Rebekah Taussig - Sitting Pretty

Before we talk about anything else, can we just start with awe? I am completely in awe of this moment were having right nowyou and me. When I was younger, disability didnt seem to exist outside my visits to the hospital and seating clinics for repairs on my wheelchair. For the most part, I felt really really weird, and not in a cool, MTVs Daria sort of way. Id never considered disability an identity worth understanding, let alone celebrating, and I was pretty sure I was the only one who experienced the world from this seat on the margins. But here we are with this little book between us, and my mind is blown, because either (1) you, too, were on the outside and youre here for stories that give language to that experience, or (2) you werent on the outside, but you want to understand what that feels like, and really, either way, the fact that youre here at all changes everything. Because this right here, you and me, looking at these stories together? This is one of the most beautiful parts of being a humanthe drive to connect and understand, heal and blossom. This is the kernel that takes my breath away. The piece I want to hold on to.

But first! You should know what youre getting into. Who is this person whose voice youre choosing to listen to for the next however many precious minutes of your life? And why did she write these pages? Very good questions.

You might know me from my Instagram account @sitting_pretty. Although social media seems to find ways to destroy us on the daily, it does offer us at least one tremendous gift: the power to share a story without going through the gatekeepers whove historically said, Pass! We dont tell those kinds of stories. Who would listen? Almost five years ago, I started an Instagram account where I could share mini-memoirs narrating life in a body thats rarely represented, let alone represented with nuance. Id been writing essays, sending them out whenever I could bear the vulnerability of it, and hoping some editor would happen to care about this perspective, when my roommate Bertie told me to take them to the Interwebs. Would anyone care? Maybe not. But I didnt have anything to lose. I brainstormed cheesy handles on an actual napkin that came with my cup of coffee. I played with words like wheelchair and cripple and disabled until I landed on the feminine, the playful, the subtly subversive @sitting_prettya name to highlight that I am moving around down here and doing just fine.

I started sharing little bits and scraps from my daysthe layers of anxiety I carry when I shop at a grocery store, the flash of shame and warmth of intimacy born through the vulnerability of struggling to walk in front of a chosen few, the frustration and reverence I feel at the sight of my scrawny, scabby legs in the morning or soaking in the bathtubso many stories that felt entirely singular, deeply personal, and painfully, wholeheartedly honest. Im pretty sure my eyes popped out on springs like a cartoon when I realized there were people who wanted to listen. Some said, Me, too! Others said, I had no idea! Either way, they were invested, and I was amazed.

It was in this space that I found so many people with stories I hungered for. I didnt even realize how starved I was until I sat at the feet and listened to the stories of other disabled folks, collecting words Id never heard, words I didnt know I could have. Their accounts deepened my understanding of my own history and gave me new pictures to reimagine what it can mean to be a disabled woman. I pictured my younger self, making up dances in my dress-up clothes. What would have happened if these stories had played a part in shaping my early perceptions? What else might I have dreamed for myself? I voiced this angsty sentiment to one of my first and favorite disabled friends in this Instagram space, Erin Clark (@erinunleashes), and she was quick to remind me that our lives arent over. We are here nowfor story-expanding, collaborative meaning-making, and starting a #CripplePunk girl band of thirty-somethings.

So here I am, writing this book, because my life isnt over, because the stories of disabled folks are so often distorted to fit someone elses louder story, because I wish Id had any stories when I was growing uplike any at allthat represented my actual, lived experiences, because theres another generation of exquisite people growing up disabled or about to become disabled, and stories are fucking powerful.

A few housekeeping details to sort out before we go any farther together:

• This book is not a how-to guide, as in How to Interact with Your Disabled Neighbor. Sorry! Not my thing.
• I am notby any stretch of the imaginationthe representative of all disabled people. Thats not a thing. The fact that I have a very visible disability (turns out its difficult to overlook a wheelchair), and the fact that I was disabled at a very young age, changes the way you and I experience this body of mine. Even folks who share these same traits will have their own slant on what it means to them, because the experience of disability is as varied as the experiences of childbirth or breakupsthere are at least seven billion different ways this could go, and even within one person, feelings can contradict or change over time. Disability expands into every possible corner and intersects with every other identity. I would be doing all of us a great disservice if I led you to believe that the conversation starts and ends with bodies and experiences that look just like mine.
• This book isnt exhaustive. In fact, I hope it sparks more conversations and more listening to more voices. I am much more comfortable in the position of storyteller and question-asker than rule-enforcer or final-word-sayer.

So. Here we areyou and me and all my sloppy awe. Im terrified, eager, and a little nauseous to invite you so fully into my world, but I think its worth the risk. So lets go forth. Lets peel back the layers, look with an unwavering gaze, ask the impossible questions, break our hearts, laugh at it all, and open ourselves up for new growth. I think were ready.