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To One of My Heroes: Thank You.

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  I have been absent from this blog as of late.  I had many things I wanted to talk about and post, however, I did not have the motivation to post them.  That changed last night on September 18th.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or RBG and the Notorious RBG, as admirers fondly referred to her, passed away surrounded by family yesterday.  Like many others around the nation, I was not okay last night.  Like many others, I went through periods of disbelief, grief, anger, anxiety, and back again.  Today, I am going to do what I always do when I find trouble processing something, and write about it.   Many people who know me are aware that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of my heroes.  She was the reason why I have some of the rights that I do.  She even inspired me to go to law school and pursue a career in law myself.  She was a steadfast advocate for so many voices, and I wish I had gotten to meet her at some point in my life.   Throughout her long career on the Supreme Court (27 years), RBG was a fig
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What Elizabeth Warren's Campaign Meant to Me

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Image by Washington Post.  Description:  Elizabeth Warren smiling, holding a microphone against an American Flag backdrop This post is going to be a little different than my previous ones.  However, I needed an outlet to write about how I was feeling. Like many others around the nation today, I find myself at a loss for words.  So what do I do when I cannot speak about my feelings?  I write about them.  This morning, Senator Elizabeth Warren decided to suspend her campaign for the presidency.  As many of you know, I identify as a Democrat and have dedicated a large part of my limited free time to volunteering for candidates to help get Democrats elected at the local, state, and this year, national level.  That being said, something that a lot of you may not have known, as I had not discussed this much, was that I fully supported Elizabeth Warren's campaign. I did so, for many reasons.  I had a hard time picking a candidate, especially when the field was so large and filled
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A Disabled Guide to the 2020 Election: Update

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Image by Fortune.com Now that we have been through five democratic debates, I have decided to update my previous 2020 disability rights election guide .  If you haven't read that yet, I have it linked.  Like last time, there will be a few candidates that will be excluded from this post as they have since dropped out of the race:  Beto O'Rourke, Bill De Blasio, Kristen Gillibrand, Mike Gravel, John Hickenlooper, Kamala Harris, Jay Inslee, Joe Sestak, Seth Moulton, Tim Ryan, Wayne Messam, Steve Bullock, Mark Sanford, and Eric Swalwell.  For the most part, the candidates' positions on health care will be excluded from this post as I focused almost exclusively on that subject throughout the last guide, and many candidates have not changed their position.  That being said, I will mention healthcare when talking about the newer candidates that have entered the race recently. First, I am going to cover the Republican candidates.  As of December, there are three in the race.
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What Not to Say to a Person in a Wheelchair

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Image owned by 30seconds.com I really debated about publishing this.  I wrote this as a way to process a really awful situation that I found myself in,  when a close friend recommended that I do so.  Many disability bloggers before me have talked about this topic and have even covered some of these themselves as some are really common, and thus, this will not be an exhaustive list of inappropriate comments. There are many more and this post could easily be almost an entire book in itself. For the purpose of this particular piece I will only be focusing on sharing some of the comments that I have received as a wheelchair user; however, I will be doing another piece at a later date that encompasses comments that people with any and all disabilities receive.  Therefore, if you are reading this and are comfortable sharing with me, feel free to direct message me if you are interested in contributing. Without further ado, here are some comments that I have received fairly recently-n
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Life Update

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It's been a while since my last post.  Being in college takes up the majority of my time these days.  However, I realized that I cannot take long breaks without writing a post here.  This blog has really been therapeutic for me, and last week, it really hit me that I needed to bring these posts back to deal with my stress. I am currently in my Junior year at Penn State.  Things have been going well.  This summer, I participated in three track meets, including Junior Nationals.  At Nationals this last year, I got first in one event and second in the other two!  My former coach has since retired and the search for a new one was daunting, to say the least.  But after a few months of hearing nothing, we finally gained a new coach!  So far, he's great!  Right now we are focusing on building the team and dealing with logistics as we have four new members interested in joining.  Meets will start after the new year. Some of you already know this, but I have also decided to co
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DC Trails Fiasco

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This is very similar to the bus that I was on I am posting this immediately after the ACLU trip blog, because I feel that it was too emotional to have in that one, but my story needs to be put out there.  I want to preface this by saying that this is just my experience with one company and I will be naming the company, so that people can decide for themselves if they want to give it business, and I do not mean any sort of ill-intent with this post. Throughout the week in Washington, D.C., the program that I was a part of used a company to take us places called DC Trails.  Prior to this particular incident, I had had issues on DC Trails with wheelchair ramps not working in the past, on an earlier trip with the ACLU.  Each day, the drivers would load me on and off, and strap me in so I wouldn't roll around.  Each bus had two Close Up leaders on board, and each time we would get off, my leader would wait for me. On this particular day, we were going to the Capitol Building a
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My Trip to Washington, D.C.

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This is a photo that I took, shortly after landing in D.C. From Sunday, July 28th to Friday, August 2nd, I traveled to Washington, D.C.  I was there as part of a weeklong program hosted by the  ACLU  and  Close Up Foundation  called the 2019 Advocacy Institute.  In short, this institute was directed towards college students who are interested in advocacy and law careers.  We learned many things about advocacy, lobbying, and even got a chance to network with other rights organizations in order to jumpstart our respective careers.  This post will give you a taste of what we were doing each day, as well as things that I learned.  Also, in lieu of explaining the activists and organizations that I met with and learned from throughout the week, I will be linking websites for your reference if you want to learn more, otherwise, this post would be way too long. Now onto the Advocacy Institute from last week. Sunday, July 28th:   The first day of the program was not nearly as packed fu
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