Writing Disabled Characters in Childhood

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11 minute read

Childhood / Teen / 20s / Early-Mid 30s / Late 30s

As I really enjoyed resurrecting the summer blog series a few months ago, I thought a fall blog series might be fun.  Since November is National Novel Writing Month, I thought it might be interesting to look back on my journey in writing disabled characters.  (Especially now that you've read We Belong.)

Growing up, I was steeped in ableism from every direction, so I (naturally) dealt with a good bit of internalized ableism.  Suffice it to say that most of my writing did not feature disabled characters at all.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: FUN WRITING PROMPTS?  WHAT ARE THOSE?

Before any attempts to write characters (disabled or not) I had to learn the structure of writing. Sentences, paragraphs, how to tell a story.  To do that, teachers often give prompt-driven writing assignments.

My second grade teacher once gave us the prompt "If I were 7 inches tall..." to fill.  No doubt, she wanted to encourage our imaginations, and consider all the adventures we might have if we were teeny tiny people.  I, instead wrote about my own premature birth, tiny size, and medical interventions I needed.

[Image: Tara (left) and Tonia (right) age 7]

In fifth grade, I was recovering from massive surgery and learning at home, when my teacher said I was to write a story from the perspective of a snowflake.

A snowflake, you guys.  I'd been cut open 13 times only weeks earlier.  The assignment sounded like an exercise in futility to my traumatized brain.  I struggled about where to even begin.  I wasn't a snowflake, obviously...

After some thought (through pain and serious dissociation) I figured I only had one option: to approach this silly assignment as realistically as possible.  It's the only way I could reconcile writing it at all.

So, naturally, my snowflake had a two-month life span as a snowflake.  Her experience falling from the sky at six months old (summer birthday) was traumatic, as she landed on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's nose and immediately began melting away.   A gust of wind blew her off, where she found her sister (an identical snowflake!  No two snowflakes are alike, take that!)  The two snowflakes "played together every day and every night."  And then, "one day in February, they melted right outside the reindeer house."

Intense, right?

That was the name of the game for my early writing.  I didn't know how not to be serious.  I'm sure being steeped in various traumatizing circumstances (medical and otherwise) contributed.

EARLIEST ATTEMPTS AT WRITING DISABLED CHARACTERS:

I was in middle school (sixth grade) when I discovered The Babysitter's Club: Little Sister series by Ann M. Martin. The discovery of these books was life-changing for me as a writer.  I loved Martin's characterizations. I loved each character's dialogue and the real situations the characters were in.  Reading these books inspired me to write my own.

Yes, at eleven years old, I wrote my first book, featuring fictional characters.  Kayla was eleven years old like me.  The third-oldest of 12 siblings.  Unlike me, Kayla was nondisabled.  So were every single one of her siblings.

Kayla:

Memorably, though, when Kayla called for help when one of her younger sisters was injured, she flipped out on the 911 operator for talking to her as if she were a baby.  As a sixth grader, I was regularly condescended to, and spoken to like I was an infant by strangers.  I resented it.  And it felt good to let Kayla verbalize my anger at the unfairness of it all.

Kevin:

It's worth noting, also, that in the same story, Kayla's younger brother (7-year-old Kevin) is horribly injured in a household accident.  He's hospitalized for an extended time and eventually the family comes to take him home.  Before that happens, though, Kevin is told the nurses need to "check his arm one more time."

The medical trauma I poured into this scared little boy was real, you guys.  He lost his hold on self-control.  He cried, and screamed, and called for his mom to help him.  (The family - all 13 of them - stood back and watched.)  The kids' dad, offered a perfunctory, "It's okay, Kev."

Six-year-old Kari asked, in shock, "What did they do, torture him or something?"

Kayla responded matter-of-fact: "No, they just checked his arm."

All of this was notable - even autobiographical - having just had my last surgery earlier that year, and the biggest and most terrible one in fifth grade.  Kevin's incredible injuries, his trauma, his utter aloneness in the hospital and in the midst of painful treatment.

Kari's use of the word torture was not accidental.  Neither was Kayla's matter-of-fact explanation.  Because I had often felt tortured in the surgery and recovery process.  And simultaneously, I had to learn to internalize what was happening and take it anyway.  Because there was no escaping it.

Abbie:

In seventh grade, something amazing happened: my English teacher that year had a 22-year-old daughter with CP!  My teacher discussed her daughter with CP the same as she discussed her other kids.  Made no secret that if somebody came over to their house and was disrespectful seeing her daughter with CP eating a meal, then that guest was not welcome again.

I had never known anyone older than me who had CP.  And though I never met my teacher's daughter, I reveled in the experience my teacher brought with her in the classroom.  She knew I, like her daughter, might need accommodations.  But also that I, like her daughter deserved to be treated with the same respect as other kids.

When my grades all dropped (even in English) she was the teacher who pulled no punches:  "Do I think you're doing your best?  If I'm being honest, no.  I know you can do better than this."

Her belief in me, and her lived experience near someone with my same disability gave me the courage to explore the topic when it came time to tackle a final English project.  There were options.  One was to write a children's book, on a subject we felt was relevant, or that we wanted to see covered in children's literature.

I wrote Why Am I So Different?, featuring Abbie, a 5-year-old just starting Kindergarten in her wheelchair and facing ableism in school.   However, I did not learn the term ableism until my 30's, so while my book definitely addressed ableism, it did not use the term.

The title is a bit misleading as, really, throughout the book, Abbie is wondering why she's treated so differently from her nondisabled peers.  Abbie knows that her wheelchair is a part of her.  She also knows she deserves to be treated with the same dignity and respect as everyone else in her class.

Tara copied most of the words I'd written on blank printer-paper and illustrated my story with adorable colored-pencil art.  (This was the 90's, and our home would not have a computer of its own until the following year.)  Handwritten rough drafts went on ruled notebook paper.  Final drafts did not.

I relied on ruled paper to know where I was on the page.  Without lines guiding me, my handwriting drifted, becoming illegible, and I could not even begin to draw.  Tara accommodating me allowed me to turn in a solid final project at the end of seventh grade.

The children's book was so well-received, I was asked if it could be featured on some kind of larger scale.  (The specifics are lost to me now.)  

I said no.  

I still had residual Imposter's Syndrome, thanks to being consistently patronized for mundane things.  This made me positive that my writing was not as great as everyone said it was.  That teachers must be just being nice to me because I had a disability.  (In my mind, Tara had done most of the work to make my project possible to even hand in.  It felt wrong to take credit for it.)  And besides that, I was scared to get attention for writing about disability, when it was clear from my daily life on all fronts that having a disability was not acceptable.

Today, though, I am proud of my early writing.  I'm glad I had it as an outlet to let out some of my own pain.  And I am stunned that I was able to make the decision to write about disability at a time when it was so taboo.

Tune in next week for more of the Writing Disabled Characters series, where I'll talk about my teenage years and experiences writing disabled characters.

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