Reflecting On The End Of Disability Pride Month

Friday marked the end of disability pride month, which, I’ll admit, I didn’t know was a thing until this year. I am proud to be a dwarf. I am proud to be a person with a disability. But...there were times when I wished I wasn’t, or at least wished I could hide it. 

I was disabled before I was born. While genetics was my favorite topic in biology, I’m certainly no expert. However, I know enough to know that one tiny substitution, an A for a G, in a series of thousands on my DNA strand changed my life before I ever got to live it. My parents didn’t know, my doctors didn’t know, no one knew until my birthday. 

Being a little person in an average-sized world has never been easy. It makes shopping for clothes more challenging. It forces me to take two steps where the average person only has to take one. It is the first thing people see when I walk into a room. I’ve developed a sixth sense where I can detect people staring, people pointing, people taking out their phones to take pictures. There were times where I was made to feel invisible and times where I wished I was. 

I learned at a young age that, despite my best efforts, I can’t conceal my dwarfism. It is not just a diagnosis, it is a part of who I am. Because I am a little person, when the softball diamond grew too big, I had to stop playing. My dad, refusing to let me give up, insisting I be treated like “one of the guys”, taught me how to track pitches and keep score the old fashioned way (on pen and paper). It was his teaching that started my journey in sports that led me to working a college bowl game and a triathlon in London. Because I am a little person I have scars from surgeries past, scars I would hide in elementary school by wearing pants in June. However, it is because of these scars and surgeries that I could bike to Ocean City and back with my dad, become a Zumba instructor and climb Masada. Because I am a little person, when first applying for jobs, I would choose not to disclose my status as a disabled person. I thought concealing my dwarfism for as long as possible was the only way I would be given a fair chance. Yet, the reason I have the job I do now is because I’m a little person who had to learn to advocate for herself and others. 

Over the years I’ve had to constantly remind myself and others that my disability may define a part of me, but it certainly does not limit what I can do. Were there moments when I wished I was just a few inches taller? Of course, but I don’t think that would have made my life any easier. As a little person, I’m constantly looking up at the world around me and the people in it. It is this outlook of always looking up (see what I did there?) that I’m writing these words:

I am a proud, disabled woman and that will never change.