Tiffany A. Yu, Founder, Diversability:
November 29, 1997 was the day that everything changed. My body changed, my life changed, my whole family changed.
I was 9 years old. And on a car ride home with my dad and a couple of my siblings, he lost control of the car. I sustained a handful of injuries, including permanently paralyzing one of my arms, breaking a couple of bones in one of my legs that would leave me as a temporary wheelchair user for about four months, and much later being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental health disability.
On top of all of that, my dad also passed away. After about a four-month rehabilitation period, I returned back to school. And I was thrust into this environment where I was still grieving the loss of my dad and trying to better understand this new body that I had, this disabled body.
Bias shows up for disabled people the most is through exclusion. It’s through not even being thought about. So some of my hardest memories growing up weren’t necessarily things that people overtly said to me. It was the things that they didn’t do. And one of the things I noticed was that people were pretty uncomfortable around my disability.
And, as a result, they were uncomfortable with me. And at the time, all I really wanted was to be accepted and understood and seen. For about 12 to 13 years after the car accident, I actually didn’t tell anyone about it. I still remember the day that I first shared the story publicly of the car accident.
I think two things were happening with the emotion that came out. And the first was being seen and validated for the first time in the story. And the second was the enormous amount of pain that I hadn’t given myself the space to process.
I wanted to build a community, because what happens in community is not only do you realize you’re not alone; you realize how much power and influence you do have as a collective together. And so what we’re working on is what I call the shame-to-pride transformation around a disability identity.
Disability pride is everything. It is the way that a disabled person asserts their sense of worth and value in a society that tells us that we should feel shame about who we are. Looking at my own journey, I want to take those 12 years of shame that I had internalized and say, hey, look at me now. How liberating is it to just be myself and be proud of who I am in all aspects of my identity?
Nine-year-old Tiffany would be in disbelief of who she has become. In many ways, the why behind everything I do is for her. And if I could tell 9-year-old Tiffany anything, I would tell her, I can’t wait to see who you become.
My name is Tiffany Yu, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on elevating disability pride.
