#disablility

when abled people say to push yourself out of your comfort zone… yeah you can ignore that. That ‘comfort zone’ they speak of is just… an entirely different thing. You CAN grow without pushing yourself to your limits. You CAN grow without collapsing in a QFC parking lot sobbing uncontrollably and unable to breathe because everything is just too loud.

when they say ‘step out of your comfort zone’ or tell you you need to ‘embrace discomfort’ they are actually referring to discomfort as the feeling of ‘I would kinda prefer not to be doing this.’ They are NOT referring to the following:

About to have a panic attack

About to cry

About to literally faint from pain

Actually they usually assume there is no physical pain at all

Completely mute/about to go nonverbal

About to have a flashback/meltdown/other crisis

Actually crying/having a panic attack/fainting/having a crisis

Most people who lose a body part experience something called 'the phantom pain'

the rose and red color represent smell and unity between people with different smell conditions. the wavy line also represents smell and the differences between ablility to smell or diffences in someones sense of smell. the colors correspond to the stripes in my smell disorder umbrella flag (link) and represent each specific condition

anosmia - complete lack of smell

hyposmia - lessened ability to smell

parosmia - brain incorrectly identifies smells, eg. a pie might smell like chemicals

phantosmia - smelling things that aren't there, olfactory hallucinations

dysosmia - any difference in smell that isn't a difference in the amount of smell being sensed. basically an umbrella for parosmia and phantosmia

hyperosmia - increased sensitivity to smell

of course brennan can still mend her, and he often does, but the issues, the pain, just keeps coming back faster and faster each time. Eventually she starts taking steps to prevent the pain from happening all together. Disability is going to play a large part in this fanfiction (more than just violet and her son are going to have issues) and i've been really working on weaving in what accommodations they would have in this world. It would be super easy to just say "oh, brennan has mending, they wouldn't be having any of these issues" but to me that's just lazy writing. Disabled people and disablility deserve to have good representation in media, and on top of that it is infinitely more interesting for a story to actually dig into and explore how a disabled person might live and accommodate themselves in a fantasy world!

You are the expert on your lived experience!