"why should I confess myself?"—the time I remembered disability theology exists
perching lines, no. 25
Hello gentle people,
I wake up around three or four am several nights a week. When I was steeped in a Pentecostal expression of faith, people around me would say the enemy is at work during those hours so if you find yourself awake, you have to pray.
Praying doesn’t come easily these days. It got complicated when I went through another mental health crisis this past September. The details of what happened are still so deeply sensitive to me. But I am finding the words to talk about it with the people who matter.
Right now I know it will take years to heal from what happened. Lately it feels like I have been trying to rush that process and get to okay for productivity’s sake. But no, what happened led me to recommitting to practices that help me be well.
In many ways, I feel like I am back to square one, as I felt in 2023 with my hospitalization. It has taken some time for me to realize that though I avoided medical incarceration, this last experience was just as helpful in showing me how serious my mental illness is. It was yet another realization in “I really am disabled.”
It’s like I am remembering what I’ve learned in studying disability theology and justice in seminary and in my past work with Liberated Together. It’s like I forgot that I built “a gentle landing” with a reflection on disability theologian Sharon Betcher who talked about how our society is afraid of falling.1 By falling, she means in part the state with which one finds themselves dependent on others to survive. She means that distinct struggle disabled people know shapes both the feeling and actual material realities associated with falling from a higher social class.
I write A Gentle Landing to recognize how in my life the fall is inevitable. I write to recall again how I am still here despite the fall. I write to remember who or what was there, ensuring I survived. I want to remember what made the difference between a slip up and a crash.
It was hard to think of this without recalling Betcher’s words, which I chose for perching lines:
“Why should I confess myself? To what should I confess? And once you know, what difference will it make? So one day I tripped, I fell, I lost my leg. Streptococcus—the flesh-eating disease—found an opportunity. Like a grain wagon toppled in the middle of a wheat field in the path of a tornado, it was nothing personal.”
“What happened to me? How did I fall out of grace? My world fell apart not with the medical scenario of my health crisis and amputation, but when I reentered social life…[…]…my stigmatic disability forces me through the wringer, dropping me out of high culture. The size four to which I had once mercilessly reduced myself in suburbia will never return, my mobility now requiring of me sleeve-splitting and unfeminine biceps, while my single thigh thickens like a tree trunk, my abdomen loses its muscle tone.”
“Again the question comes to me: ‘What happened to you?’ Answer: I fell. I fell from the stratosphere of gracious virtuosity. I fell into social class, gender-sex oblivion. No rather, let me put it this way: I was tripped up by a social depression in the suface of the human interface and dropped down a rabbit hole or refusal.
—Sharon Betcher, “The Fear of Falling,” Spirit and the Politics of Disablement
“Why should I confess myself?” As I come to grips with falling—pondering past incidents and what lays ahead of me, confession is hard. I still find the impulse surging through me, to satisfy the curiosity shaped by surveillance. I still worry there is something I should be apologizing for. There is some one whose standard I have failed to live up to.
“To what should I confess? And once you know, what difference will it make?”
Writing is an act of hope. When I write these days, I am often laying down, heavy with the fatigue that comes with depression. In those moments, sometimes my finger tips dancing on the keyboard feel as if they usher my entire body into aliveness. When I find beautiful words, sometimes they are enough to help me get out of bed.
Sometimes.
The life I am writing after is one where I cherish the “sometimes.” Those moments when the thing reached for is the remedy and healing is a simple formula. But it is also a life of stringing those moments together to cover my prayers when nothing works, when habits fail and I fall again.
The testimony I am living does not depend on me being perfectly well to be real. The disability shaped trials life throws at me do not break my testimony, they break it in.
I am reminded that Lucille Clifton’s poem “won’t you celebrate with me?” is not a confession but a declaration. It does not apologize it invites:
won’t you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.
And so I invite you. This is my story, too. Though I was not born in Babylon but I have been trying to make my life here as best I can. I write to share the ways I am making it up. It’s a doozy.
What happened to me? I fell and “everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.”
Come celebrate with me.
Here are some ways I am seeing a gentle landing recently:
Remembering that this time last year, I was celebrating one of my best friend’s birthdays with her in person. It was a rare gift because she lives far away. She had come up around mid January to help take care of me after my surgery. I have my surgery to thank for the experience of celebrating her life at this wonderful Brazilian BBQ spot, the kind where they walk around with the meat and carve it at your table. This year, we are not together but I celebrate her life. She has taught me so much about disability justice and theology simply by existing. I’ve witnessed how she has sought ways to liberate herself as she has navigated multiple disabilities. I have seen life be less than gentle with my friend. Despite this, her heart reminds tender and open. She is often the first to think of tangible solutions to problems if they are related to the disabilities we share in common.
I recently finished a book called bell hooks’ Spiritual Vision: Buddhist, Christian, Feminist.2 In one of the early chapters, the author, Nadra Nittle, dives into hooks’ early adverse childhood experiences, which include domestic violence, child abuse, and bullying. Her family life was difficult and reminded me a lot of my own. She was profoundly lonely as a child because of her giftedness and tendency to gravitate towards people and ideas her family and community weren’t able to appreciate. Like me, she was suicidal growing up battling depression and a crushingly low sense of self-worth.
The darkness that clouded her childhood was punctured by the light of a few individual adults, who saw and believed in her voice and her intelligence, making room for her questions and telling them about their lives. Nittle emphasized child liberation theology, which focuses on the well-being and justice children who are oppressed, marginalized and abused deserve.
This book has been so deeply moving to me as I start working a job that considers the welfare of children. I am glad a gentle landing exists for children in ways that protect them from abuse and exploitation, such as with mandated reporting.
I started meditating again and completed a seven day streak today! I am writing field notes for my second newsletter, woven, about the benefits of meditation for a journey of reshaping our relationship with our devices and our selves. I hope to make meditation a practice I keep up. I look forward to seeing the benefits of a month, a year and years.
I am in a place where I can admit I am not where I want to be but I have the community, resources and time to care for myself and move forward. There are still so many things I am dreaming up, even from this space of rebuilding practices of care and slowness. It means all hope is not lost.
Finally, I changed the sentence that said I would publish every Wednesday, resting as needed to “I post on freely, resting as needed.” (This is still going out on a Wednesday before old habits die hard!)
landing track
Hello to you, if you are new here! The sudden spike in new subscribers has contributed to my nervousness around writing recently. I don’t know what brings you here but I am glad you are here. Feel free to introduce yourself in the comments with what a gentle landing looks like for you. (If you need a guide see my About page.)
If you are a returning reader here, hello! Of course I didn’t want to leave you out. I am also glad you are here. I would love to bear witness to your explorations of a gentle landing as you live and dream it.
From her book Spirit and the Politics of Disablement. This is an affiliate link. I earn a 10% commission if you happen to buy this book or any books linked in this post.
This is an affiliate link.
ahhhh so beautiful!