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For a very long time, I felt that having rheumatoid arthritis meant that my body had betrayed me. But in the moment of profound insight, I realized that my body was not an enemy to resent, but a partner to support. In my new article for CreakyJoints Canada, I write about how I became friends with my body:

“I felt betrayed by my body. More than that, I felt abandoned by my body, as it surrendered to the onslaught of autoimmune arthritis, seemingly doing nothing to push back. I was young when I had first moments of joint swelling and pain, only 4 years old, and it got worse. Much worse. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) robbed me of most of my childhood, leaving me hospitalized for years — because that’s how they did it back then in Denmark, where I was born and grew up — missing out on school and friends and playing.

Denmark is an old country, with old and mostly inaccessible infrastructure and I was a teenager just a decade or so after the move to de-institutionalize people with disabilities who previously had been put away, out of sight. So there I was, finally discharged from the hospital, my body still a source of mostly uncontrolled pain in an environment that largely excluded people like me. For several decades, both in Denmark and after that when we moved to Canada, I rarely saw other wheelchair users.

My response to my environment and my pain was to internalize the ableist view that saw me and my body as a tragedy, as weird and unusual, as “special.” Inside, in my mind and my soul, I felt like just any other young woman, with dreams of becoming a vet, meeting my first boyfriend, traveling, writing, trying to help others, and be accepted. Outside, my disabled body and the pain within were the barriers to chasing my dreams.”

Hop on over to CreakyJoints Canada to read my tips about how you can become friends with your body, too.