Here's the article itself, by Leah Ridley Brome (posted on Linked In and Facebook):
This month is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. I published this on LinkedIn to shed some personal light on a topic that needs more visibility.
A few days after dancing at my wedding, my back
began to hurt. When I say hurt, I mean burn. It felt like every nerve
ending was on fire causing my spine to stiffen and seize. I couldn’t
breathe, not just from the pain, but literally, I couldn’t breathe - my
oxygen levels were low, and I wheezed and whistled like a freight train.
A childhood asthmatic, I thought I was having a particularly rough
period due to exceptional lousy air quality or seasonal changes, but
after three seasons had passed, I knew something was wrong. I was
nauseous all the time from the pain that now spread everywhere, not just
my back.
My doctors were at a loss, my inflammation levels were off the charts. They put me on a steroid medication called prednisone to help me function. The medication helped until it didn’t. It turns out, I am extremely sensitive to prednisone. The eighteen months I spent on the drug caused significant weight gain, muscle weakness and damage, and type II diabetes. The strangest thing about this period in my life was that I hardly noticed that my body was literally falling apart.
My career at my previous company was going exceptionally well. I had received two promotions in a year, the last one making me the leader of a new function - Global Talent Acquisition Strategy. When another department restructured, my team inherited work focused on recruiting People with Disabilities (PWDs) to work for the company. The program was incredibly successful in the stores owned by the company, but not as successful in corporate. Our team was challenged with increasing the optimizing the partnerships, pipeline, and processes related to recruiting PWD talent in corporate positions.
Around this time, I was forced to use a mobility scooter around my office because I could no longer walk long distances or stand for long periods of time. At first, I loved it. I zipped around the office with ease to meetings the same way I used to before all this happened. But then, I noticed something. When I was in the scooter, I became invisible. I could no longer confidentially enter a room. Not every door was handicap accessible, and often times, I would struggle to push a door open in my scooter. This would invariably cause a good Samaritan to come to my aid. It was a kind gesture that I hated being the recipient of. Even worse was when I had to ask my colleagues or my boss to load my scooter into a car when we would travel together. But my biggest shame was not being able to look someone in the eye when I first met them. They had to look down at me literally. Their smiles to me seemed patronizing. For some, I saw a flicker of surprise when they learned that the women in the scooter was indeed the same Leah Brome they had been talking to on the phone. I suspect in their mind's eye leaders didn’t use mobility devices.
A leadership retreat in New Hampshire was my breaking point. My scooter broke down at the resort after trying to make it up a particularly steep incline. The historical seaside resort was not accessible at all. My colleagues attempted to push me up the hill, and one even offered to carry me. Eventually, I got some help walking up the hill, and my colleagues carried my scooter in pieces until we could figure out the problem.
At that retreat, I recognized the obvious: I had a disability. The world no longer seemed like a place that was designed for me in it. Literally, there were some doors I couldn’t open. As an African-American, gay woman discrimination isn’t a foreign concept to me, but I had a lifetime of navigating that. I understood how to navigate that. Navigating a disability, especially one that was so "visible", scared me.
The PWD initiative I was leading now took on a more personal note. I now understand the courage it takes for a person with a disability to disclose their disability on an application or in a phone interview. I now understand the added pressure to a first in-person interview for those with mobility issues - figuring out if all the doors you will encounter are handicap accessible. Wondering if your interviewer will be shocked to see you using a mobility device or if they’ll ignore it (or over-ignore it, staring way too much at your face, afraid to even look at your device). Then even after you get the job, you wonder if the favorite after-work haunt can accommodate you and whether or not you’ll be the person who ruined all the fun by not being able to join the group. You wonder if your higher-than-usual number of doctor’s appointments will cause others to question your committment to your employer. You wonder if you’ll ever be promoted, and if you are, will you be respected as a leader because you are different? You wonder if networking will always be so hard, with some seeing your disability before they see you, and you wonder if you’ll lose opportunities your other colleagues might not. You worry that you are asking way too much of a manager to “accommodate” all the uniqueness that is you and you question if it is that fair to them. If you have an invisible disability, you wonder if maybe you can “pass.” Maybe you can purchase and bring in your own devices to help you do your job, and no one has to know. These are just a few of the consistent thoughts and concerns that PWDs have when they seek and obtain employment.
Attracting PWD talent is more than just stating that we don’t discriminate at the bottom of a job posting. It’s about showing candidates that we have purposefully designed space for them within our everyday operating practices.
My greatest fear was that my disability would change me, and it did. I am more empathetic, humble, and more authentic at work and at home. The doors of the world may not have been built for me to pass through them easily, but somehow, I’ll find a way to scoot on through. That’s just how I roll.
https://www.linkedin.com/…/thats-just-how-i-roll-navigatin…/
I have experienced many of these things when using the grocery store electric cart/wheelchair, because more often than not they break down in the middle of the aisle, causing embarrassment to me as I have to find someone to get me another one that works or fix the one I am on. When using my cane I move along slowly, because I can only take small steps with my knees and back hurting and full of inflammation and edema. But most people only see a fat woman struggling and they judge me as someone who only eats junk food and has no self control, who has "let herself go" and all kinds of other cliches and stereotypes that are far from the truth. "Concern trolls" on the internet and sites like Facebook constantly post about how obesity/being fat is not only ugly, but it will kill me with a heart attack, diabetes or any one of a million other diseases, despite the fact that my heart and blood pressure are fine, and I don't have the gene for type 2 diabetes (nor do I actually have diabetes). And yes, just as Ms Brome said, you worry that employers will either discriminate in hiring you or fire you for being too much trouble if you do get the job. I rarely even have the chance to interview for a job, as my age and gender are a factor that hiring managers don't want to deal with. Add to that the thought of having to deal with an older woman with a disability and you have the perfect storm of someone who will be ignored and overlooked when it comes to hiring, even for jobs that I am well qualified for, or have worked on in the past.
So while the Me,too and TimesUp movements continue to try to hold men accountable for sexual harassment and rape, and for sexism and a whole variety of indignities that women experience every single day, the "It's Okay to be Fat" movement faces an even steeper hill of prejudice and ignorance in a society that wants women to be consistently dissatisfied with how they look and how they feel about their bodies. It weakens us as women to see ourselves as ugly and unlovable because we can't meet the "perfect" standards of airbrushed and photoshopped models whose pictures aren't even real to begin with.
Then there is the question of hair color...to be gray or not to embrace gray/white hair? www.grayisthenewblonde.com
Women are taught that to be older is to be ugly and invisible, and in a society that worships youth, you are called upon to remove all the hair on your body (except for the hair on your head) and color the hair on your head, lest you be seen as "grandmotherly" or "ancient." The problem there is that there is power in accepting your age and reveling in the looks that you've grown into. But companies don't make money off of women who accept themselves as they are and don't color their hair or spend cash on the latest diet fad or on waxing/shaving products to make themselves as hairless as prepubescent children. The patriarchy is behind this, of course, old white men who want to control and subjugate women by setting "standards" of looks and behavior that are impossible to attain or retain. BE WHO YOU ARE, RIGHT NOW. Love your body, flaws and all. Accept your age and enjoy the wisdom of knowing what you know and of your experiences as a human being. Being disabled has made me realize that I can't waste a single moment trying to be what some ad agency or some other group of prejudiced old white men want me to be. I must live and love on my own terms. So should you. Don't give up, don't allow anyone to tell you who you are, and squeeze the juice of life from every last second.
My doctors were at a loss, my inflammation levels were off the charts. They put me on a steroid medication called prednisone to help me function. The medication helped until it didn’t. It turns out, I am extremely sensitive to prednisone. The eighteen months I spent on the drug caused significant weight gain, muscle weakness and damage, and type II diabetes. The strangest thing about this period in my life was that I hardly noticed that my body was literally falling apart.
My career at my previous company was going exceptionally well. I had received two promotions in a year, the last one making me the leader of a new function - Global Talent Acquisition Strategy. When another department restructured, my team inherited work focused on recruiting People with Disabilities (PWDs) to work for the company. The program was incredibly successful in the stores owned by the company, but not as successful in corporate. Our team was challenged with increasing the optimizing the partnerships, pipeline, and processes related to recruiting PWD talent in corporate positions.
Around this time, I was forced to use a mobility scooter around my office because I could no longer walk long distances or stand for long periods of time. At first, I loved it. I zipped around the office with ease to meetings the same way I used to before all this happened. But then, I noticed something. When I was in the scooter, I became invisible. I could no longer confidentially enter a room. Not every door was handicap accessible, and often times, I would struggle to push a door open in my scooter. This would invariably cause a good Samaritan to come to my aid. It was a kind gesture that I hated being the recipient of. Even worse was when I had to ask my colleagues or my boss to load my scooter into a car when we would travel together. But my biggest shame was not being able to look someone in the eye when I first met them. They had to look down at me literally. Their smiles to me seemed patronizing. For some, I saw a flicker of surprise when they learned that the women in the scooter was indeed the same Leah Brome they had been talking to on the phone. I suspect in their mind's eye leaders didn’t use mobility devices.
A leadership retreat in New Hampshire was my breaking point. My scooter broke down at the resort after trying to make it up a particularly steep incline. The historical seaside resort was not accessible at all. My colleagues attempted to push me up the hill, and one even offered to carry me. Eventually, I got some help walking up the hill, and my colleagues carried my scooter in pieces until we could figure out the problem.
At that retreat, I recognized the obvious: I had a disability. The world no longer seemed like a place that was designed for me in it. Literally, there were some doors I couldn’t open. As an African-American, gay woman discrimination isn’t a foreign concept to me, but I had a lifetime of navigating that. I understood how to navigate that. Navigating a disability, especially one that was so "visible", scared me.
The PWD initiative I was leading now took on a more personal note. I now understand the courage it takes for a person with a disability to disclose their disability on an application or in a phone interview. I now understand the added pressure to a first in-person interview for those with mobility issues - figuring out if all the doors you will encounter are handicap accessible. Wondering if your interviewer will be shocked to see you using a mobility device or if they’ll ignore it (or over-ignore it, staring way too much at your face, afraid to even look at your device). Then even after you get the job, you wonder if the favorite after-work haunt can accommodate you and whether or not you’ll be the person who ruined all the fun by not being able to join the group. You wonder if your higher-than-usual number of doctor’s appointments will cause others to question your committment to your employer. You wonder if you’ll ever be promoted, and if you are, will you be respected as a leader because you are different? You wonder if networking will always be so hard, with some seeing your disability before they see you, and you wonder if you’ll lose opportunities your other colleagues might not. You worry that you are asking way too much of a manager to “accommodate” all the uniqueness that is you and you question if it is that fair to them. If you have an invisible disability, you wonder if maybe you can “pass.” Maybe you can purchase and bring in your own devices to help you do your job, and no one has to know. These are just a few of the consistent thoughts and concerns that PWDs have when they seek and obtain employment.
Attracting PWD talent is more than just stating that we don’t discriminate at the bottom of a job posting. It’s about showing candidates that we have purposefully designed space for them within our everyday operating practices.
My greatest fear was that my disability would change me, and it did. I am more empathetic, humble, and more authentic at work and at home. The doors of the world may not have been built for me to pass through them easily, but somehow, I’ll find a way to scoot on through. That’s just how I roll.
https://www.linkedin.com/…/thats-just-how-i-roll-navigatin…/
I have experienced many of these things when using the grocery store electric cart/wheelchair, because more often than not they break down in the middle of the aisle, causing embarrassment to me as I have to find someone to get me another one that works or fix the one I am on. When using my cane I move along slowly, because I can only take small steps with my knees and back hurting and full of inflammation and edema. But most people only see a fat woman struggling and they judge me as someone who only eats junk food and has no self control, who has "let herself go" and all kinds of other cliches and stereotypes that are far from the truth. "Concern trolls" on the internet and sites like Facebook constantly post about how obesity/being fat is not only ugly, but it will kill me with a heart attack, diabetes or any one of a million other diseases, despite the fact that my heart and blood pressure are fine, and I don't have the gene for type 2 diabetes (nor do I actually have diabetes). And yes, just as Ms Brome said, you worry that employers will either discriminate in hiring you or fire you for being too much trouble if you do get the job. I rarely even have the chance to interview for a job, as my age and gender are a factor that hiring managers don't want to deal with. Add to that the thought of having to deal with an older woman with a disability and you have the perfect storm of someone who will be ignored and overlooked when it comes to hiring, even for jobs that I am well qualified for, or have worked on in the past.
So while the Me,too and TimesUp movements continue to try to hold men accountable for sexual harassment and rape, and for sexism and a whole variety of indignities that women experience every single day, the "It's Okay to be Fat" movement faces an even steeper hill of prejudice and ignorance in a society that wants women to be consistently dissatisfied with how they look and how they feel about their bodies. It weakens us as women to see ourselves as ugly and unlovable because we can't meet the "perfect" standards of airbrushed and photoshopped models whose pictures aren't even real to begin with.
Then there is the question of hair color...to be gray or not to embrace gray/white hair? www.grayisthenewblonde.com
Women are taught that to be older is to be ugly and invisible, and in a society that worships youth, you are called upon to remove all the hair on your body (except for the hair on your head) and color the hair on your head, lest you be seen as "grandmotherly" or "ancient." The problem there is that there is power in accepting your age and reveling in the looks that you've grown into. But companies don't make money off of women who accept themselves as they are and don't color their hair or spend cash on the latest diet fad or on waxing/shaving products to make themselves as hairless as prepubescent children. The patriarchy is behind this, of course, old white men who want to control and subjugate women by setting "standards" of looks and behavior that are impossible to attain or retain. BE WHO YOU ARE, RIGHT NOW. Love your body, flaws and all. Accept your age and enjoy the wisdom of knowing what you know and of your experiences as a human being. Being disabled has made me realize that I can't waste a single moment trying to be what some ad agency or some other group of prejudiced old white men want me to be. I must live and love on my own terms. So should you. Don't give up, don't allow anyone to tell you who you are, and squeeze the juice of life from every last second.
