Our Beautiful Challenges — Marie

Disability Pride series

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is that not everyone meets disability at the same door.

Some of us are born with a disability.

Some acquire one through an illness, an accident, or simply through the aging process.

No matter how we arrive, we all become part of the same community.

I was born with cerebral palsy.

I don’t know life without it.

Growing up, disability wasn’t something that happened to me—it was simply part of who I was.

That doesn’t mean it was easy.

Like many children with disabilities, I had to learn how to navigate a world that wasn’t always designed with me in mind.

I grew up during a time when disability rights were still changing. Schools, businesses, and communities were learning what inclusion really meant. I often found myself educating people without even realizing I was doing it.

Others enter the disability community much later in life.

A stroke.

A spinal cord injury.

Multiple sclerosis.

Parkinson’s disease.

Cancer.

An accident that changes everything in a single moment.

Those experiences are very different from mine.

Someone who acquires a disability often has to grieve the life they once knew while learning to adapt to a completely new way of living.

Someone born with a disability may spend years trying to prove they belong in a world that constantly underestimates them.

Neither journey is harder.

They’re simply different.

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to meet people from every part of the disability community.

Through organizations like NCHPAD, I’ve met veterans, athletes, stroke survivors, wheelchair users, people with invisible disabilities, and people living with conditions I had never heard of before.

Every one of them has taught me something.

They’ve reminded me that disability is not one experience.

It’s millions of unique stories connected by resilience, courage, and hope.

When we take the time to listen to one another instead of comparing our experiences, something beautiful happens.

We begin to understand.

We begin to support each other.

We begin to realize that our differences make our community stronger.

Disability Pride means making room for every story.

It means recognizing that someone who was born with a disability and someone who acquired one later in life may face different challenges, but both deserve dignity, respect, accessibility, and opportunity.

I’ve learned just as much from people whose disabilities are different from mine as I have from people who share my diagnosis.

That is the beauty of our community.

We don’t all come through the same door.

But once we’re here, we have the opportunity to walk beside one another.

And when we do, we discover that our greatest strength isn’t that our stories are the same.

It’s that we’re willing to share them.

Because no matter which door brought us here, every person deserves to be seen, heard, valued, and included.

That is what Disability Pride means to me.