I have lived in Hove for 22 years although I am originally from Sunderland. I had a car accident in 1984, when I was travelling through Keswick, and acquired a spinal-cord injury.
After spending six years trying, but failing, to fit back into the working class macho culture I had grown up in, I decided to go to college. I studied O-level psychology, done my A-levels and then a degree in psychology at the University of Sunderland. I completed a Ph.D. in Disability Studies at the University of Sheffield four years ago.
While I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity of studying and for the many transformations that have taken place because of what I have learned along the way, the journey has led to times of great sorrow and turmoil in my life.
So whereas disability studies have provided me with a lens through which I am able to understand my personal experiences from a political perspective, this has not necessarily led to a happy ending.
Part of the problem has been to do with my realisation of the full magnitude of the problem, not just for disabled people, but also for all oppressed people and the sense of powerlessness that I have felt at certain times, especially the last few years. I have also, over the journey, become not only embittered about the treatment that I have been subjected to in the past, but also hypersensitive to the more subtle kinds of prejudice and discrimination that I would have been blissfully unaware of previously.
The problem for me now is that I cannot un-know the understanding that I have gained and what started off as motivation has now somehow brought with it the great responsibility and obligation to contribute in some way to social change.
