DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH 🎉 “You don’t look disabled” I fought for my life many times, while people around me still told me that I “looked fine”. I was surrounded by a world that relied on physical external evidence before they could treat me with worth and dignity. We live in a world where not everything is as it seems. It is estimated that around 12 million people are misdiagnosed each year. It is also estimated 40,000 people die because of mis-diagnosis. The reality of it is if we stopped being so judgmental, and if we truly listened to each other we could save lives and improve the quality of a lot of them. Still to this date I have never seen my disability or lived experience with a stoma represented on screen (other than a short mention in Greys Anatomy where it was used as the “worst case scenario” and the patient decided assisted suicide was a better option...) you can imagine the consequences of this kind of storytelling, and the self esteem of those who live everyday with stomas, Colitis, Crohn’s and other similar conditions. Not to mention society’s perception. I say that to say, whilst I continue to have a complicated relationship with my disability, but I could be prouder to be an ostomate, and gratful that it saved my life and allows me do amazing things. It also has given me the honour of being apart of the disabled community, a community where we are telling your own narratives, creating our own companies and being the voices that society has tried to suppress for so long and are breaking the barriers that disable us. Cheers to being disabled and proud 🥂 Happy disability pride friends. 📸 @acgphotos #DisabilityPride #ChronicIllness #Ostomy #Ostomate #RepresentationMatters #DisabledAndProud #DisabilityRights Image description: keely is standing in the sunlight wearing a blue skirt suit, and blue heels. Behind her is the C Talent crew Andraea LaVant seated in her wheelchair wearing a bright yellow shirt, Paula Carozzo wearing a cute green skirt suit, Marsha Elle, Elle Potruch, Andrea Lausell, Eileen Grubba and Angel Giuffria.