help yourself with your depression through suicide is a tragic form of “overcoming.” If finding the right treatment for your depression proves difficult, it’s not proof that your disability makes you different from other people. It’s not proof that, for you, suicide is a rational choice. No. It’s proof that depression is difficult to treat for vast numbers of people. Like you. It's free and confidential to contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline anytime. You are not a medical prognosis or a checklist of functional abilities. You're a person. Who is in terrible pain now and deserves relief. Like everybody else. If you're in crisis: 1-800-273-TALK (8255), 1-800-799-4TTY (4889) https://www.facebook.com/800273talk/ @800273TALK © 2016 talesfromthecripblog.com

Do people living with disabilities also experience depression? Yes. Anyone can have depression and you are no different in deserving treatment and relief for it. Thinking that you alone can help yourself with your depression through suicide is a tragic form of “overcoming.”

If finding the right treatment for your depression proves difficult, it’s not proof that your disability makes you different from other people.

It’s not proof that, for you, suicide is a rational choice. No. It’s proof that depression is difficult to treat for vast numbers of people. Like you.

It’s free and confidential to contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline anytime. You are not a medical prognosis or a checklist of functional abilities. You’re a person. Who is in terrible pain now and deserves relief.

If you’re in crisis:

1-800-273-TALK (8255) , 1-800-799-4TTY (4889)
@800273TALK
 

#CripTheVote: You Have Hillary Clinton to Blame for This Blog Post

/ Ingrid Tischer / 5 Comments

For the first time in my 50 years on July 28, 2016, I heard my disabled childhood described through the civil rights lens by a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. She centered my childhood where I would have: on education and public schools.

It’s difficult to explain the magnitude of hearing my disability identity described in the language of equal rights and not special needs. As meaningful as it was to see a woman accepting the nomination, the tectonic shift I felt was in Clinton accepting me as I am: as a person who deserves respect and can serve the greater good. Not as a diagnosis who has nothing to give or a vote to cast. Certainly not as a target to mock whose vote is irrelevant. Because I have gained my right to an education, I gladly accept the responsibility that comes with answering these two questions:
What do I want to contribute to that is bigger than myself? What is it that I have to contribute?
In using the education that Hillary Clinton and other disability rights advocates fought for, I have a shot at becoming a role model who works together with others rather than being labeled an “inspiration” who is kept at a distance.
The story of childhood is the story of education. The access to and quality of education determines whether that story is one you want to retell over and over, or one that threatens to scare you into silence. The school-to-prison pipeline and the violence that students of color with disabilities experience in the name of “discipline” are the education issues that need urgent action today. I appreciate Clinton’s past work because I see potential in it for protecting the rights of more children and youth with disabilities.
B/w photo of a little boy and younger girl sitting. Both smile and the boy is giving the girl a mischievous sideways glance.

The author and her older brother. Hillary Clinton said, “Every kid with a disability has the right to go to school.” That was an idea – not the law – in 1967 when this photo was taken. Three years later, this little girl could not start first grade at the neighborhood school where her older brother went. The school had a pet rabbit named Pugsly. Inclusion: DENIED. An education: DENIED. A bunny to pet: DENIED.

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What #CripLit Means To Me (and How It Differs From #DisLit)

/ Ingrid Tischer / 9 Comments

Crip Lit Let disability entertain you www.talesfromthecrip.org

Crip lit entertains you. It doesn’t explain disability.

Too basic?…

What #CripLit Means To Me (and how it differs from #DisLit) 1. In #CripLit, at least one main character has a disability and the narrator is aware of its political dimension. 2. In #CripLit, living with a disability can be described through the narrator's point of view, not just the character's, and this can provide stylistic opportunities. 3. In #CripLit, a disabled character can be deeply flawed, unlikable, or foolish, and is not obligated to be an advocate, inspiration, or role model in fictional clothing. 4. In #CripLit, an anti-hero can have a disability that is integrated into their character. 5. In #CripLit, the story does not seek to educate the reader about the mechanics of living with a disability and does seek to describe a fullness of experience, whether wholly or partially imagined. © 2016 talesfromthecripblog.com

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#CripLit Excerpt from “The Copier God Unleashes the Flood Waters”

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment
Another Excerpt From There's No Cure for Gretchen Lowe a novelAs the West-Hesperidan Free Clinic’s Administrative Manager, Gretchen was the closest thing they had to fundraising staff now that their Director was on stress leave. She was supposed to represent the clinic at these house party things but here she was wandering on the edges, again, frankly worn out just from hauling herself in the door. Here was a question: Why does philanthropy so often require climbing stairs?

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This Labor Day, Let’s Commit to Wiping Out the Charity Model for All People With Disabilities in Our Lifetime

/ Ingrid Tischer / 7 Comments

Photo of Jerry Lewis with his infamous quote about how muscular dystrophy would make him half a person.

When your organization’s fundraising tactics undermine your mission – as dehumanizing your own people does – your fundraiser efforts can only be judged a failure. No matter how much money you raise.

This Labor Day weekend has me feeling celebratory because there’s no Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Telethon on the air for the first time in 49 years.
This is great. If you’ve got that particular diagnosis. If you don’t, you may still have a problem. If, say, you’re diagnosed with autism. People with autism are still dealing with the same dynamic of destructive messages in the fundraising that purports to help them.
Criticizing how funds are raised generates a whole lot of anger if the critics are among those who are said to benefit from the efforts.  That’s why cross-disability solidarity, disability history, and telling our own stories are so important. The medical model of disability would keep us separated by diagnoses — different and disconnected — but the social model can bring us together — unique and united — through common concerns for our rights.
I’ve said it before and it’s still true: “I look at fundraising as a means of not just supporting social change but in promoting it as well. How we raise money says a lot about our attitudes toward the cause we want to fund.”

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