Rebekah Taussig on What Disability and Ableism Mean and What They Don’t

Content Warning: this episode discusses depression and suicide.  Childhood and adolescence can be tough for anyone. There’s so much to figure out. Author Rebekah Taussig (Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body) had an extra challenge in that she was paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair, the result of cancer diagnosed when she was a year old. After many years trying to make her disability okay for everyone else and seeing her paralyzed legs as ugly, Rebekah developed a depressive disorder. But as an adult, she had something of an awakening about disability, realizing that there wasn’t something deficient in herself, it was more an issue of living in an ableist world that refuses to provide access for everyone. Later, when Rebekah became a mom to a boy named Otto, she dealt with postpartum depression and issues of feeling that she wasn’t enough for him. Through careful work and support from her husband, Rebekah is in a good place now and here to tell a story that anyone could benefit from hearing.