Disability Day of Mourning

Trigger warning: Talk of death and mourning.

Today, March 1st, Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, Not Dead Yet, and the National Council on Independent Living are observing a Disability Day of Mourning.

We remember the lives of those people with disabilities who were murdered by caregivers, by people they should have been able to trust, by people they maybe thought loved them, who maybe themselves even thought they did love them.

At vigils all around the country, we read their names, but we cannot read all their names, because so many of their names are not known to us when the news reports focus only on the hardships in the lives of the murderers.  So we also remember our fallen whose names we do not know.

Some people imagine that a disabled life is not a life worth living.  This is not the truth.

Some people imagine that a disabled person is not a person worth loving.  That is not the truth.

Some people imagine that not being able to talk means not having anything to say.

Some people.