Hi all dedicated Wobbly Yummy Mummy Fans!

For the next six months or so I predict my posting on here will be a tad sporadic, so let me take this opportunity to apologise in advance. I’m studying for the Certificate of Disability Studies in NUI Maynooth, so that’ll be my priority for the next while. But I promise I will update this blog when I can!

In the meantime here is a poem inspired by what I’ve studied so far. Enjoy!

Look at you there, looking at me
As you will me to become whatever you see,
Your handy, capable hero, a huge lump of clay
to be moulded, designed in whatever way
you choose.

Choice.

You say, that if you had the choice
(and you say this so arrogantly, with your own voice)
That no way would you spend the rest of your life
Battling spasms, twisted limbs, pain and yet – in spite
Of this
I persist
To exist.

Do you honestly think that I cannot hear
That I’m the embodiment of all of your fears?
You tell me I’m great, a pure inspiration.
You don’t know my name! But you think
you still have the right to dictate my place
in this so-called ‘great’ nation.

I’m not here to inspire, or make you feel good
and yet I’m not able to live a free a life as I should.
I carry the weight of your negative assumptions on my back
While you casually remind me of all that I lack.

I’ll never walk properly, my hands are weak
And I sound like a drunkard whenever I speak.
Would I not be happier surrounded by ‘my kind’
where my existence wouldn’t push the boundaries of your tiny mind?

I am not scrounger, or inspiration, or hero,
And I won’t be hidden or locked away either.
I’m a Trinity graduate, a writer, a wife
Who, in spite of your assumptions, has a pretty good life.
My ‘incapacitated’ body bore a daughter full of light,
And she knows that, one day, she must continue the fight:
Fight for equality
Fight to be seen as ordinary –
Fight to make mistakes.
I’d rather be seen as flawed than a fake.

You see,
I am not your ‘handy-capable’ hero,
Or an inspiration,
Or a workshy scrounger,
Or a burden, or a waste of space.
This is no tragedy
I am me – spastic, wobbly, gabby
And, ‘in spite’
Of this
I choose
To persist
To exist.