The Island and the Sea: A Journey Home of a Woman with a Physical Disability

This is a story that starts from my anger. Because of the oppression I experienced, I, a student with a physical disability who was used to being in the mainstream education field, tried to move myself to the disability rights movements field. In the course, however, I felt uncertainty, chaos and confuse, and I also reflected upon the stare and the curse on my cripple body. I then struggled to release from old frameworks that constrained me, at the same time to build the identity of disability toward my own body. The struggling was also intervened with “being disabled"" and ""being able"" repeatedly. Originally, I considered the writing as the way to find an utter position to accuse the mainstream society of its unfriendliness and prejudice. However, it developed more meanings to me. Despite the story started from my anger, it then proceeded and revealed more exactly the sense of inferiority and the guilt for my family. My brother’s career challenges also changed my worldview from pursuing outside achievement to facing the issue of life being. It was at the point that the story turned around. I then looked back to write about my illness, my family and school life, understanding my way of becoming an elite, and then stepped my way to find the belonging of my mind. The retrospection of this life story is bitter. After the realization of my family member, and myself it is possible to settle with myself. The sufferings in it become the guidance that helps me build self-identity from outward to inward. The story, however, is still in process. The deconstruction of “the stigma of disability” and the emancipation from “the thoughts of disability” will continue to be the direction of my body and me…