Ruminating has been the name of the game for the beginning half of the week. I’ve been feeling out of sorts again and pondering why.

There was an anniversary of the passing of my Nanna last week and a difficult test at the hospital which confirmed my tingly fingers, but crikey being electrocuted, even just lightly, was wearing.

There have also been some realisations that I will never be the same as others, not in a pity me sort of way, more in the realisation (time and time again) of the reaction to my body that people like me experience every day and how it represented.

It’s reading a book and seeing your body/disability used as a slur and in a negative manner, multiple times, and wondering how it got past the publisher. It’s being asked how long you and your husband have been together within the first few minutes of an appointment, which you know is curiosity, but something you know your non-disabled people don’t have to have to deal with or feel like they have to justify. The undercurrent that you don’ fit in the mould, you are made to feel ashamed for the way you were born. It’s pervasive and insidious.

It’s where stories and physical representation matters.

Where are the books that tell of dwarf experiences, where we control the narrative? Where are the representations in magazines of all shapes and sizes relationships come in? Rather than being displayed as something abnormal in trashy magazines or only accessible via a gallery? Normalising what society doesn’t deem as normal at this point in our history or too scared to ask. Where are the tools and the organisations to facilitate the telling of our narratives?

So many questions. Must it always be up to us to educate and inform?