Author: Emma Bennison, DANA CEO

Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking about disability pride at TAFE NSW’s TAFE-Ability Network disability pride month virtual event. This is an adapted version of my speech.

The cover image displays The Disability Pride Flag with five diagonal stripes running from the upper left to the lower right in muted red, gold, white, blue and green on a charcoal grey background. The diagonal stripes represent the diversity of the disability community and the barriers disabled people navigate together.

“You Get Proud by Practicing”: My Journey Towards Disability Pride

One of the biggest misconceptions about disability pride is that it’s about pretending disability isn’t hard.

From my perspective, that’s not the case.

Sometimes disability is frustrating. Sometimes it’s inconvenient. Sometimes it’s embarrassing. Sometimes it’s exhausting.

I still remember the absolute mortification of my braille display crashing while I was delivering the financial reports at an AGM. Nobody knew how hard I had to work to continue delivering the report using my screen reader when I was unprepared to do so. It was a close call as to whether I would get through it without sharing incorrect figures.

I also know the exhaustion that comes with being a student, receiving information in inaccessible formats, not being permitted to complete practical assessments because of disability, and constantly having to remind teachers and lecturers to make classes accessible. The guilt that comes with feeling like I’m asking for too much is real, even though access is a human right. Those reminders that I try so hard to deliver with compassion and grace draw on emotional and energetic reserves that could otherwise go into leadership, creativity or simply doing my job.

Disability pride hasn’t made those moments enjoyable.

It hasn’t made discrimination hurt less.

It hasn’t made me stop wishing, occasionally, that some things were just easier.

So if disability pride isn’t pretending everything is wonderful, what is it?

I’ve been thinking about that question a lot. I’ve realised my answer has changed throughout my life.

Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that this is my story.

I was born blind. I have never known a world in which I could see. That means my journey towards disability pride is different from someone who acquires disability later in life and has to grieve the loss of something they once had.

Even within my own life, disability pride has looked different at different times.

Blindness has always been woven into my identity. It has shaped my friendships, my humour, my community and, ultimately, the leader I’ve become.

Anxiety arrived much later. I suspect many of my experiences as a blind person contributed to it, but my relationship with anxiety is very different. Blindness feels like part of who I am. Anxiety often feels like something that happened to me.

There is no single path towards disability pride. We all arrive by different roads.

For a long time, though, I thought I understood pride.

Looking back, I realise that what I thought was pride was actually resilience.

Growing up, I didn’t think I was any different because I was blind. But over time I absorbed messages from the world around me.

A friend once uninvited me from her birthday party because her mother thought I would be too much of a burden.

I came second in singing competitions where judges later admitted they worried giving first place to the blind girl would be misunderstood.

Years later, I missed out on a senior leadership role because I wasn’t considered “a safe pair of hands” for travel and presenting, despite already travelling and presenting successfully in my existing role.

None of those moments defined my life.

Some I remember vividly. Many I suspect I’ve forgotten. Perhaps forgetting was its own survival strategy.

But together they whispered the same message.

Know your place.

Disability pride, I’ve come to believe, is partly the practice of refusing to believe those whispers.

I became very good at adapting.

Humour helped.

Achievement helped.

Being agreeable helped.

Resilience helped.

But resilience and pride are not the same thing.

The first real cracks in those messages appeared when I found my disability community.

I met disabled people who expected equality instead of gratitude. Who challenged inaccessible practices. Who refused tokenism. Who asked difficult questions. Who had high expectations of themselves and of other disabled people.

If I’m honest, there were times I desperately wanted them to stop talking.

I worried they were asking for too much.

I worried they were making us all look difficult.

Years later, I found myself in those same conversations.

Every instinct in me wanted to stay quiet or to run away.

Instead, I would ask myself one question.

What would my mentors do?

Almost every time I already knew the answer.

They wouldn’t settle.

They wouldn’t apologise.

Borrowing their courage gave me permission to discover my own.

Eventually, I realised the pride I admired in them had quietly become part of me.

Perhaps that’s how disability pride grows.

One person practices it.

Someone else watches.

Then they practice it too.

In 2014, I travelled to the United Kingdom. That trip changed my life.

Not because it made me a leader. I was already leading.

Because it changed the kind of leader I wanted to become.

While there, I attended a festival where audio description was simply available. Not at one designated performance. Whenever I chose.

It wasn’t really about audio description though.

It was about autonomy.

For once, accessibility fitted around my life instead of me fitting around accessibility.

I also saw disabled people supported to work, travel, lead and participate in ordinary life in ways I hadn’t seen in Australia.

At first I thought I was hopeful.

Then I realised I was grieving.

Because I’d seen another way.

I wasn’t asking for too much.

I was asking for things that already existed.

Once you’ve experienced that possibility, it’s impossible to unknow it.

From then on, I stopped asking how disabled people could adapt to systems.

I started asking how systems could adapt to disabled people.

That shift has shaped every leadership role I’ve held since.

There are still days when I have to practise pride.

Pride doesn’t erase grief.

Pride doesn’t erase frustration.

Pride doesn’t erase anxiety.

But it does remind me that none of those things determine my worth.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder about the cost of all that adaptation.

We celebrate resilience.

We don’t always ask what resilience has required.

Some experiences I packed away because that was how I kept moving forward.

Perhaps that is why my relationship with anxiety feels different from my relationship with blindness.

Even the things we survive can leave a mark.

The late disability rights activist and poet Laura Hershey wrote, “You get proud by practicing.”

Those words have stayed with me for decades.

But what I’ve learned is that none of us practises pride alone.

We inherit courage.

We borrow courage.

We lend courage.

Sometimes we borrow it from people whose disability journey looks nothing like our own.

And if we’re very lucky, one day we discover that someone else has borrowed ours.

I began this article talking about disability pride.

But perhaps pride was never really the destination.

Perhaps pride was what allowed me to keep walking until I found belonging.

Every story I’ve shared here has essentially been asking the same question.

Will I be seen as someone who belongs?

Today my answer is yes.

Not because the world has become perfectly accessible.

Not because discrimination has disappeared.

But because I’ve stopped believing the lie that disability makes me worth less.

Disability pride isn’t pretending the world has changed.

It’s believing it’s worth changing.

And every act of genuine inclusion makes it easier for someone else to believe they belong.

Laura Hershey was right.

“You get proud by practicing.”

And perhaps, together, we help one another practise belonging.

Finally, remember that disability pride isn’t just something disabled people build. It’s something all of us make possible when we create places where people don’t have to choose between belonging and being themselves.

Originally Published on LinkedIn by Emma Bennison. Republished with permission.