Invisible Disability
Invisible disability refers to impairments that live in the body and shape experience without announcing themselves visibly—conditions like autism, ADHD, chronic pain, PTSD, and sensory processing differences, which alter how a child moves through the world even as teachers, peers, and systems fail to see or believe their reality.
In schools, invisibility becomes a form of risk: supports are delayed, distress is misread, and the burden of proof falls on the child to perform their suffering convincingly enough to be deemed worthy of accommodation, while masking, compliance, or silence are mistaken for wellness.
To name invisible disability is to refuse the logic that equates visibility with legitimacy, to affirm that pain, overwhelm, and difference exist even when undetected—and to insist that the right to access, dignity, and care does not depend on spectacle, diagnosis, or external validation.
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The orange shirt I folded
I was folding laundry late one night, brain running on the kind of background grief that rarely quiets, when my hand closed around the orange shirt. I moved to set it aside—automatically, instinctively—because I remembered September was coming, school would be starting, and Orange Shirt Day would follow quickly after. That shirt would be needed…
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Flourishing as an ethical imperative
Like many of you, I caught CBC’s Ideas episode the other day, where philosopher Angie Hobbs spoke about the ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia—a term sometimes translated as happiness or welfare, but more richly understood as human flourishing. In a world flooded by crisis, it may seem indulgent or impractical to contemplate the good life,…
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My neighbour asked if I wanted to talk to her friend who is a social worker
It was meant as kindness, like she’d mistaken my roaming the neighbourhood bawling as some sort of cry for help instead of just my typical state as I sift through the details of ten years of institutional harm. I weep because I feel pain and I’ve had to trap it inside and I’m fucking done…
