The Three Lies We Tell Ourselves About the 'Inspiration Narrative'
Thought Leadership. A deep dive into why being called "brave" or "inspirational" is damaging, linking this to your childhood tumour experience and how it shaped your speaking topics.
Let me be clear: this isn't an attack on genuine courage. Disabled people, like anyone else, perform acts of true bravery, resilience, and strength.
However, when a non-disabled person responds to a disclosure of disability or a description of a daily struggle with, 'You are so brave,' or 'That's truly inspirational,' it often functions as an emotional shortcut. This language, seemingly kind, can actually be detrimental. It takes a complex, exhausting, and often painful lived experience and shrinks it down, effectively trivialising the immense administrative, physical, and emotional labour required just to navigate an inaccessible world.
The "Effort vs. Heroism" Gap:
The problem with 'you are so brave' is that it mistakes exhaustion for heroism. It ignores the effort required to manage pain, apply for benefits, coordinate care, or even find reliable accessible transport. This isn't bravery—this is unpaid, necessary administrative labour.
In a recent workshop discussing the term 'Inspiration Porn,' I used a powerful example: the planning involved in a "simple" task, like going out with friends. The question for the non-disabled reader isn't, "Was that brave?" it's, "Is that bravery, or is that a system failure?" The answer should always point to the failure.
The Narrative of Performance (The "Tumour Boy" Pressure):
Using terms like this pressures the disabled person to perform positivity. When we are labelled "inspirational" across all contexts, we lose the right to be angry, sad, frustrated, or simply mediocre. You must always be "overcoming" or "a warrior."
In childhood, while undergoing treatment for Timmy the brain tumour, this pressure was constant. When doctors and nurses saw me primarily as inspiring, it forced me to shrink and hide my fear or pain because people expected me to be the "brave little fighter." This narrative does not empower children; it isolates them and demands a performance of resilience, even when they are at their most vulnerable.
The Absolution of Society (The "Policy Bypass"):
This is the most critical issue: statements like this shift responsibility from the system to the individual. The compliment of "inspiration" is often given because it costs the speaker nothing.
The frustrating truth is this: If I am 'brave' for managing a lack of a ramp, society doesn't have to build the ramp.
This frustration is part of why I am building Gatherly. I believe that society needs to move from being inspired by individual struggle to being accountable for systemic barriers. We see politicians talking about the need for more people to be in work and less reliant on the state, but they aren't focusing their efforts on changing the system or encouraging society to be more inclusive—rather the opposite. Until the system is forced to change, my daily exhaustion will continue to be incorrectly labelled as heroism.
We deserve to be human, not heroic.
If reading this made you feel seen, you are not alone. Let's work together to normalise struggle, demand accountability, and change the narrative from "brave" to "baseline."
My daily work—from documenting access failures to confronting internalised ableism—happens on social media.
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Don't stop being you. Stop apologising for it.