About
Rising Disabled.com
Through the Rising Disabled project, Light Ahead Support Services provides such accompaniment and emotional support as peer supporters who have lived experience of disability, chronic and mental illness. We strongly believe that sharing our challenges and successes in recovery can give credible encouragement and reasons to hope to fellow people living with disabilities on their own path to wellness.
Meet Your Peer Support Hosts and Authors
Hi Friend,
I may not know you yet, but I have been thinking about you for many years. As I was trying to cope with another significant life-changing setback due to my disability, I started longing for a project like Rising Disabled.
My mind knew that there were many other people like me in the world, but my heart was breaking, feeling alone, discarded and doomed. For decades, I had managed to keep up in a society that is often too focused on the abilities of the non-disabled majority. Always with courage beyond frustration and the occasional tears, I had made a place, a career for myself, proving that I was intelligent, creative, competent, worthy of trust and praise at least as much, if not more, than the average able-bodied person.
But then, life and aging happened, and my disability worsened.
Land Acknowledgement
Light Ahead Support Services’ headquarters are situated on the shores of Lake Ontario, on lands that settlers came to call Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, upon the traditional territories of the Neutral, Huron-Wendat (Hyoor-Uhn Wawn-DA[t]), the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Haudenosaunee (Hoh-DEE-noh-SHoh-nee) Nations of Turtle Island, the original name of Canada. Parts of Hamilton are also located on lands of the Erie.
These lands were shared under the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Agreement between the Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee (Hoh-DEE-noh-SHoh-nee), to share and care for the resources around Michigami – the Great Lakes region. This wampum uses the symbolism of a dish to represent the territory, and one spoon to represent that the people are to share the resources of the land, take only what they need, and leave plenty for others. The Dish with One Spoon reminds us that we are stewards of the land – not owners of it. We join the call to redress the legacy of residential schools, systemic injustices, and violence against Indigenous Peoples, their culture, and identity by rising to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. These acts were integral to the founding of Canada and their lasting intergenerational effects on Indigenous Peoples include poorer health, higher rates of inadequate housing, lower income levels, and particular vulnerabilities of Indigenous women and girls.