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In January of 2024, I made the decision to stop running from disability. With distance from a turbulent and traumatic relationship, I finally had the space to address the holes in my life. But I had accepted the label of disability long ago. So what was I running from?
Acceptance. That was my pursuer. It’s one thing to claim disability and fight for my rights and the rights of others; it is another thing entirely to devote myself to building a life that nurtures my bodymind, rather than operating in spite of it.
As I took stock of my habits, routines, events, and commitments, I realized that so little of my life was actually built to support me. I would be reimagining things from the ground up, and that was a daunting prospect. But it was a journey I knew I had to take. Starting with changing my therapist.
Leaving a good therapist is monumentally difficult, and it’s made even harder if you’re the one deciding to initiate the change. Without my former therapist, I likely wouldn’t have gotten to a point where I was ready for this kind of acceptance. But that acceptance also entailed acknowledging that they were not the right fit for me anymore.
As I was growing into my autistic self, I needed someone who, at the very least, had experience working with autistic folks and could comprehend how our minds work. I needed someone who would validate my experiences and meet me on my own terms.
After our last session, I sat waiting for an unfamiliar bus, on my way to visit a friend at their job. P!nk’s “Last Call” was playing gently in my ear. There were just enough clouds to filter the sunlight, the sky a dim blue-gray above me. The air hung heavy, not frigid but not yet warm. Just on the edge of comfort.
Five years after my injury, I felt the spark of new growth. Space for new habits, a new therapist, a new approach to school. But this kind of growth is slow. It’s like sitting in the garden to watch a pepper vine twirl its way up: after many hours of silent contemplation, you are likely to notice a small shift, but your time would be much better spent elsewhere, the vine twirling ever on in the background.
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So I let that all sit in the back of my mind’s garden. I focused on the moment. The slight breeze pushing the chilly air onto my skin. Once inside, the sounds of conversation and smell of fresh paper.
As usual, I was in two places at once—one internal, one external—yet this did not feel discordant. The inner world reached a harmony with the outer, and I was comfortable to root myself more firmly in the external world, knowing the internal pieces would continue to move and grow at their own pace.
As I write this, I am in a quest for health. Weeks of illness and bodymind disturbance have me worn down, exhausted, my defenses waning. What does radical self-acceptance look like when you don’t want to be in pain, discomfort, agony? When you want to be able to eat one meal without worrying about the nausea?
For me, it looks like an understanding of normality as fluidity. I know myself well enough to know that I do have a normal range. Not a fixed state, but a flow of symptoms and feeling that I am comfortable in.
Knowing this, it’s clear to me I am currently outside my normal range. Something is wrong, and I have two paths ahead of me: get myself back within that normal range, or redefine my range to include this, too, as normal.
Both of those paths rely on identifying exactly what has pulled me out of my normality. But they do not rely on a return to a fixed, predetermined state. I do not wish to have the bodymind I had six years ago, nor the one I had six months ago. I only wish to reach an equilibrium: a place of flux and flow where I can feel comfortable enough in my daily life.
My quest for health is not a quest for Cure. It is a quest for comfort, for ease. And as long as I don’t begin wishing for an imagined, impossible state, I know I will eventually reach that ease again.
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Ashton Rose 