Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century

Writer A. H. Reaume describes her friendship with Maddy Sloan. They met at a work-related networking event and immediately connected over both having brain injuries. While Maddy is recovering from a brain hemorrhage, Reaume is recovering from a severe concussion. Because of this, they experience many different symptoms, although some of their symptoms overlap.

The first time they met up outside of work, Reaume and Maddy went strawberry picking and commiserated about their disabilities: “Mostly we talked about how lonely we were within our disabilities and recoveries— not just because fatigue and overstimulation sometimes isolated us but also because no one we knew understood” (142).

Reaume also shares that she struggled to write her novel because looking at screens is draining for her, which makes it difficult to focus on writing or editing. Talking to Maddy encouraged her to “think creatively” about ways to compensate for these roadblocks. For example, Reaume decided to take on extra freelance work to pay for an assistant to transcribe her handwritten drafts into a digital document. She hired some of her friends to do it, but soon, they got too busy to help her. Maddy volunteered instead.

Reaume describes her work with Maddy as “the best collaboration of my life” (143).