Changes in 2025

(Local View from 4'2, Lake County Press, January 31, 2025)

January 2025 has been…interesting. New years and new beginnings tend to create excitement for unexpected joys, blessings, and opportunities while sometimes they also bring grieving of what was or could have been. Change can be great and hard all at the same time. Change is inevitable. System disruption usually comes when it is least expected.

Welcome the norovirus. Well, maybe welcome is too strong of a word. I have been sick and tired for over a week literally and figuratively. Even though I have been working at learning to pace myself in the past several years, I still go and go until I can go no more and my body wins. My body has won for over a week. I didn’t realize how much caffeine was my fuel source these past months or how hard it is to find comfort food when you are sick and need to be gluten, dairy and sugar free. On my sickest days which were also our coldest days, I was very thankful for family and friends in my support system who are also apartment neighbors.

Illnesses happen to us all at some point. Exhaustion and tiredness also come in seasons for us. Burnout can be a byproduct of this if we are not careful. I am thankful to have supportive co-laborers in my work. Board members, friends, family, and allies who care about me, my story, and my Why. In recent weeks, before I got sick, I was able to reach out and be vulnerable with them in expressing where my heart, head, and spirit were at. I fiercely believe in and fight for the underdog, sometimes to my own detriment. Sometimes I forget I am the underdog.

As the first week of our new national administration being in office, there has been huge changes to the advocacy world in the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Advocating for disability rights was already hard in the previous administration as many times we were just brushed under the rug saying we were a part of the diversity campaign and yet our stories were not shared, the funds were not allocated to infrastructure or programming changes to increase accessibility or accommodations. So we had to make our voices stronger, we had to keep showing up and speaking up. There were pockets of business, industry and education that seemed to be forever allies in this work and they were leading the way in breaking down barriers of representation in their policies and practices. And now in less than a week we see many of them completely dismantled.

We are hurt. We are grieving. We are numb. We are in disbelief. We are quiet. And, we are not done! The tenacity, perseverance, interdependence, barrier breaking, underdog spirit of the disability community is just at rest. We are problem solvers every day. We are fighters everyday. We rally everyday. So as we rest and regroup, keep reaching out and reaching up. We keep taking the next right step. We as a community and region don’t need mandates to keep doing what is right. We can keep representation of all stakeholders at the table as our everyday practice. We can keep accessibility and inclusion in our community as an everyday and every moment reality. We can continue to work together to share each other’s story and embrace the fact that ALL of our lives are impacted by disability each day and that is a good thing.