Hello Everyone,

Welcome to The Invisible Vision Project’s Blog.

In today’s blog, I want to address an issue. As some of you reading my blogs or follow me on social media for a while, you may know that I talk about my disability, and some of the other struggles that I have, whether it be disability related or not. Well, the reason for that is because, I’m an advocate, and, advocating for myself is part of my job; and, of course, the other part, is to advocate for and educate others. However, there is another part of this work as an advocate that I haven’t done, and that is: I have not yet made it clear, that, people with disability or have other challenges, whether it is physical or mental, these people are NOT making excuses, they’re not lazy or unwilling to work harder. In fact, these people, a lot of them, may have worked way harder than people without any limitation or face as much challenges in life.

Today, I also want to share a side story, a story in which is, part of the reason why it took me so long to accept my disability and all the other struggles I face in life. So, a huge part of that reason is: I didn’t want to be a ‘needy’ person, and I certainly didn’t want others to think that I’m making excuses for my disability and my challenges. And in fact, when the time I came out of my disability,  some people (that I will not name or even say who they are ) have said something like this to me: “oh, so you’re too disabled to work, but you aren’t disabled to enjoy life and have fun?” (note: this is referred to a conversation and argument I had with someone about finding employment).

It is receiving negative comment like this that makes me want to defend myself, and advocate for myself. I want to make it clear, and very clear, that, by establishing and accepting my disability, I am not making any excuses, any at all. By accepting my disability, I am now fully aware of my ability and my limitation; I will no longer feel bad or guilty for the things that I couldn’t do because of my disability or my struggle. I no longer want to live in guilt for the rest of my life, that’s not a very healthy way of living. By accepting my disability and struggle, I also got to know myself A LOT better than before. So, in any way, I am not and will not make any excuse in any way because of my disability. Some people seeing persons with disabilities may think that we may have ‘advantages’ to take. Well, the truth is, I’m not really agreeing on that. Yes, some of us may receive support from the government and organizations, and that’s because some of us need that kind of help due to the nature of our disability. And, we receive such support, because that’s how some of us live a full and independent life, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We are, and I wouldn’t speak for all of us, but, I could say that most of us with disability or have other challenges, we often have to work a lot harder than the average people, just to maintain an average life on a day-to-day basis. So, I am not, and most of us, I believe, are not making any excuses because we have a disability or face struggles in life!

So, this concludes today’s blog. I really hope you’ve enjoyed reading it!

Thank you for reading to the end.

By: The Invisible Vision Project