Pride Without Pretending

I did not lose my hand and immediately discover disability pride.

In 2011, I was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma. The treatment that followed included the amputation of my left hand and six months of chemotherapy. At the time, I was not thinking about identity, representation, advocacy, or pride. I was trying to survive.

Even after the treatment ended, acceptance did not arrive on a schedule. I was fitted with a prosthetic, but I was not physically or emotionally ready to make it part of my life. For roughly a decade, it spent far more time on a shelf than it did on my body.

That part of my story matters because disability is often presented as a transformation with a clean beginning, middle, and end. Something happens. A person struggles. Then they adapt, overcome, and emerge stronger.

Real life is rarely that orderly.

There were years when I did not want to explain my amputation. There were situations in which I wondered whether someone was looking at me, looking away from me, or trying very hard to do neither. There were practical challenges, emotional setbacks, and questions about my body that could not be answered by a motivational slogan.

Today, I wear a PSYONIC Ability Hand regularly. It helps me perform tasks that once required adaptation, assistance, or a completely different approach. It is impressive technology, but it is not a cure. It does not erase my disability, restore sensation, or make every task effortless.

Some days, it helps me build LEGO. Other days, I am thinking about battery life, grip selection, glove damage, or whether a particular task would simply be easier without it.

Both experiences are true.

That is part of what disability pride means to me now. It is not the belief that disability is always empowering. It is the freedom to tell the truth without treating that truth as a personal failure.

I can be proud of the person I am without pretending I am grateful for cancer.

I can appreciate my prosthetic without pretending it replaces my hand.

I can value independence while acknowledging that everyone needs help.

I can recognize how much progress has been made while still asking why access to appropriate prosthetic care remains so uneven.

I can speak confidently about my experience without claiming that my experience represents everyone else.

Disability pride makes room for those contradictions.

For me, pride is refusing to believe that my body needs to be hidden, softened, or explained for someone else’s comfort. It is knowing that asking for an accommodation is not asking for special treatment. It is understanding that a visible disability does not make me less capable, less professional, or less deserving of opportunity.

It is also recognizing that capability should not be the price of dignity.

Disabled people are often celebrated when we accomplish something others consider extraordinary. We are called inspiring when we work, travel, exercise, create, compete, or simply move through the world in a way someone did not expect.

But dignity cannot depend on achievement.

A disabled person should not need to demonstrate exceptional resilience, independence, productivity, or optimism to be treated with respect. We should not have to turn every difficult experience into a lesson for someone else. Sometimes a barrier is simply a barrier, and the responsibility for removing it should not rest entirely on the person forced to encounter it.

My relationship with disability has changed over the past fifteen years. I have become more comfortable being seen. I have learned more about prosthetic technology, patient advocacy, and the enormous range of experiences within the limb-loss and limb-difference community. I have also learned how much of life after limb loss is rarely discussed.

A prosthetic fitting is not the end of the story. In many ways, it is the beginning of another one.

What happens when someone takes the device home? How do they learn to use it during ordinary moments that will never appear in a brochure? What happens when the technology breaks, the socket becomes uncomfortable, insurance denies coverage, or the person simply does not want to wear it that day?

What happens emotionally when the appointments become less frequent and everyone else assumes life has returned to normal?

There is no single answer because there is no single disability story.

That understanding helped lead me to create The Bionic Perspective and, more recently, Voices of Limb Loss. My perspective as a cancer survivor, left-hand amputee, and prosthetic user is only one perspective. It deserves space, but it should never occupy all of it.

Voices of Limb Loss was created to make room for people living with limb loss and limb difference, as well as the clinicians, researchers, engineers, advocates, educators, and others whose work touches this community. The goal is not to produce a collection of polished success stories. It is to create space for honest ones.

Some will be hopeful. Some will be painful. Most will probably contain both.

As Disability Pride Month comes to a close, I find myself thinking less about pride as a celebration and more about pride as permission.

Permission to be visible.

Permission to ask for what we need.

Permission to reject the role of inspiration.

Permission to acknowledge grief without surrendering identity.

Permission to embrace technology without pretending it solves everything.

Permission to tell our stories as they actually happened, not as someone else needs to hear them.

Disability pride does not require me to pretend that losing my hand was a gift. It means refusing to treat the person I became afterward as someone who should feel ashamed.

I am proud of the life I have built. I am proud of the perspective I have developed. I am proud to contribute my voice while creating space for others to contribute theirs.

Not because disability made everything better.

Because disability is part of my story, and I no longer believe that any part of that story needs to be hidden.