Growing Up Disabled in Australia

My body and its place in the world seemed normal to me. Why wouldn’t it?

I didn’t grow up disabled; I grew up with a problem. A problem that those around me wanted to fix.

We have all felt that uncanny sensation that someone is watching us.

The diagnosis helped but it didn’t fix everything.

Don’t fear the labels.

That identity, which I feared for so long, is now one of my greatest qualities.

I had become disabled – not just by my disease, but by the way the world treated me. When I found that out, everything changed.

One in five Australians has a disability. And disability presents itself in many ways. Yet disabled people are still underrepresented in the media and in literature. In Growing Up Disabled in Australia – compiled by writer and appearance activist Carly Findlay OAM – more than forty writers with a disability or chronic illness share their stories, in their own words. The result is illuminating.

Contributors include senator Jordon Steele-John, paralympian Isis Holt, Dion Beasley, Sam Drummond, Astrid Edwards, Sarah Firth, El Gibbs, Eliza Hull, Gayle Kennedy, Carly-Jay Metcalfe, Fiona Murphy, Jessica Walton and many more.