 When I think of like a Pride month or being proud of something, I think of feelings of like excitement, you want to show it off to the world, like this is yours, feelings of ownership, you're just really jazzed about something, right? And when I think about disability, those are not the feelings that come to mind. Today's video was brought to you by Squarespace, stay tuned to hear a little bit more about them. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, delightful, and talented internet friends, welcome back to my channel and a very happy disability Pride month to you. I did not know until a few weeks ago that such a thing existed. But ever since then, I have been having a lot of complicated thoughts and feelings about it because shocker, I'm disabled. I am a below the knee amputee. Being someone who is disabled and has the honor of having an audience here on the internet, I immediately felt this pressure to like make disability Pride content. But all I could think of was like, how am I going to talk about how freaking awesome and amazing this is and how I want to share it with everybody when that is not what I actually feel? The vast majority, like almost all of the time, I feel like this is okay. I've made peace with it most days, but in no way am I like, everybody, go be disabled. It's the best, right? So I think it comes down to lack of understanding about what Pride means. But beyond that, I wanted to share with you some honest thoughts and feelings. And because I'm going to be genuinely sharing my thoughts and feelings, I can pretty much guarantee that I am going to say things that are very ableist. I'm very aware of the fact that as someone who has been raised in a culture where being disabled is not the norm, where it's seen as different, weird, and often times bad, I have a lot of mindsets that are still instilled in me, prejudiced towards disability, even though I am a member of that community. So I just want you to know that I am aware of the fact that a lot of what I'm about to say might not be the best way to word things or might be offensive to the disabled community or other communities. And if that's the case, I want to learn from it so I can be a better person in the future. But I also don't want to lie and represent a version of myself that isn't accurate. So what do we do about disability pride when we don't exactly feel proud? As we dive into this conversation, I want to give a big thank you to our fantastic sponsor today, Squarespace. Squarespace makes designing, growing, starting, building your very own website easy and enjoyable. They provide you with everything you need to grow and succeed online, whether you're starting a blog, running a t-shirt startup, or like me, redesigning your public speaking website. With an extensive gallery of award-winning layouts and templates, it makes this process really easy, especially if you're not a web designer, which I certainly am not. In the age of social media in which we live, Squarespace makes it fantastically simple to connect in your social media accounts, display content on your website, and make sure that everything is integrated and streamlined. I'm able to use their powerful blogging tools to schedule posts, categorize, share, manage comments, and so much more. Their analytics allow you to gain powerful, insightful information about your audience, which is really important to improving your website, to improving your business, to knowing how people interact with what you're putting out there and how to better serve them. If you're thinking about starting a website or a business, it can seem overwhelming because, ah, do I have to know about coding? And is it going to be simple? And I've got to learn a whole new thing, but I can tell you from personally using it that Squarespace makes this whole process simple and easy and seamless and actually enjoyable to use. Check out squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you are ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash Footless Show for 10% off your first website or domain. And now let's get back to disability pride. If you did not know, July is Disability Pride Month. And like I said, when I found this out, it almost sounded like an oxymoron to me because I'm like, disability is something that you are. I don't have a problem with the term, but it's not something that I would celebrate. Or as the dictionary definition, it tells us, feel a deep sense of pleasure or satisfaction from. When I think of disability, that is not what I think of. To me personally, when I think of disability, I think of working around limits. I think of a society that isn't built for you. I think of a really cool community filled with amazing people who are unfortunately often seen by a lot of society as different or weird. Like we don't think this is normal, right? So disability to me is all about adapting to the world and making life work anyways and having great time while I do that. But disability in and of itself is not something that I would celebrate. I almost feel anger hearing that because I'm like, no, I'm not gonna celebrate a thing that hurts me. That's caused me a lot of discomfort and pain. Don't get me wrong. I am happy with myself and my life, but if I am entirely honest with you in a perfect world where everything works the way it's supposed to be, being someone who was born with two legs that worked at one point, like knowing what it was like to get up in the morning and not have to assemble myself, not have to worry about like a hole in my liner or a screw came loose or I got a bruise on my leg and now it hurts to walk for days or I'm having skinny shoes underneath my liner. Like having lived life as someone who wasn't disabled for the first few years of my life and having memory of that. I do see that as better. I spend next to no time sitting and like wishing my life was different, but in a perfect world, I would have both of my legs, right? Like I will advocate and educate and have conversations all gosh darn day about disability and life as a disabled person and disability rights and advocacy, but that is because I continue to live in a world that is not built for me and because so many of my friends continue to live in a world that is not built for them. I recently had this realization that really all being disabled means is that the world as a whole was not sculpted to benefit you. Because the majority of people have sight, we have a world that is built for sighted people because the majority of people are able to use their own two feet to walk. We have a world that is built for walking people. If human beings as a whole were never born with arms, if that's just not something that our species had, we would have a world that was built for armless people, but we don't have that. What we've built is a world for people who are not disabled and thankfully, we have come a far away with disability rights, with accessibility, believe me, we have a long way to still go with social change and perception and how people treat each other and that means we are gonna learn how to adapt really gosh darn well and how to persevere and how to get through things, but that doesn't make it always a good thing or a positive experience. And I think my thoughts on this matter are very heavily informed by the fact that I am new to this, that it wasn't even three years ago that I lost my leg. Before that, I had a lot of health struggles, a lot of health challenges, but it wasn't nearly as visible as public or as unavoidable in my own head, if that makes sense. So I'm coming into this with years of fitting in to the world the way that it was built and trying to figure out what my genuine feelings are about disability pride is kind of difficult. Half the stuff I just said that I will keep in this video, I feel like a bad person for saying. I feel like the appropriate and socially acceptable response here is that being disabled is fantastic. This is an aspect of my identity that I am proud of, that I wanna like share with the world that I take pleasure and satisfaction from as the dictionary definition of the term says, yes, dictionary definitions are very boring, but they are important. So I was really curious what other disabled people thought about this and other disabled voices. So I took to the internet to learn a little bit and to have my mind expanded because I want to know if there's something I'm missing here, if I have a fundamental misunderstanding of what this is supposed to mean. And I came across this article by USA Today, which I will link down below, talking about what Disability Pride Month actually is. And I noticed that one of my acquaintances online, Tiffany Yu, who has a paralyzed hand from a car accident, she creates a lot of really awesome content on TikTok was featured in this article. For Tiffany Yu, Disability Pride Month is about recognizing her disability as an integral part of who she is. For Anthony Rios, it's about accepting that his disability makes him different, not worse. I really like that one. For years, you tried to hide her disability by wearing long sleeve shirts and refusing to talk about the accident. She later developed PTSD and took on the challenge of healing and accepting herself. I think that so much of my healing process has been about really experiencing the full embodiment of who I can be and who I am. So this month is about people with disabilities like me falling in love with themselves. I really love that. See, that makes a lot of sense to me because I'm like, yes, absolutely. You're taking your circumstances and being like, okay, I'm gonna embrace this and I'm gonna fall in love with who I am and it's different, but it's not worse. I want to confront what creates ableism and why they don't like the word disabled because in reality, there's nothing evil or wrong with being disabled, said you. And as I read through this article, I began saying like, oh yes, I totally get that to so much more of it and having a deeper understanding of what this means. To me, disability pride is many things. It's a chance for disabled people to declare their inherent self-worth something that isn't often done by individuals outside of the community. It's a chance for the disabled community to come together, uplift and amplify one another. Perhaps more importantly, it's a time for all of us to make a whole lot of noise in the fight for disability justice. As I began digging into the voices of disabled people and what they actually had to say about this month, the more I felt at home with those statements, the more I was like, yes, that's absolutely true or like, I respect that that is that for you or I get the pride needs this to you. One of the most important things that I have learned in my life as an amputee is that everybody is different. A lot of the times there isn't a right answer. There's a this fits for this person and this doesn't fit for this person answer. I am someone who will happily show you my prosthetic leg. I wear shorts all of the time, right? Because that works well for me and I'm happy to do it. But I know a lot of people who do not want to be seen as amputees who want to cover their prosthetics at all costs. Neither one of those things is bad or good. It's a personal choice. It's about comfort and what you feel comfortable doing and hearing what disability pride month means to different members of my community. It started to make a lot more sense to me and I also felt a lot less pressure to force myself to be happy about something that maybe I wasn't feeling. So as I have processed through all of this, I've come up with my own definition of what disability pride month means to me this month. In 2021, as a 30 year old and I fully expect this to change as years go on. As a disabled woman, I am gosh darn proud of the perseverance that I have. I am really proud of the fact that I have chosen to face things head on. I think of all the little things that I've learned how to do or how to adjust to or how to adapt to. And I do feel that like sense of pride, like that swelling of the chest or just like feeling pleased with it, right? I think about learning to run which is something I'm doing right now or the process of getting ready in the morning or washing everything down at night, no longer being overwhelming and the journey that it took to get there and persevering through it. And I am really proud of that. I am very proud of some of the education around this topic and the conversations that I've had and that I've been able to be a part of that. I definitely do not for a second think that being disabled makes you any less of a person. It doesn't make me any less of a human being, but it is different. It is about adjusting and like I said, adapting to a world that isn't really built for you. To use my voice and my platform to advocate for my community and build connections with the able-bodied community and see if we can all come together and make the world a better place for everybody. I think it also means accepting that there are a lot of days when I'm frustrated with disability, when I am bummed out about the fact that my body sometimes limits what I am able to do, that there are gonna be days when I have to skip something because my body just isn't with it. I also think that within disability pride, there is more than enough room for how each individual person feels. If you are someone like me who maybe doesn't feel a lot of super positive, happy feelings around disability itself, that is a-okay. There is absolutely room for you and for me within this month to sculpt what this means to you. If the statement I'm proud of my disability doesn't resonate with you, that's okay. I think there are so many pieces to find within this identity things that we are proud of and that is something I'm continuing to look at in my own life. When labels like disability cover such a huge spectrum of human existence and experience, I think it's important that we all use our voices to decide what that means to us. And that's a little bit about what disability means to me and some of the things that I think about and some of the things that I'm working on and some of the things that I know aren't great to think and also some of the things that I am genuinely very proud of in my own life that have come as a side effect of my disability, things that I have adapted to and figured out and persevered through and overcome. And so I'm curious, if you are a member of the disabled community, visible, invisible, wherever you might find yourself, what does this month mean to you? If you are an able-bodied person, what does hearing about this month mean to you? How does that strike you? What do you think when you think of disability? I'm honestly curious to hear your real comments down below and I look forward to reading through those. Thank you again so much for sponsoring today's video, Squarespace. Remember, you can go to squarespace.com slash Footless Joe. That's me for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and they are someone I highly recommend working with. By clicking that link and checking them out, not only are you opening yourself up to fantastic creative opportunities but also supporting this channel and I really appreciate that. To my Patreon members who do so much to enable what I do here, who make these videos possible, thank you to my Patreon community. I really appreciate each and every one of you and to you watching this video right now. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today. You could be anywhere else in the world, doing anything else and you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and I really appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys. Bye.