Ridge Services

We need to stop pretending that avoiding the word “disability” is helping people.
I watched this video today, and it put words to something I’ve lived but never fully articulated:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Hb9436Aes/

We are not teaching people with disabilities about themselves.
And that doesn’t protect them. It isolates them.
I grew up having seizures.
Not quietly. Not in a way people ignored.
People panicked.
And I understand why—but what that created for me wasn’t safety. It was pressure.
The next time people saw me, I wasn’t just me anymore. I was the person who had a seizure.
“Are you okay?”
“Do you need a different chair?”
“Do you need a different desk?”
It sounds supportive. But it becomes overwhelming fast.
Because now you’re not just dealing with your body—you’re managing everyone else’s reaction to your body.
And that changes how you respond.
Instead of saying,
“Something feels off, I might be going into a seizure,”
You stay quiet.
Because you already know what’s coming next—panic, attention, disruption.
So you disconnect from your own body just to keep everyone else calm.
That’s not support. That’s conditioning.
And the same thing happens with intellectual and processing differences.
I wasn’t stupid.
I just couldn’t process information at the speed the system demanded.
I needed more time.
I needed repetition.
I needed a different way of learning.
But no one told me that.
Instead, I was told I wasn’t trying hard enough.
So I stopped trying to excel—because why would I put in three times the effort if no one explained that it would actually help?
No one taught me how my brain worked.
No one told me there were different ways to learn.
It became another unspoken truth.
And that’s the problem.
We tell people:
“Focus on the ability, not the disability.”
But if you remove the truth, you remove the foundation for self-understanding.
And self-esteem cannot be built on something that isn’t real.
If you don’t understand your disability—
how it affects your body, your learning, your social experiences—
you don’t build confidence.
You build confusion.
You build shame.
You build a version of yourself that is constantly trying to meet expectations that were never designed for you.
And then we wonder why people with disabilities have higher rates of mental health struggles.
It’s not just the disability.
It’s the disconnect.
It’s being told you’re “just like everyone else”
while constantly experiencing that you are not.
That gap does damage.
Because now you’re not only managing your reality—
you’re managing the expectation that your reality shouldn’t exist.
And that’s exhausting.
People with disabilities don’t need to be protected from the truth of who they are.
They need to be equipped for it.
Real self-esteem comes from understanding yourself—not hiding from it.

Originally posted 8:20 p.m. (Toronto) Sunday March 22nd.