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These are very difficult topics to broach, and there’s a part of me that’s like, do you really want to throw that at a 13 year old and crush their spirit with the realization that because they need long term care, they will be very financially limited forever? I sometimes wonder if I was better off and had a happier childhood because I didn’t understand that until I was older. But at the same time, I think it’s important to prepare for these kinds of realities. And I think even within the disability community, we haven’t really had a cohesive conversation about these truths. 

Like, there’s a segment of the disability community that will just be like, yeah, people with disabilities can date and get married just like everybody else, no stigma. And it’s like, well, that’s only true for a certain subset of the disability community. That’s basically true if you can take care of yourself physically. If you can, it’s a whole different can of worms.

So yeah, I think the conversation would have been helpful, certainly, and it still would be, rather than just pretending like, oh, we’re just like everybody else in every way, because we’re not. And if we were the same as everybody else in every way, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now about disability stuff.