My Blindness Doesn't Make Me Inspirational

I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at 14, but didn’t really start acknowledging the diagnosis and visual impairment until around age 20. That’s also when I started to hear that I was an inspiration. At that time and for a few years after, I didn’t really care; in fact, I thought it was sweet and a compliment to my ability to persevere and keep moving. But after learning about inspiration porn and getting told I was an inspiration many times when I was just doing average joe activities, I started looking at things a little differently.

Inspiration porn is when a person without a disability thinks a person with a disability is inspirational just because they live with a disability. That’s it… just them living is the sole reason they are called an inspiration.

Living as a blind person with retinitis pigmentosa is not inspirational. Most people would continue to live if they were diagnosed with such. Going through what I have had to go through to continue to live the life I want to live, taking orientation and mobility lessons and using adaptive technology is not inspirational. I did what I had to do to survive.

I am OK with you thinking the perspective I have taken on disability, the advocacy work I do related to disability, and the amazing opportunities I have been given and embrace are inspirational. But just because I continue to keep on trekking through this thing called life with a disability — that’s not inspirational.

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