World Mourns Outspoken Woman With Disability Who Declared, 'I'm Not Your Inspiration'

Stella Young wasn’t here to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. She made that perfectly clear. And by flat-out rejecting "inspiration porn," the woman with a bone disease who died suddenly on Saturday effectively subverted the conversation surrounding disabilities. Born in Victoria, Australia, Young lived with osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disorder that caused her bones to break easily, and led her to use a wheelchair, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She was 32 when she died. While the comedian accepted her condition, she couldn’t welcome the inane way people talked about her disability. (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Post by Stella Young. When Young was 15, for example, her community wanted to honor her with an achievement award. The issue, however, was that the Dawson’s Creek-watching teen hadn’t accomplished anything at that point in her life other than get to where she was expected to be and complete the tasks she was expected to do, Young said during a TEDx talk in June. This idea became her crusade. During her TED talk, Young pointed to a number of oft-shared uplifting images, including one of a boy playing wheelchair basketball that was paired with the saying, "Your excuse is invalid." ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news