Thank you so much to Rebekah Taussig for providing her perspective from her wheelchair bound, amazing body in her memoir Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body. I have always considered myself a skilled empath (yes, I know how that sounds, but for the sake of this review roll with me here) but I had never actually taken much time to think of the experience of disabled people (again, I know how that sounds, but reflect: how much time have you carved out to consider this?). Of course I've seen them, known them, and even loved them more than anyone else, as near the end of her life my mother was quite severely disabled, but I haven't thought much about how they move through the world and how the world moves against them. I haven't thought about how they are constantly portrayed as victims, as people who need healing and change, as secondary characters in both fictional and real-life narratives of do-gooders in this world. I've used the accessibility stalls when I thought it wouldn't inconvenience anyone. I've lived life not fully aware of how the world is made for me and not made for others, even though I consistently try to be aware of this and learn and grow.

Rebekah Taussig made me grow. She opened my eyes.

Her story was so powerful. I really took so much away especially from her experience teaching teenagers. Disability itself isn't necessarily something that needs to be fixed. The world and its accommodations of those disabilities is a more important thing to focus on. Sending the message to disabled folks that there is something inherently wrong about them that should be righted is so damaging, but it is all too often the message sent and message received. People with disabilities are also often the source of "inspiration porn," dehumanizing them and their needs, treating them as though they only exist to serve the positive emotions and warm fuzzies of other people. Finding and affording suitable housing, having a career, affording healthcare, and so many other issues overtake the lives of these individuals, all these things we take for granted because they're hard enough for able-bodied people and so it becomes hard to imagine how much more difficult they are when you are not entirely able-bodied.

Rebekah also points out that those of us who live long enough will also come to struggle with disability. It's important to consider this now, and always, and understand that one day the walk up the stairs to the office may no longer be possible, that one day holding the fork up and swallowing our food may not be possible, and what can we do to make these things more accessible for those who need accommodation now and those of us who do not but will later in life?

I will see the world differently forever because of this book and will actively seek out more disabled perspectives. Thank you to Rebekah Taussig for teaching me so much. That shouldn't and doesn't need to be her job, but she takes it on anyways, and I and so many other readers have benefitted and are endlessly grateful.