Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
17K notes
·
View notes
Guys it's just merch
Danny watched with a smile hidden behind his mug of hot cocoa his new family. Originally he was only going to mess with them a little, since he wanted to keep his civilian live he gained with them but at the same time wanted to kind of provoke them to tell him about their night time jobs on their own.
Not like he could just flat out tell them he knew about their vigilantes lifes and that would be embarrassing to explain.
It's not every day that Danny's powers fluked on him, but with the stress of the past months, it happened. Right at a moment, he had to be clumsy and trip over his own feet and accidentally phased through a grandfather's clock, finding a hidden passage. Well at least he learned that way that Batman hadn't placed him with some other rich fruitloop that wasn't his godfather but well... with Batman himself and his family out of mask.
Yeah no, he did not want to explain that and hoped they would do that themselves. But apparently, they took Danny's statement of wanting a normal life a bit too serious.
Which brought him back to his current entertainment in the form of messing with his siblings.
"I don't get what the problem is guys. It's just merch." He chuckled slightly at the face Damian was making. While Jason chose to kick Tim under the table.
"Soooo how much merch on Red Robin do you have with this shirt now?" Dick asked instead with a bright smile, Danny still hadn't figured out how to tell what emotion he hid behind them sometimes.
"I think this is my third shirt of him." Danny mused, placing his cup back on the table and tapping his lip in a thinking motion. "Though I was going to pick up a couple of custom-made jackets of Red Hood and a Nightwing plush later today."
He acted like he did not hear the triumph like hiss of 'yes' from Jason as well as the very upset huff of Damian.
He just grinned at the amusement about how they apparently were competing over how much merch he owned of each of them.
When he found a Robin figure and several Robin pins mysteriously placed on his desk the next morning, he broke out laughing. Yet still just to mess with them gushed about his newly gotten merch to his family while sharing a knowing look with Alfred who knew he was just messing with them.
If there was a surprising amount of Batman merch, suddenly mixed into what he already owned the following week without his knowledge. Well, he wasn't going to complain about free stuff.
But he still would get a good laugh out of their reactions on the day he decided to full on dawn every piece of Batman merge instead of theirs.
4K notes
·
View notes
Ok we all talk about the Pevensies' trauma at returning to Earth at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and their trouble readjusting to life there again but think of all the funny/good parts too
They return from the country, and their mom is surprised when all her children hug her at the station. Even Peter, who thinks he's all grown up. Even Edmund, who went away surly and withdrawn. She doesn't know her children haven't seen her in over a decade.
They miss their dear Cair Paravel, but they absolutely do not miss its chamber pots. Indoor plumbing is amazing.
It takes a while to remember how modern technology works, though. How many heart attacks did the siblings give their parents or the professor because they walked into a dark room only to turn on the light and find the children sitting there in the dark. (They were by the window! There was still plenty of light from the sunset! They would have gotten a candle in a minute!) The kids sheepishly remember oh yeah electricity is a thing.
(Edmund has a new electric torch in Prince Caspian. He was so excited to get that torch. Almost more excited than you'd think a kid his age would be, and his parents expect Peter at least to tease him, but the siblings all agree light in your hand at the touch of a switch is terrific.)
Suddenly getting really high grades in some subjects and terrible in others. Their grammar, reading comprehension, spelling, vocab, even penmanship? Amazing. History and geography? They don't remember anything. One time in class Susan forgets Earth is round and wants to die.
Also they can never remember what the date is supposed to be because Narnia uses different months and years. They can estimate time really well by looking at the sun though, and Edmund at least can always tell which way is north etc without thinking about it (again, using the sun)
Okay but how many times did they go to pick something up or reach something and realize they are so much shorter and less muscled than they expect? It's a common sight to see Peter climbing on counters to reach a top cabinet, grumbling about how he's High King this is demeaning. (No he never takes the extra five seconds to grab a stool. He will climb that shelf.)
Peter and Susan being delighted because they are no longer almost thirty. (In a few years Edmund and Lucy will tease them about being old and their parents will not understand.)
Lucy doesn't have to deal with periods anymore for a few years yet. Susan might not either. Heck yeah
Lucy loves to climb into her siblings' laps and be cuddled. In Narnia she eventually she grew too big, but now she is small and snuggleable again. Peter is her favorite, and if she's upset, he'll tickle her and tell bad jokes until she's smiling again, but really she loves cuddling with all her family. She grew up without her parents; how many times did she just want to crawl into her mom's lap and her mom was a world away? Imagine the first time she realizes she can now. Or, imagine one day, a cold and grey sort of day, when the rain is pattering against the windows, and it sounds like the rain on the windows of the Professor's house, that first day they went exploring. It sounds like the day they played hide and seek. It sounds so like the rain on the windows of Cair Paravel, that if Lucy closes her eyes she can imagine she's back there, having tea and chatting with Mr. Tumnus before the fireplace of her room, and soon the rain will stop, and they will go out on the balcony and wave to the naiads and the dryads and the mermaids, who have come out to enjoy the rain and visit one other on the banks of the Great River winding past Cair Paravel down to the sea.
But if Lucy looks out the window, all she'll see is the rain over London, so it's not only a cold and grey sort of day, it's a lonely sort of day too.
Susan and Edmund are playing chess in the living room (and they must have studied with Professor Kirke, thinks their mother, because they certainly weren't that good when they left). Lucy goes over to Edmund, and oh dear, thinks their mother, now he's going to call her a baby and be horrible to her, but instead he picks her up and puts her on his lap without even taking his eyes off the chessboard; it's simply a matter of course.
"Doesn't the rain sound familiar?" says Lucy in a solemn, wistful way.
Their mother doesn't know what that means, but her siblings must, because Susan says, "Yes, Lu, it does,” and Edmund gives her a little hug with his free arm as she tucks herself under his chin to watch the chess match.
(Five minutes later there is a crash from the next room as Peter falls off a counter. Their mother does not understand the words he must have picked up from the Professor, but he's grounded for them anyway. His siblings have no respect for their High King, because they refuse to stop laughing.)
19K notes
·
View notes
I love libraries.
I'm browsing the WWI shelves (as you do) and notice a very old book about the war. I glance at the first pages that talk about how one day the war will be over and we'll look at this place and not see any signs of the battlefield.
Then it hits me. And I check the publishing date.
This book was printed before the war's end. Not written. Printed. The physical object was created in 1918, while the war in question was raging and the end was as yet uncertain.
Now I'm standing on the other side of the apocalypse, with this physical link to that era in my hands. I'm living proof that the war did end and life did go on and we can all look at the end of the world as a long-ago memory.
Reading old books is cool enough, connecting our minds and hearts through the ideas of people who lived long ago, but there's something extra profound about holding a copy of the book that comes from the time that it was written. It's a physical link between the past and the present connecting me to those long-ago people. A piece of the past come into the future that gives me the chance to almost take the hand of some long-ago reader, to hold something they could have held, connecting not just mentally but physically to their era, a moment of connection across more than a century.
Excuse me while I go weep.
1K notes
·
View notes