I’ve always been a reader, and like anyone else, I love an inspirational story. And what’s more inspirational than miraculous healings, rising above disabilities and illnesses, or an able-bodied person learning lessons from someone who has it worse?
There’s a place for that. Especially since fiction is just that, fictional. But people with disabilities exist for more than just inspiring others.
As a teenager, I was an athlete. I even received scholarships to play softball in college. But my sophomore year, everything changed.
I started collapsing. I was exhausted, dizzy, shaky. I would faint multiple times a day. After going through a lineup of confused doctors and hospitals, I was finally diagnosed with dysautonomia/POTS, a nervous system disorder, with fainting spells, pain, and exhaustion making it difficult to perform everyday tasks such as walking to class.
There is no “cure” for POTS. I manage my symptoms with medication, lifestyle modifications, etc., but post college and into my working adult life, it’s still my reality. Some days, I can function mostly “normally,” like spending a day at the zoo—though I need a few days to recover afterward. Some days, I’m too dizzy to get out of bed. It’s a tossup, and anything can cause a flare.
A lot of well-meaning people have shared stories of people—few and far between—who recovered. Everyone has advice on how to make it better. I’ve had plenty of people pray over me for healing. Some have gone so far as to question whether I had sins I needed to repent of, or whether POTS was a demonic manifestation. Apparently not, because after plenty of prayer, I’m still chronically ill.
But I still have dreams, and a life. Sometimes I fainted on the way up the stairs to class, or listened to a lecture from the floor half-conscious, but I still graduated with a degree in professional writing in only three years. I’ve worked for literary agencies, publishers, newspapers. At twenty-two, I’m about to have my third book published, with five more contracted.
And as an author who writes fiction, I see disabled characters in a different light than I once did.
Disabled people are not just there to encourage character growth in the “normal” main character. Disabilities aren’t there to inspire through miraculous healing (though it can happen). People with disabilities are the same as any other character. We have hopes and dreams, inner lives, personal struggles. And disabilities do not define us.
I make lots of POTS jokes at my own expense, but I’m first a Christian, a writer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. I’m not the “potsie friend,” I’m just a friend.
I recently heard someone say that if you could replace the disabled person in a story with a dog, and it wouldn’t change the plot or message, that’s a problem. And the more I thought about it, the truer it seemed. How many stories of caring for an autistic, quadriplegic, or other differently-abled person would literally be no different if the person the main character cared for was a dog instead?
If you’re a reader or a writer, I encourage you to take a look at disabled characters. Do they have other character traits besides “being disabled”? What do they like? What are they passionate about? Do they talk about anything besides their disability?
What we read influences how we see the world. I love disability representation, and I love inspirational stories. But as we read and write, let’s keep in mind that God made all of us differently, and those with disabilities are not charity cases, or pets, or there for us to feel better about ourselves, but rather people just like the rest of us.
Have any good book recs with positive disability rep? Leave them in the comments!
Alyssa Roat grew up in Tucson, Arizona, but her heart is in Great Britain. She has worked in a wide variety of roles within the publishing industry as an agent, editor, writer, and marketer. She is the publicity manager at Mountain Brook Ink and Mountain Brook Fire, a former associate literary agent at Cyle Young Literary Elite, an editor with Sherpa Editing Services, and a freelance writer with 200+ bylines in local, national, and international publications.
Alyssa is the co-author with Hope Bolinger of the YA superhero chat fiction romance Dear Hero and the sequel, Dear Henchman. Her name is a pun, which means you can learn more about her at www.alyssawrote.com or on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook as @alyssawrote.
An estranged uncle, a mysterious mansion, and Arthurian legend—together they lead to a world of magic and bloodthirsty wizards who want teenage Brinnie dead.
Brynna “Brinnie” Lane has always lived a quiet life under the watchful eye of her hovering mother—until she’s sent off for the summer to live with an uncle she didn’t know she had. While her parents get to travel across the globe, she’ll be spending three months in the middle of nowhere: upstate New York. It looks like she might spend the entire summer friendless with her nose in a book.
However, she soon finds that Wraithwood Estate, her uncle’s creepy old mansion, holds as many secrets as the man himself. When Brinnie is warned not to explore any of it, her curiosity only grows. As unnatural events take place and Brinnie hears whispers of a hidden war, she must unravel the truth about her family’s mysterious past if she wants to survive.
Something terrible happened at Wraithwood thirty years ago, and Brinnie is determined to find out what—even if it means confronting the possibility that magic is real.
janemouttet
Alyssa Roat