The October contest #1 by sduttaskitchen|How do you glance towards the word disability?

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How do you glance towards the word disability? Describe.

When I see the word disability, it’s not a simple word for me.
It shakes something in my head, like a reminder that life doesn’t treat everyone the same.

Some people wake up and walk without thinking twice, while others wake up and the first thought is how to survive the day with a body or a mind that refuses to follow along.
Disability looks heavy to those who don’t carry it, but to the one who carries it, it becomes a way of living.

I don’t mean it’s easy—far from it—but you adjust, you learn, you create your own rhythm.

There’s something strange about how society looks at it though.

Sometimes, people stare like you’re broken.
Other times, they avoid you completely, as if pretending not to see will make them comfortable.
I don’t like that.

For me, disability is not weakness.
It’s not even always about loss.
It’s difference.
A different set of challenges.
And maybe, in those challenges, there’s a different kind of strength.
Like iron that only forms when fire has burned it enough.

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Which disability is more challenging? Physical or mental!

Now when someone asks me, which one is harder, physical or mental, I get stuck.
Because the truth is, pain has no measuring tape.

What’s small to one can be unbearable to another.
Physical disabilities—you see them, wheelchairs, missing limbs, walking sticks.
The struggle is outside, visible, concrete.
But sometimes people rally around it, they build ramps, they help you cross the road, they notice.

Mental disability is like a shadow nobody else can see.
Depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, those storms inside.

You can walk through a crowd with a full-blown mental war happening in your head, and nobody even knows.

That’s what makes it crueler sometimes.
Because if nobody sees your wound, they don’t believe it’s bleeding.
You become invisible.

So, I don’t say one is harder than the other.
They’re hard in different ways.
Both can crush you.
Both can teach you.
Both can make life heavy, yet life still goes on.

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How can we encourage those who are going through a disability? Explain!

Encouraging someone with a disability—now that, I think, is something we all can do, but we fail often.
People rush in with pity, with shallow words, “oh, I’m sorry.”
Sometimes pity feels like a slap.

Nobody wants to be looked at like a tragedy.
What helps more is real listening.
Just sitting there, no judgment, no quick advice.

Hearing the person.
Seeing the person.
Not just the disability.
Encouragement isn’t always loud words of inspiration.

It’s not telling someone “be strong.”
Sometimes it’s in showing up.
In making the world around them less hostile.

Adding a ramp, hiring without bias, offering patience when they take longer to explain.
It’s inclusion.

I think people with disabilities don’t need to be told they’re strong all the time.
They already know the weight they carry.
They need space to breathe, to fail, to try again.

They need people who don’t treat them as fragile glass but as humans who can live, create, contribute.

Encouragement can be as small as not staring when someone struggles.
Or it can be as big as standing up for their rights.
Little drops of acceptance, they add up.

To me, disability will always be less about what’s missing and more about what remains.
A person may lose one path, but then there’s another.

Sometimes that new road is harder, steeper, and unfair.
But it’s still a road, and with enough kindness around, maybe it becomes walkable.
At the end of it all, the word disability doesn’t scare me.
It humbles me.
It teaches me that ability wears different faces.
And every face, no matter what shape, is worth looking at with respect.

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I will invite
@axgustine, @samuelbrilliant and @precious9

Cc,
@sduttaskitchen