I’m part of a group of amazing parents and children; people bonded by diagnoses — most you’ve probably never heard of.
Many disabilities, differences and illnesses are not easy to identify in people we may know or meet.
In a world where kids think they have to keep their invisible differences hidden, we disagree.
More than ever before, our world is polarized, separated and less accepting. Thus, we fight daily for awareness, inclusion and compassion.
We’re exhausted by people being ignored or judged because what makes them different isn’t visible at first glance.
If you ask the naysayers or look in history textbooks, they tell you what we’re trying to do is impossible.
So how do we make the impossible a reality?
Because we’re fighting against ignorance, we do things differently. We lead with empathy and education. We don’t have unlimited resources, so we rely on relationships to spread our movement.
And it’s happening.
Every single day.
It’s happening through books, articles, television shows and films.
It’s happening on playgrounds, in grocery stores, in forward thinking businesses, places of worship and in classrooms.
Acceptance of invisible differences in growing.
We are winning.
We believe our invisible differences are part of our lives, but they don’t define us.
We won’t stop until we change the world.
This is our manifesto.
A version of this post appeared on rshibbard.com.
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R.S. Hibbard shares the challenging path of parenting a child with 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome, while managing her own invisible differences.
r-s-hibbard