Georgia

“But that's the thing - outsiders lump kids with CP under the same umbrella, and that's another umbrella under the enormous parasol of congenital disorders, which sits under the gargantuan black canopy of disability. We're sorted into categories, but we can be nothing alike. I don't even mean how some of us are hemiplegic and others are paraplegic, or how some of us are spastic and others aren't, or some of us have learning disabilities and others don't. I mean on a perso al level, we're all different people.
That should be obvious right?
Camp Wigwah is where I realized my disability is like any other part of a person - eyes or ears or teeth or height - and that it's a variable. I have poor eyesight, and the muscles on my right side are tense threads that make my knees collide. But Karen Yuen's in a wheelchair, and Ali Sniridan spasms every evening.
I started thinking of CP as a part of me, and I stopped resenting it so much. It seems dumb to ask your eye color to change. An AFO isn't bad when you think of it like a pair of glasses. I love my glasses; they're one fashion accessory that demands no explanation.
That's how the space brace came about. Mom and Tamara were trying to make me love myself. But it's harder when it's someone else's decision.”
― Leah Thomas, Wild and Crooked

“The world’s on fire all the time, and you can’t put out every fire. But you can respond to the things that don’t leave you alone, whether it’s an idea or whether it’s an injustice.”
― Lin-Manuel Miranda

“Just trying to be helpful,” said Thomas.
“I didn’t ask you here for help. You just happened to turn up right after—” Alastair made a gesture apparently intended to encompass demons hiding in stables, and slid Cortana back into its scabbard at his hip. “I asked you here because I wanted to know why you sent me a note calling me stupid.”
“I didn’t,” Thomas began indignantly, and then recalled, with a moment of freezing horror, what he had written in Henry’s laboratory. Dear Alastair, why are you so stupid and so frustrating, and why do I think about you all the time?
Oh no. But how—?
Alastair produced a burnt piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Thomas. Most of the paper had been charred beyond legibility. What was left read:
Dear Alastair,
why are you so stupid
I brush my teeth
don’t tell anyone
—Thomas
“I don’t know why you don’t want anyone to know you brush your teeth,” Alastair added, “but I will, of course, keep this news in the strictest confidence.”
― Cassandra Clare, Chain of Thorns

“Defiance is not ‘Defiant’ to them unless it doesn’t actually defy
anything.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Skyward