Thriving While Disabled: Navigating Disability Finances
I know that I haven’t written another post in way too long. I do apologize for this, but it’s been for a variety of good reasons. But at the most basic, life happened in a way that drew my focus away from writing posts, and I had less time and energy to devote to it. But I want to share something super exciting that I’ve been putting out on my social media for a while, but have not written a post about. I’m correcting that oversight now. I’ve been putting a book together for almost a year now, and it should be published soon!
What I’ve written
The book is entitled Thriving While Disabled: Navigating Disability Finances, and it’s a guide to thinking about the financial, emotional, and social costs of living with a disability, with information on and suggestions about navigating the broken systems you face in the process.
I’ve drawn from quite a few of my blog posts for this, and added more topics as well. This is where most of my writing energy has gone since I was inspired to make it happen about a year ago!
The book quickly goes into a brief history of disability and the disability rights movement, with an explanation of structural ableism and classism. Then it discusses how the two combine to make living in modern society with a disability so incredibly difficult, including perspective on the whole broken mess that is our social welfare system.
The next chapter discusses the social costs and risks that accompany being disabled, with insights on how to anticipate the issues and minimize the damage, as well as useful concepts like spoon and fork theories.
Image description: On a turquoise background, large white text reads “Thriving While Disabled” with smaller text below it “Navigating Disability Finances” Below the text is half a compass rose design in white. The bottom of the image is a green stripe with the name “Alison Hayes” in white text
In the third chapter, I dig into work, employment laws, accessibility and the other protections that do exist for disabled people at work, and the process of determining if you still can and should work, as well as how to protect yourself while working and leaving work.
Chapter 4 is devoted to the process of applying for Social Security’s disability programs. The next chapter is devoted to medical debt and health insurance options.
Chapter 6 is entitled “surviving the wait” and discusses the major social welfare programs and other benefits that you might need, apply for, or use while trying to survive the process and the often multi-year wait for disability coverage.
Chapter 7 is all about working while collecting disability benefits, and how you can understand and control if, how, and why your benefits could end when working.
Chapter 8 discusses the longer term considerations and implications of living with a disability, like banking, marriage, children, and legal protections. Basically, it hits on the stuff you’ll need to think about at some point, but which isn’t primarily a survival concern.
The final chapter covers asperational considerations, like what policies or policy changes would help our community and ways you can learn more or pay things forward.
Every topic has references to places you can go for more information, to get more details and better understand the issue, or to help you do the thing discussed. I’m really proud of it and excited to share it with you!
Why I decided to write this book
This is a labor of love, to help our community. I’ve been mentally playing with this for a while, and intend to create an online course covering these materials as well, once I have the spoons. In fact, my original plan was to have this be a huge course, but when I showed it to a few folks, they instantly responded with “Alison, this is a book!”, so I decided to start with that. I’ve always wanted to write a book, and so the pieces fell into place with this being the end result. I’m very excited about it and looking forward to sharing it with you.
Who this book is written for
Well, you of course! This is a resource for my fellow disabled folks who may be struggling along this treacherous path of surviving our current society and all the ableism inherent to it.
My goal is for this to be the handy-dandy resource you turn to when you’re thinking about what your next step is, with pages that may inspire you to keep going when things feel impossible or stupidly challenging. My biggest message throughout is that the systems are broken, not you. The process is hard and the odds are stacked against us. But I have faith in your ability to succeed anyway.
I’m sure it may also be helpful for family members, social workers, mental health professionals, and others in government or government-adjacent positions to understand how disabled people experience the system, but that’s not my primary focus. I want you, as a person living with a disability, to know that you are not alone in the struggle, that the odds really are stacked against us, and that you can still succeed despite these challenges
So when is it coming out?
Well, it was supposed to come out October 8. However, my publisher hasn’t made the progress they needed to in editing my book, so there’s no way that that is happening. If they carry through with their promise to start working on it immediately, then I’m hoping(and they estimated) it will be out by late October/early November. So hopefully it’ll be out by December at the latest, and I’m hoping it’ll be sooner than that. I will be updating folks on my email list about timing as I know more.
I’m anxiously awaiting the feedback I need to get onto the next steps. I can’t wait to share it with you!
Keeping you posted
So I’ve got an email list and would love you to join it. I will be emailing out updates as I can and have them to share, and do my best to bring you along on this journey as I can. I can’t wait to share it with you, and hope to get back to sharing posts again in the not-too-distant future!
