A community centred around joy

Coming together around disabled joy

Last week, on the last day of Disability Pride Month, I opened the doors to the Disabled Joy Collective.

Now, just a few days later, we’ve had our first 17 members join, and they are deep in conversation about what brings them joy, the books they love, and the joyful moments in their day to day.

Five months ago this was just an idea.

A sparkle in my brain as I considered what I could build of the basis of Seated Perspectives.

Up until then, I had thought that the only way I could meaningfully contribute to the disability community was by bringing my professional expertise in branding and content and marketing into the mix. That’s why I focused on coaching other disabled creators and building the Gentle Content Club to make content creation easier for other disabled folks.

And this isn’t to say that I won’t still do that work and create those resources, but in taking time to reflect what brought me joy and what I actually wanted to do vs. what I felt I should do, I realized that it all lay in community. (And disabled joy.)

The biggest joy that I have received from showing up under the Seated Perspectives banner is how it’s helped me connect with so many other disabled folks. I’ve been able to have conversations with so many others who have their own versions of my story. They feel seen in my content, and I feel seen in their responses.

This journey also introduced me to disabled joy — as a concept and as something that I want to embody and share and celebrate.

I used to think of disability and joy as incongruous. They were like oil and water. They couldn’t exist together.

It took me learning from other members of the community and witnessing disabled joy in real time to prove me wrong.

It took me unlearning a lot of my own internalized ableism.

It took me learning to love more parts of myself and claim my disabled identity.

And it also took me drawing on my deep-seeded stubbornness to fight against the narratives that get placed on disabled folks.

The fact that disabled is tragic, or burdensome, or something to overcome.

And the only way to be “inspirational” or successful is to overcome it.

I hate all of these narratives, by the way, and I strongly believe that talking about disabled joy is an antidote to them — because it gives us dimension, it makes us more human, just like everyone else.

So as I kept ruminating on how to build on everything I’ve done with Seated Perspectives, disabled joy felt like the most natural progression.

There are many spaces for disabled folks, to advocate, to support each other, to share resources, to participate in adapted activities, but I had yet to come across any space focused entirely on disabled joy.

So I’ve built one. (You can learn more about it here.)

The Disabled Joy Collective is an online space where you can share your joys and celebrate the joys of others, tend to each other, share books and craft projects, and explore connections with other folks.

Every week, I share a journaling prompt, and there’s an online room for a half hour of co-journaling.

And once a month, we have a meetup where I welcome another leader in the disability community to talk about what disabled joy means to them.

Already, this has been such a lovely space to be part of. It’s an honour to see the idea from five months ago become real.

Now I’m excited to take on the next challenge of growing this community and witnessing how the people within it continue to shape it.

If you have any questions about the community feel free to leave a comment or email me at ali@seatedperspectives.co

Chat soon,

Ali