The Quiet Parts of Disability
What Happens After the Inspirational Story Ends
About My Book
The Quiet Parts of Disability is about what happens after the inspirational story ends. It explores the systems, assumptions, support structures, and invisible work that shape everyday disabled life.
Drawing on lived experience and disability policy, I examine how systems influence where people can live, which opportunities they can pursue, and how independence works in practice.
“We should not have to be extraordinary to be treated as ordinary.”
What the Book Explores
The book introduces language for patterns that are often difficult to name, including The Ceiling, Geographic Lock-In, Permission Economy, Credibility Labor, Narrative Fixation, and the Structural Model of Disability.
Together, these ideas connect disability policy to ordinary decisions about work, education, relationships, mobility, independence, and the future.
Why I Wrote It
For years, people understood me through stories about diagnosis, perseverance, and inspiration. Adulthood made me increasingly interested in everything those stories left out, especially the systems operating quietly underneath daily life.
My hope is that disabled readers find language for experiences they recognize, while people shaping policies and systems better understand what their decisions feel like from inside a life.
Foreword by Keely Cat-Wells
Keely Cat-Wells, Founder and CEO of Making Space, wrote the foreword to The Quiet Parts of Disability, describing the book as a way of making policy human.
Excerpts from The Quiet Parts of Disability
“Something as routine as shopping at Target is framed as extraordinary instead of recognized as a completely normal part of life. It is not bravery. It is just Tuesday.”
“Most of the time, I perform that translation successfully. Naming it matters because performing something effectively does not mean it carries no cost. Invisible labor is still labor, even when nobody else notices it occurring.”
“My goal extends beyond helping people survive disability systems as they currently exist. It involves creating systems where people with disabilities no longer need to exhaust themselves proving they deserve movement, complexity, ambition, autonomy, leadership, visibility, and meaningful participation in society. Support should expand possibilities, not limit them.”
“Real life does not function by administrative categories. Systems interact with one another constantly whether policymakers acknowledge those interactions or not. A disruption in healthcare affects employment. Employment affects insurance eligibility.”
“Those resources give me a better chance of breaking through the ceiling than many people will ever have. A system cannot depend on everyone having those resources. I can break through the ceiling, but there needs to be a door for everyone else.”
“Support should be capable of surviving the ordinary changes of a human life. People with disabilities should not have to outgrow their support in order to outgrow the expectations built around it.”