I highly recommend @bennessb’s #NEISvoid to anyone who is chronically ill. It’s a bit like #Nightingales, but way more successful! @judithheumann told me the disability rights movement started, in essence, with disabled people telling each other their stories (See: @cripcampfilm)
And that in telling each other their stories, and in taking the time to deeply listen, they were able to forge a community of people with diverse disabilities and experiences, forge a common movement identity, and share those stories with the wider world. #neisvoid
So, blind people learned how to tell the stories of autistic people, people with cerebral palsy learned how to tell the stories of deaf people, and so on. Perhaps through storytelling, people with diverse chronic illnesses can start to do the same? #NEISVoid
And perhaps, eventually, engage in a similar kind of storytelling and deep listening with the more established “tribes” of the disabled community. #NEISVoid
It’s my hope that more people in the chronic illness community will come to identify as disabled. There is so much power and pride in the identity, the culture, the history, the community. #NEISVoid
But––I think we need to help people with other disabilities understand why people with chronic illnesses need both the social model and the medical model. Perhaps through storytelling, we can develop a more nuanced understanding of how the two relate. #NEISVoid
