Susannah Breslin, a writer and blogger who did much to bring attention to The 19th Floor back when I was still a fresh-faced n00b in the blogosphere, has a great interview up on BoingBoing with Sarah Scott, who blogs about life with a spinal cord injury. Here’s a snip from the interview:
SB: Why do you blog?
SS: I started blogging for a few reasons. I was desperately lonely and going through all these sort of insane experiences that no one could understand, and I was desperate to be able to explain them in such a way that people would be able to understand without reverting to all the chair stereotypes that I was just a bitter, mean, crazy person now. There were a lot of people in my life that didn’t make the transition to be able to see me first and the chair second, and it was heartbreaking. I thought online I could control things in such a way that people would see me again. In the beginning, it was very much about control.
As things have evolved, I started to ease up on that obsessive level of control and start showing the darkness too. It turned out to be hugely therapeutic for me, and I hope that it humanized me for a lot of people as well. More than anything, I want people to see me as a person and not as an object of pity or otherwise. My story is really about grief and catastrophic change, and I think most people at one time or another in their lives can relate to that.
Sarah’s blog, mayday productions, contains some lovely examples of her photography as well as some sharp and honest writing about coping with the clueless and the cruel. I’ve added Sarah’s blog to my feed list and I look forward to reading her on a regular basis. And big kudos to Susannah for continuing efforts to bring attention to the work of bloggers with disabilities.
