**A Journey of Self-Discovery and Empowerment through Disability Studies**

I recently had the opportunity to explore two books that have left a profound impact on my perspective, particularly when it comes to understanding disability and chronic illness. As someone who often finds themselves overwhelmed by the overwhelming amount of information available on these topics, I was eager to dive into books that would provide a fresh and insightful look at life, trauma, and self-discovery.

The first book that caught my attention was "About Life" - a thought-provoking exploration of life's complexities. I listened to this audiobook while doing chores around the house, and it was exactly what I needed at that moment. The author's perspective on life was uplifting and not overwhelming, which is often a challenge for me when reading about chronic illness. I found myself feeling more connected to my own experiences and emotions as I navigated the book's themes of trauma and self-discovery.

One aspect of this book that resonated deeply with me was its portrayal of the importance of community support in navigating disabilities. The author shared their personal experience of being emancipated from their parents, only to face skepticism from medical professionals who didn't believe them as a minor. This story highlights the significance of having a supportive community and the challenges that often arise when trying to access medical care.

The other book that I'd like to recommend is "Ask Me About My Uterus" by Abby Norman. As someone with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), I couldn't help but feel drawn to this memoir about endometriosis. The author's honest and unflinching account of her experiences with pain, surgery, and the impact of medical professionals on women's lives was both eye-opening and deeply moving.

What struck me most about Abby's story was her passion for advocacy and research. She spoke candidly about how she did her own work to understand endometriosis, despite the skepticism of some medical professionals. Her determination to shed light on the complexities of this condition and its effects on women's lives is truly inspiring. I found myself nodding along as she shared her experiences with scarring from surgery, heating pad-induced agony, and the constant struggle to find relief.

One aspect of Abby's story that resonated deeply with me was the emotional toll of having a chronic illness without being believed. The author's experience of being dismissed by medical professionals, who doubted her symptoms and told her that she had too many surgeries, is all too familiar for many women with endometriosis. It's a testament to Abby's strength and resilience that she continued to advocate for herself and others affected by this condition.

The final book that I'd like to recommend is "Furiously Happy" by Jenny Lawson. As someone who has struggled with both mental illness and chronic illness, I found this book to be a breath of fresh air. While it's often difficult to discuss the complexities of disability, Jenny Lawson does an excellent job of exploring these topics in a way that's both humorous and thought-provoking.

What struck me most about Jenny's writing is her willingness to explore the intersectionality of mental illness and chronic illness. She writes candidly about how she has experienced both conditions simultaneously, and how they've interacted with each other in complex ways. Her insights into the cyclical nature of these experiences are both eye-opening and deeply relatable.

Jenny Lawson's approach to writing about disability is also noteworthy for its sensitivity and nuance. While many authors tend to conflate mental illness and chronic illness, Jenny makes a clear distinction between the two. She acknowledges that each experience is unique and worthy of exploration in its own right, rather than trying to merge them into a single narrative.

One aspect of Jenny's writing that resonated deeply with me was her humor and wit. Her ability to find the absurdity in even the most mundane experiences is both entertaining and cathartic. At the same time, she tackles complex topics like depression and anxiety with sensitivity and empathy, making this book an essential read for anyone who has struggled with mental illness.

In conclusion, these three books have left a lasting impact on my perspective and understanding of life, trauma, and self-discovery. From "About Life" to "Ask Me About My Uterus" and "Furiously Happy", each author has brought their unique voice and experience to the table, shedding light on topics that are often overlooked or misunderstood. I highly recommend these books to anyone who is looking for a fresh perspective on disability, chronic illness, and self-discovery.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello friends I'm Kendra Winchester welcome back to my channel and today I'm going to be doing some recommendations for disability Pride Month now I had no idea that July was disability Pride Month it's actually a fairly new Pride Month I believe that it's not officially a pride month in New York City I'm not sure I mean I'm gathering it hasn't caught on to the rest of the country because I had no idea that it existed but we have this amazing pride flag which I'm very excited about and this is an entire month to celebrate people with disabilities and as some who has a disability I rarely see myself on the butcher net in particular and you know when 20% of the population roughly has the disability you would think 20% of the books would feature people with disabilities and/or are written by them but that's not really the case and so I would really love to see the book turnout celebrate people with disabilities in all of our glory and at a time right now which is really difficult for those of us with disabilities both physically and emotionally when people are deciding who has the better quality of life and is worth being saved this is a time for us that we need right now so yes we're going to celebrate by talking about books by people with disabilities but also this is not a complete list of all the books in the world when people disabilities so please leave me your favorites down in the comments so if you are new to reading about disabled people I would recommend Alice Wong's new essay collection that she edited disability visibility first-person stories from the 21st century and I love this because it includes a wide range of disabilities I have a disabling chronic illness which is an invisible condition but there are also people with visible disabilities like bodily difference or maybe they use a mobility aid there's a wide range of things that people experience and really the term disability is just a broad umbrella term we have all such a wide range of experiences this book includes people of color with disabilities and includes queer people trans people there's an essay by a Muslim person who talks about how they are exempt from fasting during Ramadan but they still try sometimes participate in their faith in that way there is a si in here about by an indigenous person who talks about the rise of autoimmune conditions and invisible disabilities in their native community and there is one by a deaf man who is in prison and how there is no accommodation for him in prison and I had never thought of so many of these different situations because we're all so different I mean even people with the same condition as me have an entirely different experience so of course this is going to include so much diversity and you know range of experiences so I would recommend starting with this for sure and there's also more resources in the back some of which are included in this stack which is pretty great so next up I have a book that I would recommend for black indigenous people of color mental health awareness month which is also July this is the collective schizophrenias by Esme Weejun Wang and talks about her experience having schizoaffective disorder how there's a lot of stigma around that diagnosis and what her life has been like trying to cope with this condition she doesn't talk about it account in this but she also has a disabling chronic illness and the last time I checked her diagnosis was Lyme disease but that of course can change because a lot of illnesses look the same until they get really badly and then it's too late but at least you know what you have said that to me once anyway so next up I'm just recommending all of Samantha Irby you all know I love Samantha Irby my favorite is we're never meeting real life she has inflammatory bowel disease and so she has a lot of humor around poop and going to the bathroom and what that's like with a bowel disease having one-night stands or something like that like you get to know people pretty quickly when you have a condition and that's someone with about condition I deeply really and so this was one of the first essay collections our authors that wrote about my experience of having a colon that hates me and so while we have different conditions I still deeply elated to this book it's also very intersectional and it's not just about her illness there's a wide range of other topics covered relationship with her wife or B black woman being a fat black woman whatever you know Samantha Ruby's thinking about like I don't know applying to The Bachelor all of that's in here highly recommend the audiobooks as well because besides accessibility being important she reads them herself and is so funny so this is sick by porch Easter Kippur and this is her experience with Lyme disease I believe she also has some updated illness stuff since she put this book out but this is primarily like the years of her having Lyme disease and not knowing and what that experience was like trying to find a diagnosis and it was really it was a difficult book for me to read the recurring theme of a lot of these is I really struggled to read about the losses that are very similar to mine and Lyme is very similar to my illness as well again they all look the same I told they don't but I deeply connected with this I will say though since I've had my illness since I was a small child I don't remember not having it but she got hers after college probably so she had like this like whole life ahead of her and she feels that was kind of stolen from her so I think if you also got sick in your early twenties which I hear is a common time for people to develop chronic conditions then you will deeply relate to this book so the next book is a book to Barling and that is Jen Campbell's the beginning of the world in the middle of the night we love Jen and we love her writing and she does a lot of advocacy for bodily difference and so I think it's obviously you can see that advocacy and that focus of that topic in this book which is also somewhat inspired by fairy tales and I really love fairy tales with Jen like all about that I love her work and I love how we've kind of watched this journey of her identifying as disabled and what that means to her and how its progressed over time and how that's totally fine you don't have to figure out everything right away and I think that's such an important thing to learn and understand so in addition to all of tech Campbell's books I'm going to recommend her channel because she just has so many insightful things to say and not to mention she's an amazing poet and talks about poetry and is my number one go-to for poetry so just go go check out all of her things all this all the things one of the things that I really struggle with is how I talk to people about my disability they get very quiet they're like oh are you okay oh I'm sorry that must be really hard for you I can't imagine doing anything like that you must be so brave you're so inspiring and they do that because they are horrified at the idea of being sick that our lives must be so incredibly difficult and sad no I am very joyful and I even live a very happy life here in my library and things and even though I am semi homebound I still live a great life because while the internet and modern technology is a huge help but I think it's important to understand that there's a lot of disabled joy that is worth celebrating and this is a book that I would recommend for that as well get a life Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert this is an own voices book about a woman with fibromyalgia and her finding love and she's a black woman living in the UK but she's upper-class comes from really wealthy background and she falls in love with a white guy who comes from a lower class background so they both are acknowledging the privileges that they have or do not have and having those difficult conversations around that it also looks at what sex is like for people disabilities so I don't know if you know this or not but oftentimes people who are not disabled often imagine disabled people as asexual beings which there's nothing wrong with being asexual but just because they're disabled doesn't mean you're going to be asexual and so that's a problem that I see a lot of literature and just a society in general and so I think this is important because yes we are also sexual beings I don't I don't understand why that's even in question I don't even know I don't know this book is about a woman who has this very rare condition and she's exhausted in a way that she can't even lift her head and so she has his wild snail as she watches him his little terrarium like living his life and she gives you some cool snail facts and you just listen to her talk about life and I'd listen to this on audio and it was lightful and not overwhelming because oftentimes I'm very overwhelmed by the books that I read about chronic illness in particular and I could only do them so often and I think I'm tangling my own trauma with that can be very painful process but this helped me so much and it wasn't as emotionally distressing as a lot of other books like the one about to mention was so definitely go check this one out talk about emotionally distressing books asked me about my uterus by Abby Norman is great for anyone with the uterus or love someone with uterus got read this because it's all about her experience with endometriosis now I have polycystic ovarian syndrome they don't know if I have endometriosis because you have to have surgery to have that diagnosed and they're like you've had too many surgeries we don't want you to create more scar tissue anyway point being still pending this is Abby's experience and she actually gets diagnosed enemy to us is really quickly like a lot of women have it for years and years and years and have no idea that you know super painful periods aren't normal so because what it's told to deal with it you know anyway so I really appreciate what Abby does in researching and talking about how medical professionals gaslight women about their experiences with pain and different things and the importance of believing women and how she did her own advocacy in her own research and how that still you know she's still a woman living with an incurable condition because just because you remove your uterus doesn't mean that the endometriosis goes away I don't think a lot of people know that and so this is something that she will live with for the rest of her life and I totally relate if having scarring on your abdomen because your heating pads is too hot but you can't move it or you will feel like you're dying and I really appreciated what she does with this and so I think yeah it's also really difficult because she was emancipated from her parents and the medical professionals at the doctor's offices wouldn't believe her when she was still a minor even though she brought her paperwork and so you also see how community support is incredibly important for those of us with disabilities because when you have money in this country you can't get medical help and it's just a whole mess and so I really appreciate what she does in this book it's incredibly important and meaningful and more people need to write about your asses and how evil they are the last book I'm going to recommend is a book that I think is incredibly important because most people who are able-bodied don't understand the difference between a mental illness and more of a physical a chronic illness kind of disability and in their efforts to be inclusive that obviously mental illness is a disability and obviously chronic illness is a disability they kind of merge the two experiences together but like we've discussed in this video experiences range widely but it's also doubly difficult if you have a chronic illness and a mental illness and those things can you know trigger each other and create the cyclical thing that happens which is really a struggle for a lot of people disabilities because a lot of us who have one or the other developed the other one they kind of want to party together for whatever reason and so I really appreciate what Jenny Lawson does in her books this one is furiously happy and this is a funny book about horrible things she has a chronic illness which I think she talks a little bit more in her first book but this one primarily focuses on her mental illness and like depression and anxiety and a lot of people with chronic illnesses have that and and vice versa I mean you have both they're both together again they like to hang out with each other but I never really seen someone talk about them separately and then talk about how they interact with each other as much as Jenny Lawson does and so while being really funny she also gives you a lot of great content about what it's like to have both physical and illness and then a mental illness as well and I think that that's really important to have that discussion around especially for people who get confused about the differences and why the differences are important because that you know changes the way that you're treated what doctors you go to etc so yeah I think that's important topic but she talks about how they both played together really well so yes I really enjoy her books so that's it for me for now I'm gonna return with my TBR for the books that I have bought recently but so many about disability and I've really found that disability studies as long as it doesn't venture into disabled and chronic illness is too much so a lot easier for me to read so I'm very excited about reading some this month and yeah I will share them in the next video but yeah alright talk to you guys laterhello friends I'm Kendra Winchester welcome back to my channel and today I'm going to be doing some recommendations for disability Pride Month now I had no idea that July was disability Pride Month it's actually a fairly new Pride Month I believe that it's not officially a pride month in New York City I'm not sure I mean I'm gathering it hasn't caught on to the rest of the country because I had no idea that it existed but we have this amazing pride flag which I'm very excited about and this is an entire month to celebrate people with disabilities and as some who has a disability I rarely see myself on the butcher net in particular and you know when 20% of the population roughly has the disability you would think 20% of the books would feature people with disabilities and/or are written by them but that's not really the case and so I would really love to see the book turnout celebrate people with disabilities in all of our glory and at a time right now which is really difficult for those of us with disabilities both physically and emotionally when people are deciding who has the better quality of life and is worth being saved this is a time for us that we need right now so yes we're going to celebrate by talking about books by people with disabilities but also this is not a complete list of all the books in the world when people disabilities so please leave me your favorites down in the comments so if you are new to reading about disabled people I would recommend Alice Wong's new essay collection that she edited disability visibility first-person stories from the 21st century and I love this because it includes a wide range of disabilities I have a disabling chronic illness which is an invisible condition but there are also people with visible disabilities like bodily difference or maybe they use a mobility aid there's a wide range of things that people experience and really the term disability is just a broad umbrella term we have all such a wide range of experiences this book includes people of color with disabilities and includes queer people trans people there's an essay by a Muslim person who talks about how they are exempt from fasting during Ramadan but they still try sometimes participate in their faith in that way there is a si in here about by an indigenous person who talks about the rise of autoimmune conditions and invisible disabilities in their native community and there is one by a deaf man who is in prison and how there is no accommodation for him in prison and I had never thought of so many of these different situations because we're all so different I mean even people with the same condition as me have an entirely different experience so of course this is going to include so much diversity and you know range of experiences so I would recommend starting with this for sure and there's also more resources in the back some of which are included in this stack which is pretty great so next up I have a book that I would recommend for black indigenous people of color mental health awareness month which is also July this is the collective schizophrenias by Esme Weejun Wang and talks about her experience having schizoaffective disorder how there's a lot of stigma around that diagnosis and what her life has been like trying to cope with this condition she doesn't talk about it account in this but she also has a disabling chronic illness and the last time I checked her diagnosis was Lyme disease but that of course can change because a lot of illnesses look the same until they get really badly and then it's too late but at least you know what you have said that to me once anyway so next up I'm just recommending all of Samantha Irby you all know I love Samantha Irby my favorite is we're never meeting real life she has inflammatory bowel disease and so she has a lot of humor around poop and going to the bathroom and what that's like with a bowel disease having one-night stands or something like that like you get to know people pretty quickly when you have a condition and that's someone with about condition I deeply really and so this was one of the first essay collections our authors that wrote about my experience of having a colon that hates me and so while we have different conditions I still deeply elated to this book it's also very intersectional and it's not just about her illness there's a wide range of other topics covered relationship with her wife or B black woman being a fat black woman whatever you know Samantha Ruby's thinking about like I don't know applying to The Bachelor all of that's in here highly recommend the audiobooks as well because besides accessibility being important she reads them herself and is so funny so this is sick by porch Easter Kippur and this is her experience with Lyme disease I believe she also has some updated illness stuff since she put this book out but this is primarily like the years of her having Lyme disease and not knowing and what that experience was like trying to find a diagnosis and it was really it was a difficult book for me to read the recurring theme of a lot of these is I really struggled to read about the losses that are very similar to mine and Lyme is very similar to my illness as well again they all look the same I told they don't but I deeply connected with this I will say though since I've had my illness since I was a small child I don't remember not having it but she got hers after college probably so she had like this like whole life ahead of her and she feels that was kind of stolen from her so I think if you also got sick in your early twenties which I hear is a common time for people to develop chronic conditions then you will deeply relate to this book so the next book is a book to Barling and that is Jen Campbell's the beginning of the world in the middle of the night we love Jen and we love her writing and she does a lot of advocacy for bodily difference and so I think it's obviously you can see that advocacy and that focus of that topic in this book which is also somewhat inspired by fairy tales and I really love fairy tales with Jen like all about that I love her work and I love how we've kind of watched this journey of her identifying as disabled and what that means to her and how its progressed over time and how that's totally fine you don't have to figure out everything right away and I think that's such an important thing to learn and understand so in addition to all of tech Campbell's books I'm going to recommend her channel because she just has so many insightful things to say and not to mention she's an amazing poet and talks about poetry and is my number one go-to for poetry so just go go check out all of her things all this all the things one of the things that I really struggle with is how I talk to people about my disability they get very quiet they're like oh are you okay oh I'm sorry that must be really hard for you I can't imagine doing anything like that you must be so brave you're so inspiring and they do that because they are horrified at the idea of being sick that our lives must be so incredibly difficult and sad no I am very joyful and I even live a very happy life here in my library and things and even though I am semi homebound I still live a great life because while the internet and modern technology is a huge help but I think it's important to understand that there's a lot of disabled joy that is worth celebrating and this is a book that I would recommend for that as well get a life Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert this is an own voices book about a woman with fibromyalgia and her finding love and she's a black woman living in the UK but she's upper-class comes from really wealthy background and she falls in love with a white guy who comes from a lower class background so they both are acknowledging the privileges that they have or do not have and having those difficult conversations around that it also looks at what sex is like for people disabilities so I don't know if you know this or not but oftentimes people who are not disabled often imagine disabled people as asexual beings which there's nothing wrong with being asexual but just because they're disabled doesn't mean you're going to be asexual and so that's a problem that I see a lot of literature and just a society in general and so I think this is important because yes we are also sexual beings I don't I don't understand why that's even in question I don't even know I don't know this book is about a woman who has this very rare condition and she's exhausted in a way that she can't even lift her head and so she has his wild snail as she watches him his little terrarium like living his life and she gives you some cool snail facts and you just listen to her talk about life and I'd listen to this on audio and it was lightful and not overwhelming because oftentimes I'm very overwhelmed by the books that I read about chronic illness in particular and I could only do them so often and I think I'm tangling my own trauma with that can be very painful process but this helped me so much and it wasn't as emotionally distressing as a lot of other books like the one about to mention was so definitely go check this one out talk about emotionally distressing books asked me about my uterus by Abby Norman is great for anyone with the uterus or love someone with uterus got read this because it's all about her experience with endometriosis now I have polycystic ovarian syndrome they don't know if I have endometriosis because you have to have surgery to have that diagnosed and they're like you've had too many surgeries we don't want you to create more scar tissue anyway point being still pending this is Abby's experience and she actually gets diagnosed enemy to us is really quickly like a lot of women have it for years and years and years and have no idea that you know super painful periods aren't normal so because what it's told to deal with it you know anyway so I really appreciate what Abby does in researching and talking about how medical professionals gaslight women about their experiences with pain and different things and the importance of believing women and how she did her own advocacy in her own research and how that still you know she's still a woman living with an incurable condition because just because you remove your uterus doesn't mean that the endometriosis goes away I don't think a lot of people know that and so this is something that she will live with for the rest of her life and I totally relate if having scarring on your abdomen because your heating pads is too hot but you can't move it or you will feel like you're dying and I really appreciated what she does with this and so I think yeah it's also really difficult because she was emancipated from her parents and the medical professionals at the doctor's offices wouldn't believe her when she was still a minor even though she brought her paperwork and so you also see how community support is incredibly important for those of us with disabilities because when you have money in this country you can't get medical help and it's just a whole mess and so I really appreciate what she does in this book it's incredibly important and meaningful and more people need to write about your asses and how evil they are the last book I'm going to recommend is a book that I think is incredibly important because most people who are able-bodied don't understand the difference between a mental illness and more of a physical a chronic illness kind of disability and in their efforts to be inclusive that obviously mental illness is a disability and obviously chronic illness is a disability they kind of merge the two experiences together but like we've discussed in this video experiences range widely but it's also doubly difficult if you have a chronic illness and a mental illness and those things can you know trigger each other and create the cyclical thing that happens which is really a struggle for a lot of people disabilities because a lot of us who have one or the other developed the other one they kind of want to party together for whatever reason and so I really appreciate what Jenny Lawson does in her books this one is furiously happy and this is a funny book about horrible things she has a chronic illness which I think she talks a little bit more in her first book but this one primarily focuses on her mental illness and like depression and anxiety and a lot of people with chronic illnesses have that and and vice versa I mean you have both they're both together again they like to hang out with each other but I never really seen someone talk about them separately and then talk about how they interact with each other as much as Jenny Lawson does and so while being really funny she also gives you a lot of great content about what it's like to have both physical and illness and then a mental illness as well and I think that that's really important to have that discussion around especially for people who get confused about the differences and why the differences are important because that you know changes the way that you're treated what doctors you go to etc so yeah I think that's important topic but she talks about how they both played together really well so yes I really enjoy her books so that's it for me for now I'm gonna return with my TBR for the books that I have bought recently but so many about disability and I've really found that disability studies as long as it doesn't venture into disabled and chronic illness is too much so a lot easier for me to read so I'm very excited about reading some this month and yeah I will share them in the next video but yeah alright talk to you guys later\n"