The Giving Tree Is A Mother
For a long time in my life I felt deeply troubled by the burden put on my mother when she unknowingly gave birth to a child who, by simply being alive, would forever use every single drop of her life energy. Just like everything else related to my disability, in my family this was never consciously thought about, only vaguely implied, dislocated hints at my villainy, the devilishness inherent in me, never to be admitted in a conversation - maybe because crimes without a criminal are often too complex to think about - but instead, yelled in a moment of fury about how I'm killing my mom.
Throughout my childhood and early adulthood, the guilt ate at me... until eventually I had to put an end to this craziness and deliberately choose to live my life as fully as I could, even if it meant exploring another person, and in the mean time I'd just do my best to be as flexible and compassionate as possible as a way to cause the least damage. Now if other people find me selfish, knowing the selfishness of my actions was pondered and decided gives me at least some sense of peace, some ground.
And the reason I post this now is that I want as many people as possible thinking about all the families broken not by a child with a disability, but by a community and a government that are unable to provide even the minimal support. And I ask the feminist movement to forget about their abled feminism with its precious nipple freedom and precious menstruation debates for just one second and remember all the mothers who give up on their own freedom because they can't afford 3 caretakers, because their child didn't ask to be born and somehow that burden falls upon them. What I ask for is dignity to all the people with disabilities, and consequently the dignity to all their Mothers.
