GROWING UP WITHOUT MIRRORS

When I was growing up, I didn’t see women with cerebral palsy.

That absence shaped more of my life than I realized at the time.

As a child, I knew I had cerebral palsy. I knew my body moved differently, and I understood that some things required more effort for me than for other kids. But what I didn’t see anywhere around me were examples of what adulthood with cerebral palsy might look like—especially for women.

There were no women with cerebral palsy on television.
There were none in movies.
There were none in magazines or school posters.

If they existed, they were invisible to me.

Because of that, it was hard to imagine what my future might look like. It wasn’t that I believed I wouldn’t grow up or have a life. It was that I didn’t have a clear picture of how someone like me fit into the world as an adult.

Disability, in many ways, was something people talked about in terms of childhood—therapy appointments, school accommodations, and learning how to manage challenges. But very few people talked about what happened after that. No one talked about what adulthood with cerebral palsy looked like. No one talked about careers, relationships, independence, or identity.

And almost no one talked about women.

Without those mirrors, it was easy to believe that parts of my life simply didn’t exist yet—or maybe didn’t exist at all.

This didn’t mean I lacked support. My family, my teachers, and people around me believed in me deeply. They encouraged me, advocated for me, and helped me reach opportunities that might not have existed otherwise.

But encouragement and representation are not the same thing.

Encouragement tells you that you can do something.

Representation shows you that someone already has.

That difference matters.

When you don’t see someone like you living the life you’re trying to imagine, the path forward can feel uncertain. Not impossible—but unclear. You move forward without a map.

For a long time, that uncertainty shaped how I saw myself.

It shaped how I understood womanhood.
It shaped how I imagined adulthood.
And it shaped how I learned to navigate a world where parts of my identity didn’t have many visible examples.

Looking back now, I can see that the absence of mirrors didn’t mean those women didn’t exist.

It only meant I hadn’t seen them yet.

And sometimes, the moment you finally notice those reflections is the moment everything begins to shift.