I’ve written about why shame is often attached to utilizing social welfare programs. This post digs more deeply into truths we can recognize and mindsets we can embrace to help protect ourselves from that shame while we use these programs designed to help us. We all use Social welfare programs It’s interesting that we often…
Having a disability is nothing to be ashamed of. Being poor is nothing to be ashamed of. Getting help from our own government is nothing to be ashamed of. And yet, I’m sure you winced a little, internally, at one or more of these statements. Our society here in the US has put a lot…
This post was written by Kay Uchi, a black friend of mine(Alison). She is also disabled, and we decided to share some of her experiences with systemic racism in medical care. What follows is her story. The day my father died I remember my mom knocking on my bedroom door and asking me to examine…
There are many conditions that are directly associated with stress. While that includes most, if not all, mental illnesses, it also includes very physical conditions such as diabetes, many forms of coronary disease, and asthma, to name a few. Functional Neurological Disorder(FND) is also considered a stress-related condition. Today, let’s talk about how stress works,…
So, it’s once more time for A Chronic Voice’s monthly linkup. This month’s words are bothering, demanding, nourishing, telecommunicating, and tolerating. This month, it flowed out as the stresses I’m acknowledging in my life and how I’m muddling through. The negative ramifications of the word ‘bothering’ The word bothering, well, bothers me. The Miriam-webster definition…
I’m not sure why anybody would argue with this statement, but people do. As a disabled person, I’m furious about how very broken it is and how hard people have to work to be treated anything resembling properly. It shouldn’t be this hard, but it is – and it’s really important that we talk about…
With the Black Lives Matter protests and events are occurring as part of a call for justice, I want to do my part to help the movement. While police brutality is what triggered this movement, there are a lot of complex roots underlying it. This post focuses on the disabled angle. As a disabled person,…
This is Pride month, and while I want to celebrate, I feel it is more important to discuss injustice and oppression. With the protests(and occasional rioting) that is going on all over the US, I feel it’s important to discuss the intersectionality of the LGBT community, and how the community has, in large part, erased…
The biggest thing in the news for the past several months has been COVID-19, a novel coronavirus that has been spreading around the world and killing hundreds of thousands of people. In some ways, I’m very tired of covering it – in others, because it is constantly on my mind, I’m feeling like I need…
The honest answer is that there are a lot of possible meanings. The most typical at this point is to receive Social Security Disability Insurance benefits(SSDI) or Supplemental Security Insurance(SSI), but there really are a lot of additional types of “disability” benefits, each of which has its own set of rules, regulations, and durations. This…