Disability Pride Month

July is Disability Pride Month. If you've seen the flag showing up in your feeds lately and weren't entirely sure what you were looking at, or if you've been vaguely aware of Disability Pride as a concept but haven't spent much time thinking about what it actually means, this one's for you.

If you're a disabled person who already knows all of this: hi, I see you. Feel free to skip ahead or share this with someone who could use it.

Why Disability Pride Month Exists

Disability Pride Month is observed every July, and that timing is intentional: July 26th marks the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law in 1990. This was a landmark legislation that prohibited discrimination against disabled people in public life, employment, and services. Canada has its own parallel history worth noting: the Accessible Canada Act came into force in 2019, and Ontario’s AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) has been around since 2005, though significant gaps in implementation and enforcement remain.

Disability Pride Month exists because disability isn’t something to overcome, fix, or quietly accommodate. Disability Pride is direct pushback against the cultural messaging we’ve been fed: that disability is a tragedy, a limitation. That it is something to be pitied and inspired by in equal measure. Disability Pride says: disabled people exist, disabled people have always existed, and their lives have value not in spite of their disabilities, but as whole, complex human beings, disability included.

The celebration is a political statement. The disability rights movement didn't come from charity. It came from activism. It came from disabled people fighting for access to public spaces, to employment, to education, to healthcare, to the basic right to live in their communities rather than in institutions (check out Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Care Work for some great examples of this). Disability Pride Month honours that history, and the people who lived and fought it.

The Flag: What Those Colours Actually Mean

The Disability Pride flag was originally designed by Ann Magill in 2019 and has since been updated for accessibility (more on that in a bit, because I love that detail).

The current version features five diagonal stripes on a black background:

• Red: physical disabilities

• Gold/Yellow: cognitive and intellectual disabilities

• White: invisible and undiagnosed disabilities

• Blue: mental illness

• Green: sensory disabilities

• 
  

The charcoal grey background represents the grief, mourning, and rage that disability can bring, and importantly, the lives lost to ableism, negligence, and a lack of accessible care.

The diagonal stripes cutting across the flag represent "cutting through," breaking through barriers, disrupting the norm, moving forward.

Here's the tidbit I love: the original flag was redesigned specifically because the colours were too vibrant to be viewed comfortably by people with visual sensitivities or certain neurological conditions. A flag meant to represent disabled people was inaccessible to many of them. The redesign muted the tones so the flag itself could be experienced by more of the community it represents. That's what it actually looks like to centre disabled people in a tangible way.

So What Does Any of This Have to Do With Therapy?

Well, everything. All aspects of disability come up in my work as a therapist. 

First off, the institution of psychotherapy has not always (if ever) been kind to disabled people. Historically, psychological frameworks pathologized disability, treating it as something to be diagnosed, managed, hidden, and, ideally, minimized. 

The medical model of disability positions disability as a problem located in the individual’s body or mind that needs to be fixed. A lot of traditional psychotherapy (whether individual therapists are aware of this or not) operates from this framework.

The social model of disability functions differently. It posits that disability is created largely by a world that wasn't designed with disabled people in mind. A wheelchair user isn't disabled by their wheelchair; they're disabled by stairs; a person with chronic fatigue isn't failing at productivity; they're being failed by workplaces that treat rest as weakness; an autistic person isn't broken; they're navigating a world built around neurotypical expectations.

I try to hold the social model seriously. That means when you come to therapy with me, and you're disabled (whether that's physically, neurologically, with chronic illness, with mental illness, with something diagnosed, or something you're still figuring out), I'm not here to “fix” you. I'm here to help you navigate what it is that you're carrying, in a world that makes that harder than it should be.

This might look like: 

• Processing grief, because grief around disability is real and valid, and pretending otherwise doesn't serve anyone.

• Untangling internalized ableism, the voice that tells you your worth is tied to your productivity and to how “well” you function.

• Building skills for managing flares, fatigue, and sensory overwhelm, while recognizing that coping skills can’t remove the barriers that create that distress.

• Making space for the emotional labour of constantly advocating for yourself in medical and professional spaces.

Taking the social model seriously also means I take access seriously. Sessions are virtual, which removes a significant number of barriers. I offer a sliding scale because financial barriers to care are real, and they disproportionately affect disabled people.

A Note on Language

Disability communities are not monolithic. Some people use identity-first language (i.e. "I'm a disabled person") and find it affirming. It positions disability as part of who they are, not something shameful to be separated from the self. Others prefer person-first language (i.e. "I'm a person with a disability") and find that framing more accurate to their experience.

Neither is universally correct. Follow the lead of the person in front of you. If you're unsure, it's okay to ask.

If You're Disabled and Considering Therapy

You deserve care that doesn't make you justify your existence, prove how hard things are, or perform inspiration for your therapist's comfort. You deserve a practitioner who has actually thought about ableism, including their own.

You deserve room for the full complexity of disability. Pride and grief can coexist. So can relief and anger. Disability-affirming therapy doesn’t dictate how you are supposed to feel about your body, mind, or life. 

I’d love to hear from y’all in the comments. What does Disability Pride mean for you? What do you wish more therapists understood about disability? How can we (I) do better?