🧱 Session 19 – How Ableism Shapes All Systems
🌿 Transformative Education for Neurodivergent Liberation
“Ableism is the bedrock on which all other forms of oppression are built.” — Disability Justice Movement
📌 If you’re just joining us, I recommend reading [Session 1 – Why I’m Leading This Workshop (My Positionality)] for shared agreements and to understand how this space is held.
🕯️ A Personal Truth: I Didn’t Always See Myself as Disabled
This is one of the hardest things for me to write.
Even now—with all my research, lived experience, and advocacy—I still struggle to fully accept myself as disabled.
Not because I don’t believe in disability justice. Not because I don’t recognize my access needs. But because of what the world taught me to believe about disability.
Because of the way ableism wrapped itself around every part of my life—before I even had the words for it.
Because of the intersections I carry:
💠 White but not wealthy.
💠 Verbal but often misunderstood.
💠 Gifted but unsupported.
💠 A woman in systems that don’t value emotional intelligence or complexity.
I went 43 years navigating this world disabled—without knowing I was.
And that’s not a coincidence. That’s what systemic ableism does.
It erases. It masks. It gaslights.
It tells you you’re just sensitive. Too much. Not enough.
It demands proof. Then says your pain isn’t real.
💐 A Dedication to Disability Justice Advocates
This session is not just about theory. It’s about gratitude.
Because if I know anything now—about ableism, about liberation, about what it means to be fully seen—it’s because of the work of disability justice advocates.
It’s because of Sins Invalid.
Because of the visionary work Patricia Berne, Mia Mingus, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Vilissa Thompson, Alice Wong, and so many others.
Because of Black, brown, trans, poor, chronically ill, and disabled leaders who have held the line and refused to be erased.
Their frameworks, their brilliance, their refusal to conform—that is what made space for me to name my own experience. That is what this workshop is built upon.
This session is rooted in their labor and wisdom—and offered to all of us who are still finding language for the ways ableism has shaped our lives.
Let’s begin.
🧠 Ableism Isn’t a Side Issue—It’s a Systemic Blueprint
Ableism isn’t just about who gets a ramp or captioning. It’s about who gets to belong.
It’s the root structure woven through capitalism, racism, patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, and cisheteronormativity. It decides who is “productive,” who is “rational,” who is “normal,” and who is disposable.
In the language of institutions, ability is framed as neutral—but it’s not. It’s coded. Raced. Classed. Gendered.
In education:
🛑 Kids who stim, need movement, or speak differently are “disruptive.”
In healthcare:
🛑 Nonverbal communication is often ignored. Pain is disbelieved. Especially if you're Black, brown, trans, or poor.
In employment:
🛑 Productivity is the measure of worth. Flexibility is seen as a privilege, not a right. And “professionalism” becomes a euphemism for masking.
Ableism is not just an attitude—it’s architecture.
It's built into policies, procedures, expectations, and norms.
🧬 The Cognitive Ecology Model: A Systemic Lens on Ableism
The Cognitive Ecology Model (CEM) was never meant to be another diagnostic tool. It was created as a way to see the whole ecology—to trace how power, identity, and systems interact in real time.
CEM is built across five interwoven layers:
🌀 Individual Layer (Self)
🌱 Relational Layer (Interpersonal)
🏛️ Institutional Layer (Education, Healthcare, Workplace)
📺 Cultural Layer (Media, Norms, Representation)
🧱 Structural Layer (Policy, Governance, Capitalism)
These aren’t just conceptual categories—they’re lived. They show up in our bodies, our families, our school files, our job reviews, our inboxes. CEM is a map of how systemic ableism becomes personal reality.
Here’s how ableism shows up across each:
🌀 Inner Layer (Self)
Internalized shame for needing rest, accommodations, or non-linear ways of working.
Feeling “less than” because your brain or body works differently than others.
Trauma from being told you're lazy, manipulative, or “too sensitive.”
🌱 Relational Layer
Being told you’re not “a team player” because you need alone time or written communication.
Gaslighting from peers, family, or providers when you describe sensory distress or social overwhelm.
Navigating relationships where your needs are framed as burdens rather than boundaries.
🏛️ Systemic Layer
Policy decisions that ignore disabled voices—or consult only after the “cookie is already baked.”
Accessibility as an afterthought, not a baseline.
Accommodations denied because they don’t “fit the job description,” or because “we’ve never done that before.”
📺 Cultural Layer
Narratives that present disability only through tragedy or inspiration.
Erasure of multiply marginalized disabled people from media and public discourse.
Pathologized language that becomes normalized in everyday conversation.
🧱 Structural Layer
Eligibility frameworks that gatekeep support.
Welfare and employment systems that penalize interdependence.
Capitalist ideals that define human worth by output, efficiency, and compliance.
💥 Diagnosis Didn’t Protect Me—It Exposed the Truth
After decades of self-advocacy, I finally pursued formal diagnosis.
But I didn’t do it for understanding—I already knew I was autistic.
I did it for protection. For access. For accommodations.
I did it because I believed the system might finally listen—if I had the right paperwork.
It didn’t.
In fact, once diagnosed, I experienced more ableism—not less.
My competence was questioned. My communication style pathologized.
Some people even tried to tell me I wasn’t really disabled, that I “seemed fine.”
Others weaponized the language of care to justify control.
All the while, I knew myself better than anyone else ever could.
And I knew I wasn’t broken—I was surviving systems never built for me.
♿️ Disability Justice Isn’t Just About Access—It’s About Liberation
Disability justice, as envisioned by leaders like Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Stacey Milbern, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, invites us into a new paradigm—where access is not transactional, but relational.
“Access is love. Access is shared responsibility. Access is a practice of collective care.” – Mia Mingus
This framework teaches us:
Not all disability is visible.
Not all access is about mobility—it’s also about communication, pace, rhythm, presence.
Not all support is clinical—much of it is communal.
And most importantly:
You don’t need diagnosis to be deserving. You don’t need validation to be real.
🌀When Diagnosis Comes With Conditions
Many of us fought to be seen only to be sorted.
To be named only to be contained.
Diagnosis gave me language—but also put me in a box.
I was "Level 1."
But I’d never lived alone.
Couldn’t drive at night.
Was struggling to stay regulated at work.
None of it fit.
I didn’t need a tier. I needed truth.
And I needed care that responded to the whole of me—not a fictional hierarchy of support needs.
Ableism shapes our systems by:
Requiring proof of dysfunction before offering help.
Withholding empathy until you meet criteria.
Creating binary distinctions between “functional” and “impaired” that ignore lived reality.
The truth is: Function is fluid. Contextual. Relational.
We are not support levels.
We are systems in motion, in relationship, in becoming.
📓 Reflection Invitation: How Have You Been Made to Prove Your Pain?
When have you been told you were “fine” when you weren’t?
How has ableism shown up in your work, education, healthcare, or relationships?
What would a world look like where you didn’t have to explain yourself to be believed?
You can write. You can voice note. You can sit with the question in stillness.
This space is yours to metabolize—not just understand, but feel. And in the metabolizing, may something more liberatory take root.
🔮 What’s Next:
💫 New Sessions Every Monday & Wednesday
This 12-week journey unfolds twice a week—every Monday and Wednesday—with each session building on the last.
You can view the full session lineup here, and here’s what’s coming next:
✨ Session 20 – How Education Systems Fail Neurodivergent Kids
We’ll explore how pathologizing, punishment, and exclusion are built into educational design—and why so many gifted, autistic, ADHD, and 2E students go unseen or unsupported in schools that weren’t built for them.
💬 Share Your Reflections
This space thrives when we co-create it. Your insights, stories, and resonances deepen the collective learning. You’re invited to share in the comments or send a private message if that feels safer.
💖 Support the Work
This series is freely offered—because healing and justice should never be paywalled.
If you’re in a position to support financially, a paid subscription helps sustain this labor and expands the reach of The Compassion Collective: a community grounded in equity, care, and transformation.
Every share, every response, every ripple of resonance helps keep this alive.
With gratitude,
🌿 Shamani of The Compassion Collective
Reflecting on the never ending attempts to fix my dysfunction. To make myself functional, to get rid of the dys and replace with superhuman. Because that is what it would take. To be superhuman. And I was, inconsistently, and then paid dearly for both success and failure.
To say disabled has been anathema for me. Not once did I stop to ask myself, maybe I struggle so much because I simply cannot. But when you spend a lifetime doing impossible things, it becomes a personal failure you cannot do the impossible thing every single day, rinse and repeat, with no rest or end in sight, no support, no understanding, no, no, no.
No is a word I am also learning to embrace. No. No, I do not want to do that again.
You bring up the tough truth: getting labeled as disabled isn’t just about identity or self-acceptance - it can be the line between getting Medicaid, Social Security, and basic survival, or getting nothing. That’s real, and it’s unfair that a single word or a diagnosis - even when it’s incomplete or boxed-in - holds so much power over our options.
Let’s call it what it is: the system is set up to force people to jump through hoops just to get their needs met. You shouldn’t have to fit someone else’s definition of “disabled” to access what you need to live, but right now, in most places, you do. And with this federal administration, cutting through that red tape is getting tougher, not easier.
The fight for change will keep going, and yeah - it takes folks like you, Sher, to push it forward. But until the system catches up, people have to do what they have to do. Labels aren’t freedom, but sometimes they’re the only ticket to the basics. And if that’s the game, nobody should blame you for playing it, even as you work to rewrite the rules. Change is slow, but speaking the truth about this stuff is always a step toward making it happen.