It’s possible that this is my brain’s way of distracting myself from public speaking, which has always been something I’ve found excruciating as a highly sensitive person. But I think that this reflective state largely happens because of the complexity of disability and relationships.

Every child growing up learns about the world from what they witness. We learn about love from the people around us, the characters in our favourite books, or the friends who unexpectedly fall in love on the big screen. Stories of love, intimacy, and happily ever afters rarely include disability, and so it’s unsurprising that my desires, expectations, and perceptions of intimacy and relationships have fluctuated over the years.

It started with carefree, childhood wonder.

I remember having a wholesome idea of love. My parents were happily married, as were most of my aunts, uncles, and extended family. This privilege created rose-tinted glasses that was reinforced even further by childhood fairytales, the iconic duo of Barbie and Ken, and the Disney channel families living the ‘dream’ in a home surrounded by white-picket fences.

The script was about two parents who fell in love, got married, and had babies.

I didn’t just read the script, I loved the script. My days were spent playing house with my dolls — acting out falling in love, building a home, and raising a family. As a psychotherapist who works with parents and families, I know that play is the way that kids understand and process the world around them. I tell clients that if you’re curious what your child is experiencing, watch their play and you’ll learn a lot. So when I think back to the hours I spent creating imaginary love stories, they were marked by seeing relationships with optimism and desire.

As I got older and recognized my disability, I had questions about love.

I was moving through my preteen and teen years with awkward uncertainty, as most kids do. My brain developed more complex thinking skills, like being able to see things from others’ points of view, and I started to understand that my disability made me different.

I noticed the stares from people on the sidewalk, the bus driver who called me “wheelchair” instead of my name, and the vocal pitch changes of strangers in the grocery store as they “prayed for my healing.” I dismissed many of these interactions as simple ignorance; they didn’t know me. But when my peers who previously acted neutrally towards my disability started to treat me differently, I learned that things may be more complicated than I thought.

This season of my life was full of questions about my future, especially in terms of relationships. If my disability is already making friendships hard, what is dating going to look like? Would I be able to have a relationship as a disabled person? Would someone fall in love with me?

My parents would listen to my woes and confidently tell me love would happen for me, but just like most teenagers, they were my parents so they have to say that. The truth was, my small town had me swimming in doubt, and the content I was consuming wasn’t very helpful either. I barely saw anyone with a disability in books, TV, or movies, let alone in a relationship.

It made me wonder: is having an intimate relationship as a disabled person even possible?

I absorbed so many messages from society around who is worthy of love. An absence of disabled love stories implies that disabled people cannot, do not, and should not have love stories. I soaked up these messages and they burned into my beliefs. For a long time, I subconsciously distanced myself from wanting a relationship. I convinced myself: I am down with never falling in love. It’s alright if that doesn’t happen. My heart isn’t set on it, I’ll just get a bunch of cats.

While the latter is true (and still something I aspire to do), I can look back and see through this façade. It served as a form of self-protection. Brené Brown’s idea of foreboding joy is the only way I can think to describe this: the idea that if you don’t hope for something so that you aren’t disappointed if it never comes to be. For me, that meant closing myself off from even the desire to love, in an attempt to prevent the pain of heartbreak.

But there is a cost to this kind of avoidance, and it’s high. Living inauthentically creates its own kind of pain.

I found hope when I saw other disabled people living their love stories.

When I was 16 years old, sitting at the kitchen table, my mom brought in the mail and opened a package from my cousin. Inside was a magazine article that featured a woman named Stacy Wiparina from Ohio, who lived with my disability, and was married with two beautiful kids. My cousin wrote something along the lines of “I think Brooklyn needs to see this.” And I really did.

This was the first time that I had ever seen someone who looked like me living the future I hoped for. Even if this prospect felt rare and out of reach, this was evidence that it was possible. Stacy’s story was an anchor of hope I held onto.

A couple years later, I was welcomed into a new world of adults with disabilities. I joined a couple of Facebook groups of adults living with neuromuscular disabilities. Initially, I joined to learn about living on my own for university, but what I didn’t know is that one group would change my life forever.

I met thousands of adults with disabilities not only surviving, but thriving in their lives. They went to school, bought homes, and lived on their own. They hired caregivers and managed fulfilling careers. They were dating, married, and everything in between. They had families. I even met Stacy in one of the groups, and got to tell her how much her story meant to me as a teenager. It felt full-circle.

The landscape of what my future could hold exploded when I met disabled people living this reality. My hopes were no longer just some idea, they were a possibility.

This “coming of age” led to my own disabled love story.

Dismantling beliefs that have been built over decades doesn’t happen overnight. While these Facebook groups helped me navigate practical life decisions, like getting a g-tube to help with nutrition or applying for funding to manage my own care attendants, there was deeper learning happening.

I spent hours and hours reading through threads and forums, old and new. I soaked up every story and perspective I could about disability culture, models of thinking, internalized ableism, and the power of community. I learned so much about my past and how it led me to my present.

As I grew more confident in myself and my own personal growth, I started online dating. This was an adventure that was not easy and, as any woman who has done it knows, it was often gross. But it was the most accessible way for me to show up with intention. After years of trying every platform out there, making a few friends, and encountering lots of dead ends, I decided to take a break. And that’s when something special happened.

I reactivated my Hinge account to show a friend of mine how to use the app and I got a message from the most handsome Brown boy from a nearby city. We weren’t in each other’s geographical radius, but somehow we matched. Both on the app, and as two people. Our conversations were natural and our dates were fun. We wanted the same things and we understood each other.

This was 5 years ago, and — spoilers — last month we got married. I had always hated when people would say things like ‘love will find you when you are not looking for it.’ But alas, this ended up being my truth. And I’m pretty thrilled about it.

When I think about it, the most extraordinary part of our relationship is that it has flourished not despite my disability, but with it. We often reminisce on our favourite memories together as a couple, and many of them are moments where love and disability intertwine.

Like on our second date, when Trevor had to wipe ice cream out of my hair because the summer wind was a bit too wild. I was embarrassed, but he thought picking mint chocolate chips out of my hair was endearing. Or on the first night we moved in together, when my catheter bag got caught on his moving boxes and I left a trail of urine on our apartment floor. This could have been mortifying, but we found ourselves laughing so hard. I had been so excited that I peed on the floor!

I watched society weave an ugly tapestry about disability and love my entire life, but it started to unravel fast when faced with our relationship. Every time we solved problems as equal partners, it was a reminder that I wasn’t a burden, in the same way he wasn’t a saint. Every time my disability didn’t scare him away, it proved society wrong for ever making me think it should.

Inter-abled relationships are made of the same foundations.

The night before the panel, as we were getting ready to fall asleep, Trevor and I talked about what we wanted to focus on. We talked about what people might want to know and I felt an internal pressure to shed light on how to make an inter-abled relationship work.

I remember the deep dives I used to take on disability forums to find what the ‘secret’ was. It’s true that stories of other disabled folks were invaluable in my learning. AND, it’s also true that disabled relationships are both exceptional and unexceptional at the same time.

There’s nuance here. Every relationship faces trials and tribulations. Yes, relationships can face more challenges when disability is involved. But while these challenges may be different, the solutions are the same: communication, openness, problem solving, intimacy, compassion.

For us, disability and any of the challenges that it came with has only made us communicate better and get more creative. There is intimacy, sometimes forced but always chosen. There is more intention, more compassion, and more openness. These qualities are not unique to inter-abled relationships; they are the foundation of any healthy relationship.

I’m not sure if this is what the audience wants to hear, but I know it’s what my younger self needed to hear. And I know it’s what my present self is always needing reminding of. The messages we learn from society throughout our life run deep. So I’ll keep giving myself time and grace to continue unpacking these parts of me, and write about my experience in the hopes others may find parts of themselves in this, too.

My learning started young. As a child with a neuromuscular disability, I grew an understanding of how disability and mental health intersect before I even knew what the word ‘intersection’ meant. I learned from medical appointments, where doctors asked about every physical symptom under the sun, but never asked about how I was doing mentally or emotionally. I learned from every access barrier that proved the world wasn’t built for me, and every educator who proved that the disability experience was deeply misunderstood.

My disability was physical, but my experience was far more.

It’s this early foundation, perhaps, that led me to become a therapist.

Like many 90’s kids, my parents gave my brother and I school-year memory books for each grade. Three inches thick and quite literally falling apart, my book somehow continues to hold photos, report cards, and significant projects of my elementary and secondary years. In grade 3, a section asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “psychologist.” Although I’m not a psychologist, a psychotherapist is pretty close from a 8-year-old’s perspective!

Looking back, I consider this one of the first seeds.

By this age, I had undergone countless experiences that built up my understanding of disability. I smiled through medical procedure after medical procedure, trying to be a ‘good patient’ while counting ceiling tiles in the fluorescent light. I spent hours away from my classroom to do my prescribed physiotherapy programs, which felt less like exercise and more like becoming a marionette doll. I was inundated with new equipment and technology to help me navigate the world, in a frantic attempt to keep up with my growing body and progressive loss of function.

The focus was placed on survival, which made sense based on the fragile state of my health. However, I can’t ignore another truth: There was so much attention on my physical needs, and so little on the emotional experience that accompanied them.

I felt more and more alone as my non-disabled peers grew up and fell in love with new activities that left me behind. My young mind learned how to escape in moments of medical trauma, into my own imagination and ‘secret garden.’ In the same way, I recognized the burden of my care and instinctively learned to shrink my needs based on those around me. Yet, I was still a child needing to be taken care of. There were many late nights spent crying with my parents, as I desperately searched to understand my place in the world. The narratives from others were often conflicting; some people dismissed me as being too young, while others praised me for being so mature for my age.

These experiences are not unique to me, nor are they unique to childhood. And while my initial understanding came from my own disabled body and experiences, it expanded from the stories of chronically ill and disabled folks I’ve had the privilege of listening to, both personally and through my work as a therapist.

I started practicing psychotherapy at the beginning of the pandemic (and before you ask, yes, this was quite the initiation into the field). These early years of my career were overwhelming, trying to support others as the world shook with fear, grief, and loss. And yet, something beautiful was forming in disabled online spaces. There were people supporting each other, who shared a mutual understanding of the realities of living in uncertainty. We didn’t always have answers, but we were figuring it out together.

Hindsight showed me just how important this time in the disabled community was, because not long after, when the world ‘opened’ up again, disabled people were left behind. People took comfort in the idea that only those with ‘preexisting conditions’ were at risk, with little discussion about how that comfort was rooted deeply in ableism and the belief that non-disabled lives matter more than others. I felt horrified, but not surprised.

During this same period of time, social media was flooded with any and all things related to therapy. Mental health content was everywhere and, while this excited me as a new therapist, I couldn’t help but notice the familiar lack of content around disabled experiences.

Why aren’t we talking about disabled isolation?

Why aren’t we talking about advocacy burnout?

Why aren’t we talking about the emotional weight of being dispensable by society?

This was when I first considered making this space.

And, I’ll be honest, I was nervous about entering online spaces. Part of me still is. The online world often lacks nuance, thrives on misrepresentation, and contributes to the historical reduction of disabled experiences. As a white ciswoman, I recognize my privilege. Disabled people are often painted as a monolith, but the truth is that the disability community is wide and diverse, with so many identities and intersections that shape experiences. Mine is just one.

With these nerves, I turned to my friend Dan Darkow for guidance.

My friendship with Dan began with being board members for NMD United, a peer-led nonprofit for adults with neuromuscular disabilities. But right from our first meeting, we hit it off. Our friendship grew out of a mutual love for Schitt’s Creek, Taylor Swift, and disability justice.

Like myself, Dan was immersed in disability not only from his own lived experience but also professionally. His passion for inclusion, equity, community, and resources extended from his personal circles to his leadership at the Miller Center for Student Disability Services at Miami University, NMD United, and many other disabled spaces. To me, Dan was a bit of a unicorn and I admired his unique way of moving through life as equally practical and fearless.

I trusted Dan to understand my tangled emotions around how I appreciated the increase in mental health dialogue, especially in light of the pandemic, but was also frustrated that the world was once again leaving disabled and chronically ill folks behind. I told him about my growing desire to write about the connections I’ve made in my own therapy, concepts and tools I’ve shared with clients as a therapist, and stories I learned from the disability community.

Dan listened to my fears, hopes, hesitations, and everything in-between, and he didn’t overthink it at all. He just said: If you have something to say, say it.

For years, Dan was the only one who knew about my idea. He’d quietly check in from time to time, and encourage me without ever pushing. My steadfast cheerleader. But while I was so appreciative of his belief in me, I just wasn’t quite ready.

My decision swayed back and forth through different seasons of my life. Buying a home… getting engaged… navigating medical illnesses… These were all things that kept me busy, but also came with their own complexities, emotions, and grappling of what it means to live in a disabled body.

I could never seem to settle on when, so I resigned to taking the leap ‘one day’.

Things changed at the end of 2025.

Dan got really sick with a respiratory illness and ended up hospitalized. It was weeks of touch and go, waiting in heavy uncertainty. Then somehow, like the magical unicorn he is, Dan made it and the flood of relief was indescribable.

As I slowly settled back into the safety of knowing he was okay, my brain was stuck on all the what ifs. It was a fierce reminder of how fragile life is. Part of being in the disability community forces you to remember this almost daily. And still, it doesn’t make close calls any less jarring.

So in the new year, after Dan was home and recovering, I made the decision to stop waiting and just start writing, even if I wasn’t 100% ready. I reached out to my friend Jess Oddi, who is a groundbreaking disabled graphic artist and advocate, and asked her to create the look for this space. I was kid-in-the-candy-store excited and couldn’t wait to surprise Dan.

But that fragile reminder of life hit again.

Within hours of looking over the design, I received a text message from a friend that Dan had died unexpectedly. It was a total shock and felt as if the world flipped upside down.

The months that followed held more grief than I can even put into words. Loss, adjustment, gratitude, pain, and waves of everything… all at once. Like so many of his friends and family, I found comfort in reading the flood of stories describing his sarcastic humour, adventurous spirit, and profound impact on countless students, friends, and community members.1

I also found comfort in rereading our text messages, photos, and memes. I even discovered a saved screenshot on my desktop of a quote Dan had framed in his office that said: “Instead of telling disabled kids ‘you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it,’ I think we should tell them ‘the things you are capable of doing matter.’”

And now, here I am writing the first post.

I know that I will never stop grieving Dan. I’ll never stop missing him, our dance parties, or our 411 gossip sessions. And, I’ll never stop learning from him.

So I’m choosing to take a leap in his honour, trusting in his belief that the things we are capable of doing matter. Peer-led disabled spaces matter. I’m imagining his dramatic eye-roll at how long this took me, and also him cheering me on for choosing to say things I believe are worth saying.

My hope is that this space becomes a home for exploring and understanding the emotional lives of disabled and chronically ill folks. All too often, disabled experiences are reduced to our presenting symptoms and dismissed by systems that focus almost entirely on the physical. When the truth is, we need more conversations about the emotions, identities, intimacies, complexities, and all that comes with disability.

I don’t have everything figured out, but I have stories and I truly believe that we can learn through them.

Thanks for being here,

Brooklyn