ON THE PODCAST:

• Beyond Inclusion: How to Raise Anti-Ableist Kids
• Stella Young
• A Disability History of the United States by Kim E. Nielsen
• REIMAGINING FAMILY LIFE WITH DISABILITY WORKSHOP

CONNECT with Carrie Hahn on her website (informdisability.com), Facebook (@informspeechandlanguage), and Instagram (@carriecch80)

WATCH this conversation on YouTube by clicking here. 

ABOUT:

Carrie Hahn is a pediatric speech-language pathologist and mother. She has served children of a variety of ages in a variety of settings and has taken on additional endeavors of interest, such as an autism support group for caregivers, the distribution of a parent education newsletter, and giving talks at conferences for family advocacy groups. She creates and shares content related to disability and neurodivergence on her website and social media and uses her platform to promote education and advocacy. Hahn is the mother of two neurodivergent children, one of whom also has physical disabilities. Her book ‘Beyond Inclusion: Raising Anti-Ableist Kids” came out in July of 2024. Carrie’s professional and personal lives have intensified her passion for making a safer and less ableist world.

Note: This transcript is autogenerated using speech recognition software and does contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Amy Julia Becker (00:05)
Amy Julia Becker and this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good, proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envisioning a world of belonging where everyone matters. I have one announcement before I introduce today’s guest and that is that I will be running the Reimagining Family Life with Disability workshop again over the course of four weeks in February. This is a virtual live workshop for families affected by disability.

and it is designed to give you strategies and stories so that you can take delight in your family, connect to community, and take steps towards a good future. Registration is open. The workshop begins next week on February 5th, and you can find out more at amyjuliabecker.com slash workshop. Okay, and on to today’s conversation. So typically on this podcast, I do not talk very much about how-tos.

I really love having people share their stories and we ask big questions and reflect on ideas, but this is not usually an instructional podcast. But I invited Carrie Hahn here today because she has written a how-to book and it is called Beyond Inclusion, How to Raise Anti-Ablest Kids. As the title suggests, we talk about something called ableism in this episode. And before I say more about the book and Carrie, I do want to define that a little bit.

Ableism is one of those words that I don’t use very often, and it’s also a concept that I talk about a lot. And this conversation does include a lot of talk about ableism, so I wanted to offer just a very simple definition. Ableism is discrimination and social prejudice against people with physical or mental disabilities. And it classifies disabled people as people who are inferior to non-disabled people.

So again, those ideas would feel familiar to many listeners of this podcast. We just don’t always use the word ableism to describe them. So I just wanted to give that background. Before we turn to this conversation with Carrie Hahn. So Carrie is a pediatric speech language pathologist and mother. And she does tell a lot of stories. She doesn’t only offer advice, but her stories and suggestions together offer us a way to put a re-imagined life into practice.

Amy Julia (02:27)
My guest today is Carrie Hahn. is the author of Beyond Inclusion, How to Raise Anti-Ablest Kids. Carrie, welcome to the podcast.

Carrie Hahn (02:37)
Thank you so much. So happy to be here.

Amy Julia (02:40)
I would love to start with an introduction. So I thought maybe I could just ask you about your story, your personal story and your family experience with disability, because so much of that informs what you’ve written about and the way I think that you tell your story as well as instructing maybe for lack of a better word or guiding the rest of us in how to approach disability in our lives. So yeah, can we start with your story?

Carrie Hahn (03:05)
Yeah, totally. So I started, I’m a speech and language pathologist by trade. And so for about 20 years now, that’s what I’ve been doing for my career. And so I have been serving individuals with disabilities. Mostly I’ve been all in pediatrics. So

fast forward some years when I was already the mom of our older son and we adopted our younger son and he is blind and has, he’s got multiple disabilities. When we adopted him, the only thing we knew was that he was blind. At the time I was working at

a center that serves specifically blind and visually impaired kids. And so that was kind of part of our story when we were started thinking about adoption and how we were going to grow our family. He came onto our radar and it was just a kind of instant, okay, this is our, like, I need to know him. And so when I became his mom, you know, obviously I thought, I’ve been…

Amy Julia (03:47)
Hmm.

Carrie Hahn (04:09)
working with kids with disabilities for all these years. I just know so many things and I’ve come to figure out that, you know, not to discount having that foundation because having that foundation and being in that place was part of my story, right? That it wasn’t a brand new thing for me to navigate as a parent, but also how many things I did not already know at the time and how many things, you know, I have learned and continue to learn.

in the process of being a parent. And so a few years later, we also found out that our older son has learning disabilities. He has ADHD and dyslexia. And so ironically, I was already the parent of a disabled child. I just didn’t know it at the time. And the way that their disabilities manifest and the ways that they affect the way they move in the world are so very different.

I found myself in the position a lot of other parents asking me questions about how to relate to my younger son who is blind kind of wanting to do the right thing wanting to say the right thing wanting to be inclusive but kind of them feeling ill-equipped to do that or not knowing exactly how to do that.

And also simultaneously having interactions with people, kind of just observing the ways that he was being treated in the world I was coming in with the like rose colored glasses and like the, know,

We can do anything together and we’ll support him and not even realizing how much ableism he would face and how just it’s all day, how it’s every time we go on into the public. I wanted to learn more about…

Amy Julia (05:36)
Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (05:53)
people with disabilities and the ableism that they face, because I wanted to know how I should be responding in those cases as his mom. What’s the best way for me to react in these cases? Do I provide education? Do I not? Do I advocate? Do I get big and loud? Or do I stay quiet? What are the best ways? And I thought, well, who better to learn from than people with disabilities themselves, like who I can just start to listen to? And so…

Amy Julia (06:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (06:21)
I started just kind of reading memoirs, listening to content, following disabled people with whatever information that they were putting out into the world willingly and independently. I just started writing down like,

commonalities that people were sharing. I just started noticing patterns and like, this is a really common thing that a lot of people report.

Amy Julia (06:40)
Thank

Carrie Hahn (06:45)
and long story short, reached out to someone who was a connection of mine in publishing and she said, not only could this be a book, but this should be a book. And she said, I have little girls and this is the information that I want. I want to know what to do as a parent, because I want to do better at this and I want to empower them to be good friends and neighbors to all, including their community members with disabilities. And so.

Amy Julia (06:53)
Hmm.

Carrie Hahn (07:12)
that’s why it ended up being a parenting book in order to affect like a bigger change I think if we can start with these younger generations there’s going to be some compounding effects of that going forward but then as you go along you realize it’s just not that simple you can’t just say we’ll just you know tell people exactly what to say to their kids

And then that’s going to make them anti-abolists. It’s like, those kids are going to have questions and they’re constantly observing and absorbing what’s happening in their culture. And so it isn’t as simple as just this, this is just about the kids. has to be on a personal level. And so that’s kind of how my book came to be, was from all these different experiences that kind of just kept stacking on top of each other into a genuine desire to try to make the world better.

Amy Julia (07:53)
Hmm.

Carrie Hahn (08:02)
for my kids and other kids than it is now. Is there anything we can do to move the needle?

Amy Julia (08:09)
Totally. And we’ll get into some examples in a minute, but I thought maybe starting with defining some of the terms, including just the disability itself, but also ableism and anti-ableist. just what do you mean by those things? And, you know, how should people be kind of following along with what you’re saying

Carrie Hahn (08:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

a theme that’s gonna run throughout the book and just kind of throughout the disability community in general is just that there isn’t one definition because there’s so much diversity within.

you know, the community, the disabled community in terms of how people define disability themselves, whether or not they identify as disabled and how they make those decisions about whether or not they identify as disabled. So, you know, I, I indicated certain things in the book and saying, this is where I’m coming from, but also hopefully conveying the message of, I’m not the authority. So in terms of disability in my book,

Amy Julia (08:42)
Right.

Carrie Hahn (09:07)
I frame up disability as people with disabilities who would be subject to ableism. Not necessarily that someone has identified as having a disability, but someone who could experience or has reported experiencing ableism. And in terms of disability, I do mostly reference the social model of disability,

you kind of can contrast the social model with the medical model. And so a lot of people are more familiar with the medical model, which defines disability as being kind of connected to a problem that needs to be fixed.

Amy Julia (09:40)
Sure.

Carrie Hahn (09:46)
sometimes the medical model is necessary because I want to go to a doctor or a specialist. If I have something that I do want to be fixed or I want a doctor to help me with this, then

Amy Julia (09:56)
Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (09:59)
then we need that service to be available. The social model of disability kind of more says that people are more disabled by the limitations that society puts on them. So for example, lack of access, lack of accommodation, stigma, bias, those things are more kind of oppressive than the disability itself or the way that their body presents.

kind of going off of the knowledge that disability is like a normal part of the human condition, there are plenty of people that identify as

having a disability who don’t have anything that they wish to change about themselves. They’re not looking for a doctor to fix anything or change anything. And that’s why it’s a… Sure.

Amy Julia (10:39)
Right.

Can I interrupt you for just a second?

You had a great example, and I can’t remember if this had to do with being visually impaired or hearing impaired, but where it was someone who was like, but don’t you miss hearing? And you were like, and the person was like, don’t you miss flying? Like it’s something you’ve never done. So you don’t miss it. Like I just loved that little like comeback, which again was not rude or mean, but it was just kind of like, no, I don’t because it is that’s not actually.

Carrie Hahn (10:55)
Yeah.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah.

helping someone connect with that.

Amy Julia (11:12)
Sure, I might if I had

been a sighted person and became blind maybe I would miss it sure but that’s not the wasn’t the situation and I just loved that as a great little example.

Carrie Hahn (11:17)
Yes. Yeah.

It kind of goes back to like the individuality of a person’s experience. And that’s why the individual piece is so important and kind of a theme throughout the book is that every individual person’s experience is going to dictate so many of these factors that we talk about. And so a person who was born blind and has never had vision has had a very different experience than a person who had vision and then lost their vision. know, when if someone had something and lost it, then there is a

Amy Julia (11:45)
Right. Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (11:49)
There is a grief there people don’t fit in little neat boxes You know, even the even the boxes that exist there’s even spaces between those boxes. So Yeah, I think that that’s in the book. I kind of try to go into explain a lot of those things You know, there is a lot of nuance and how much individual factors play into it can be kind of like

There isn’t a definitive answer. it would be a lot easier if everything was straightforward and there was one answer to every question. But that’s definitely not the case with this topic.

Amy Julia (12:21)
So talk about, I would love to talk a little bit about the way we speak about disability and the ways in which we can perpetuate kind of a ableist view through our language. I’d also love to hear about what shifts if we start to use our language differently, like why does language matter so much around these things? Yeah, can you just speak to that a little bit?

Carrie Hahn (12:42)
Yeah.

I think that we have to be so mindful of whether we’re framing up things from a negative place, from a positive place, from a neutral place. And so much of how we talk about disability, it’s obviously going to come from the person and how they’re viewing it. But that’s been one of the biggest shifts that I’ve seen in myself personally as I’ve gone along this journey and as I’ve moved from someone who did used to kind of view disability as something that was

You know, all the things that now I’m like trying to help people get past that I was in that place once, you know, I talk about that a lot in the book that, that no matter where you are on your journey, it’s okay, you know, but when you’re coming from a place where you think that disability is sad or tragic or, you know, a negative thing, everything that you talk about is going to come from that place. So your language is probably going to reflect that, you know, your, language that you use.

Amy Julia (13:20)
Hmm.

Carrie Hahn (13:45)
and the way that you talk about someone or talk to them, it’s probably going to come through. And so I think the biggest thing that I’m trying to accomplish with this book is helping people shift first their kind of perspectives and then the language that they use kind of comes along with that. I do talk a little bit in the book about like person first, the things like person first language versus.

Amy Julia (14:02)
Mm-hmm.

Carrie Hahn (14:10)
like disability first language or like where you identify the person where you might say an autistic person versus a person with autism or a disabled person versus a person with a disability. Some people it doesn’t matter that much and some people it matters a great deal. And so that’s another thing that can be very individualistic.

Amy Julia (14:18)
Mm-hmm.

Carrie Hahn (14:31)
So the language does matter. In the book, I use both because I want to connect with everybody and I want to make it clear that regardless of which language you’re choosing, I think it’s important to honor that. also kind of I lean more toward what the majority is saying, but also trying to make a point of saying If you’re choosing a different way, that’s OK. And I will personally honor.

whatever you want. I talk about asking the person and talking to the person and saying, are your preferences? It’s kind of the same as if we were asking about someone’s pronouns, right? If I have to have a reason to identify you, if I’m talking about your disability for some reason, what language would you like for me to use? But I think that a lot of this centers around agency and making sure that people feel.

that they are the one, the disabled person themselves is in control of their own narrative and their own story.

Amy Julia (15:26)
once I was writing about, you know, I was, I was kind of sharing a post from someone who referred to themselves as a person with autism. And so I did the same in sharing the post. Someone else who did not read the post commented on it that I was supposed to say autistic person, not person with autism. And I was like, well, I was going based on what they said about themselves. And, and I think

Carrie Hahn (15:37)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Amy Julia (15:54)
other people from the outside looking in, those are the types of things that can prompt either cynicism of like, my gosh, like this is just language police. Could we please just move on to more important items or despair? There is absolutely no way I can ever get this right. And I’m only going to hurt people no matter what I do. So what do you think about that? Like that kind of like I got to throw up my hands either because I feel cynical about it or because I feel hopeless.

Carrie Hahn (16:01)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel like that, you know, earlier on in my journey, that felt almost like I couldn’t even hardly stand it because I felt like I was just getting it wrong all the time. Or of course, defensiveness kind of comes up. And I think it takes a long time of just focusing on humbling yourself and saying, this is like, I’m going to…

Amy Julia (16:31)
Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (16:43)
try to stay in the space, even if I feel like I might be getting it wrong, I want to continue to listen. If I do get it wrong, I want to take a beat and say, you got it wrong, but that’s okay. As long as you’re continuing to try to move forward, that urge to kind of get defensive will definitely create like separation. You know, it will cause like the rifts and the tension. And I think that it’s been, I don’t exactly know what it was, but there’s been this like shift in me that has like,

softened me a little bit to kind of appreciate if somebody does call me out and saying, rather than saying, you said this, but more like a thank you for telling me about that because I can learn from this. And I’ve also learned that there often isn’t a way that you can, like in your case, you defaulted to the person, someone else came. There might not be a way that you can always get it right.

Amy Julia (17:22)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Carrie Hahn (17:39)
But that that’s okay because as long as there’s that commitment to I care about you as the person that I’m communicating with more than I care about the fact that I got called out and if I misspoke, I apologize or this miscommunication, let me explain where it came from and you still might not be happy with me but I am invested in the connection and making sure that if there is something to be learned or if there is somewhere where I can grow from this, that I am growing from this.

So that whoever I’m interacting with knows that I’m open to, that I want to be open to connection rather than like who’s right, who’s wrong. And who’s the person in this space who I should, like, should I be the default or should this other person, you know? And that can shift from time to time. And ultimately we have to end up standing where we stand. And sometimes wherever we stand may not resonate with everybody.

Amy Julia (18:20)
Mm-hmm.

Carrie Hahn (18:38)
But as long as, you I feel like if you’ve humbled yourself and you’re practicing, you’re trying to like practice being open and connected and willing to learn from people and trying to get out of defensiveness, I think it really can help us grow a lot. So it’s not an easy thing. It’s like an ongoing thing, you know? And where I started,

Amy Julia (19:00)
Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (19:02)
could be that if that happened, I would shut down and I would step away from, you know, that group or whatever it is, I would have to step away and I’d be swirling in my own head about it because it was shame. It was me like ashamed that I didn’t get it right. And this process has kind of taught me not getting it right isn’t something to be ashamed of as long as you’re continuing to try to learn how to get it right and that you’re continuing to try to learn how to do right by the people that you are with.

Amy Julia (19:13)
Mm.

Carrie Hahn (19:32)
you know, representing just the situation, the moment, the person, the community saying, this moment might teach me something and that will help me do better in the next moment. I think that idea of everything being a process, you know, and like that you can take good from everything, every interaction that you have.

Amy Julia (19:52)
Yeah.

Well, so what about experiences and you write about a number of these where people approach your son, Dan, with good intentions, but problematic assumptions. so I’d love to kind of walk us through that because I we’ve talked a little bit about language, which extends to what I’m talking about. But also sometimes people who are like, quote unquote, offering to help or giving a compliment.

Carrie Hahn (20:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amy Julia (20:19)
You give some great

Carrie Hahn (20:19)
Yup. Yup.

Amy Julia (20:20)
stories and I just wondered if you could share one of those examples and also how you handled it and what you think about it now.

Carrie Hahn (20:27)
Yeah, well, so like, like, I think my very first story that I share in the book is the it’s from the chapter about the presumption of of competence or the presumption of incompetence since every chapter is like a form of ableism. And so when he was in kindergarten, we we adopted him when he would have been in his last year of preschool. So he had only been home for

about a year, a little over a year, probably about when this happened. picked him up, I was picking him up from his afterschool program and he was changing from his boots into his shoes because we live in a snowy place. And so I was just standing there waiting for him to put his shoes on. And there was a parent nearby who had a child who was in the same like program class or whatever. And the parent looked over at him.

Amy Julia (21:11)
Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (21:16)
and then looked at me and said, he’s amazing. And I was like very early on in this, but I was far enough along to be Like that hit me in a way that I didn’t feel, it didn’t feel great, but I knew that he was coming from a good place. And I wasn’t sure exactly what to say in that moment. And I just said, you are pretty amazing, aren’t you Dan? Because I also was like, I don’t want you to talk to.

Amy Julia (21:34)
I’m here.

Carrie Hahn (21:40)
Talk to him, don’t talk to me. I knew enough about that that I was like, let’s not talk about him. So I said, you are pretty amazing, aren’t you? And he just got really still for a second. And when he’s thinking hard, that’s what he does. It’s the thought he just freezes. And I know that he’s thinking. He got really still and he said, I’m an amazing piano player, right, mom? And I was like, he is an amazing piano player. And so it was so powerful for me to go through that.

and get his perspective on that situation. I think that was the first time I ever got feedback about how he was perceiving the situation. And he was like, he hears the word amazing and he’s thinking, what makes me amazing? It’s that I can play the piano, right? He’s not like, surely he’s not talking about me putting my shoes on, you know? And I talk in the book about how like for some putting their shoes on might be a really big deal. When he learned how to first put his shoes on, that was a big deal.

Amy Julia (22:17)
Yeah.

Right. the piano. Not my boots.

Carrie Hahn (22:39)
But when it comes to disability and ableism, kind of from a broader perspective, the presumption of incompetence is basically like, he’s blind, so he probably can’t do anything. know, like he’s blind, so the fact that he’s sitting there putting on his shoes without your help is miraculous when there were other kids nearby and they weren’t amazing, even though they were the same age as him.

that’s an ongoing thing that I honestly feel like I’m still not even really sure sometimes how to handle because he’s at the age now he’s 12 and he doesn’t have a whole lot of patience. He has gotten kind of tired of kids asking him why are your eyes closed? He’s at the point right now where that really kind of annoys him.

Amy Julia (23:07)
Mm.

Hmm.

Carrie Hahn (23:22)
And so we just had a situation the other day where a little, it was like a little girl that we know personally, we know the family, but we don’t spend a lot of time with them. And so she asked and he said, ugh, can you please not ask me that? And it was this, feels awkward because then I’m like, okay, what am I doing here? Like, I don’t want this little girl to feel bad. She probably doesn’t understand what’s happening.

Amy Julia (23:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (23:45)
Then the dad was like, sorry, sorry, sorry. And I’m like, nobody has to be sorry, you know? Where I said, I asked him, Dan, I said, is it okay if I answer the question or would you prefer that I don’t answer the question? He’s like, you can answer. And so then I just briefly said, he’s blind, he doesn’t use his eyes, so his eyes stay closed. So me also trying to navigate his.

Amy Julia (23:50)
Right.

Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (24:10)
Agency in personhood and that he gets to decide if somebody isn’t entitled to that information he can say no It’s none of your business He actually went through a phase where he was like Google it and so he ended up saying He ended up saying Google it to this and I was like, well, honey, she’s like in kindergarten so I don’t know if she can Google it but like It’s it’s like I don’t ever feel like I’m handling it right, but some of these things are a little bit messy and

Amy Julia (24:28)
Right, right.

Mm-hmm.

Carrie Hahn (24:38)
I think everybody used to do the best you can in this situation. And my whole part, another part of the hope for this book was that if more people just get out there and learn a little bit more, if they just kind of open themselves up and they want to learn about disability, just on like a basic level, just some basic education. If kids are being read stories about disability, right? Then maybe less kids will say, why are your eyes closed? Or, you know, like if more kids have

have had a little bit of information given to them, then maybe they’ve got enough to where they’re like, I remember reading, he’s blind, he’s using a cane, he’s blind, so there’s no need to ask the question, you know what I mean? But it’s not like it’s ever going to go away because the kids are different ages and so it’s…

Amy Julia (25:30)
Yeah, and I’m

wondering from that, and you’ve said a few of these, but like whether there are ever any kind of overarching principles or guideposts for people who are not trying to get it perfect, but also want to learn more, to speak differently, to kind of…

Carrie Hahn (25:42)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Julia (25:47)
live in the world a little bit differently when it comes to disability. I’m thinking of like a mom who wants to invite a child from their child’s class and knows that that child has a disability but doesn’t know how to talk to the other mom about having them come over. You know, something like that where it’s like, there any kind of guiding thoughts or principles? You’ve named like reading books. I mean, again, I think that is a great source of information, whether that’s children’s books with our kids or, you know, just going online and Googling it. But are there other things you would offer?

Carrie Hahn (25:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

In the book, I talk a little bit about how I think that talking about accessibility and accommodation, just starting to make it part of our general practice, not necessarily we’re going to talk about access and accommodation because I know this person has a disability, which clearly, you know, that’s a good time to talk about it. But I started like,

if I’m having any sort of an event or like if I’m doing anything, I kind of have started to try to just make a blanket like to all the participants saying if you have, if there are any access or accommodation needs that you have that would make you more comfortable at this event, please let me know. So then we’re, then we’re, there might be people with hidden disabilities, you know, that you don’t even think to ask, like there’s kids in your class, if they look typical.

Amy Julia (26:54)
Mm-hmm.

Carrie Hahn (27:05)
but they might have needs that they might have something that would help them be more successful at the party, but nobody, no one ever asks them because it’s a hidden disability. but when you know for sure, like in our case, I’ve had several parents that will reach out to me and say, you know, we’d like to invite him to her birthday party. Here’s what we’re going to be doing. What does he need? So it’s kind of like in the book, I talk about just kind of a basic of

Amy Julia (27:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (27:35)
reaching out and saying, want to invite your child. Here’s the activity. Here’s what will be expected. Here’s what we’ll be doing, whatever. And then is there anything that we can do to make sure that if they want to come, that they would be more comfortable or be better able to participate? Leaving that open. So then you’re letting the other person know this is a priority to me. We want to make sure your child can participate, but I’m not exactly sure what to do. And that’s

I think ideal because of the nature of everybody’s disability being different, people can guess, but like I’ve had people who take steps and do things based on, you know, kind of a more blanket identification of what might be helpful to someone with visual impairment or blindness. But then because of Dan’s individuality, it ends up wasted because he’s not like into that thing or whatever. You know what I mean? And so people spend a lot of time and effort trying to make something accessible.

Amy Julia (28:29)
Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (28:34)
But on a universal design level, if you can change stuff and make it accessible for everyone, that’s great ongoing. But if we’re talking about kind of a one time thing, I think it’s better to check in because you may put all that effort and it might not actually still be a good match for the person.

Amy Julia (28:44)
Right.

Carrie Hahn (28:53)
people brailling things for Dan is really important, but it depends on what it is because he does not like to read. And so if someone puts in all this effort to braille something that’s long, he’s probably not going to actually use it. you know, but in terms of if it’s something like shorter, like an invitation, that’s great, you know?

And then I’m trying with Dan to empower him to be able to kind of advocate for his own. Like there’s a fine line there. He’s a kid, so he shouldn’t have to be doing a ton of work to advocate for himself. His support team should be doing a lot of that without him requiring it. But as he gets older, he’s going to need to know how to do that too. So understanding what his access needs are.

Amy Julia (29:27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (29:40)
and then being comfortable enough to like share them with others or speak up for them when he chooses to or when he wants to.

Amy Julia (29:47)
Totally. What about, like, I’m thinking about some of the scenarios again, the book, do you remember how many chapters it is? 15 chapters and each one has a different one of these assumptions or stereotypes or, you know, ways of speaking or thinking and you give stories and also just, you know, similar to what we’re talking about here. So just so people have a sense of the book, but.

Carrie Hahn (29:54)
15.

Yep,

Yeah.

Amy Julia (30:11)
I wanted to just kind of zoom in on a couple of those just to give some, again, some more examples and I think some of the things that people might encounter the most. One is like, and we got at this a little bit with the amazing story, but why is it problematic to see disabled people as inspirational?

Carrie Hahn (30:14)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it’s so some out there might be familiar with the work of Stella Young, Stella Young kind of was the first person to talk a lot about this form of ableism. there’s a couple different messages that it kind of sends. One is that you exist to inspire me. So your whole life is about inspiring me, which has its own

Amy Julia (30:46)
right.

Carrie Hahn (30:50)
problems, know, the person is here for the same reasons that all of us are here, you know. If they happen to be inspirational for different reasons, all of us, you know, all of us have the potential to inspire, but when it comes to disability, there seems to be a very specific form of that, which is problematic. The other reason why it’s problematic is because

She said something to the effect of, no matter how bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person. And then she says, but what if you are that person? And so it’s when people use inspiration, when they talk or they frame up people with disabilities as inspirational, they’ll often do things like, well, I’m never going to complain again, you know?

Amy Julia (31:19)
Hmm.

Carrie Hahn (31:37)
I have it so easy and I have it so good because look, there’s that disabled person over there who just has such a pitiful existence. And that’s problematic for a lot of reasons. It’s telling a story about someone that isn’t necessarily true. I’m sure there are people that have a pitiful existence, but it’s not necessarily because there’s a lot of reasons why someone could be struggling or having a hard time, right?

Amy Julia (31:41)
Yeah.

Yeah,

sure.

Carrie Hahn (32:01)
Sometimes it is true that facets of their disability are causing them a hard time and sometimes it’s not true at all. But there’s a blanket application to the disabled community that tends to do that and basically kind of say, I’m inspired by you because you get up every day and you brush your teeth and you go to work. And it’s like, why is that so inspirational? That’s what all of us do. I think I talk in the book about how

Amy Julia (32:26)
Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (32:28)
Like if you’ve always walked on two legs, then you imagine that if you used a wheelchair, that it would be so hard, right? When someone’s learning to use a wheelchair, it’s probably hard at first. There’s a learning curve. There’s going to be things they have to learn. But once that’s established, then it isn’t hard unless things like people parking in the, you know, the access lane and they can’t access their ramp or when buildings are inaccessible.

Amy Julia (32:35)
Right, right.

Yeah.

Right.

Carrie Hahn (32:55)
again, kind of going back to that social model, the things that society puts on them that make their life hard, but their life innately as a disabled person, isn’t, you know, that doesn’t automatically make this person’s life so hard. So.

Amy Julia (33:08)
I remember

this day in elementary school, and I can’t remember if it was called, I think it was called Colonial Day or something like that. And the idea was that we would live like the colonial times. So we couldn’t turn on lights and we couldn’t use electricity at all was the big one. And I just remember even as a kid being like, this is so dumb because they had candles and oil lamps. like they had essentially what we now in disability speak would call accommodations.

Carrie Hahn (33:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Amy Julia (33:35)
for

not having electricity, which of course they didn’t know they didn’t have. like, no, they didn’t have cars, but they did have like other ways of transportation or they had stores that were closer because like it just was like our society is structured around electricity. So of course it’s hard for us not to have it today. And I think that’s really similar to what you’re saying, where it’s like you do actually accommodate yourselves. I mean, that’s one of the actual wonders. this is so cool. I was just reading.

Carrie Hahn (33:38)
Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yep. Yes. Totally.

Amy Julia (34:02)
a book called The Disability History of the United States, which has its opening chapters about Native Americans and how most native languages do not have a term that is the equivalent of the English word disability because of the people were seen in just different terms. Like they were seen relationally, they were seen as a part of the whole. so,

Carrie Hahn (34:08)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Part of that’s, yes, like we’re not singling this out. Like there’s a wide

contingency of ability and a person’s, know, what their body looks like, how they use their body that we don’t have to identify or single out because the community as a whole is everyone and there’s a range and we all fit somewhere in there. Yeah.

Amy Julia (34:30)
Contribution is not, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So

anyway, I just thank you for that. I appreciate that kind of explanation and those thoughts. Well, as we come to a close here, I’m thinking, you know, this is a podcast called Reimagining the Good Life. And I suspect that your experience with both of your sons has allowed some thinking and reimagining, in fact.

Carrie Hahn (34:56)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Amy Julia (35:06)
around

this idea of like what makes life good, what is the purpose, the meaning, all of that. So I just wanted to ask you to share with us a little bit about how your experience has changed your own understanding of what the good life is and kind of an imagination for that.

Carrie Hahn (35:09)
Yeah.

Yeah,

totally. I mean, in like the most incredible way. You know, it’s so fascinating because you can have a journey. One of your podcast episodes, you talk about how we live in a spiral and how we spiral up. And that was just that caught my attention because I was like, yes, this journey, you you go through times that are harder.

Amy Julia (35:34)
Yeah

Carrie Hahn (35:43)
And then you take a lap around. And when you get back to another point that feels hard again, you realize that you’re not in the same place. And it’s not, it doesn’t feel the same. It still feels, it might still feel hard, but it’s not the same. It’s not as hard as it was. And that journey has been, you know, so hugely transformational with my boys and where you can start in terms of being so afraid to be outside of the norm. Like when we,

adopted Dan, clearly I knew we knew he was blind and we knew that he existed outside of, you know, the norm, whatever that is, the standards that we set up that we want to try to kind of shove everybody into. And I think I didn’t realize how much I was like how much I was going to have to come to terms with what that means to be outside of that and and all that being inside or outside of the norm encompasses. And what it’s made me do over time

Amy Julia (36:20)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Carrie Hahn (36:42)
is it’s made me really see my kids for who they are like at their core, like who God made them to be and who they are. And it’s made me need to get like not only innately personal with that, but also fiercely defend that and do everything that I possibly can to make sure that they are valued as they are. You know, some of that, then you start to put it back on yourself and you have to do your own work and say, hey, look, it looks like I have some things I need to work on.

And then you end up in a place where you can accept yourself in all of your intricacies and all of your flaws because you’re working so hard to figure out how to do it for your kids. You end up maybe being able to do it for yourself and then it transfers out to a wider community. And I feel like you start to be able to see people differently, just regardless of where they are or who they are or you just see people as humans who have innate worth.

Amy Julia (37:27)
Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (37:37)
that like where it doesn’t matter if they what box they fit into or if they fit into a box and maybe even more so when you see the people who don’t fit into the box and are marginalized you develop even more of a heart for them and wanting to try to do whatever you can to make sure they have a place and that they can find the peace and the joy that they should be having access to. I just feel like it has reframed reimagined you know the

Amy Julia (37:58)
Hmm.

Carrie Hahn (38:06)
what it is that I want from life and that what I think we should be getting from life and just priorities have shifted so dramatically. What’s important? Like what actually really matters that I would answer that question so differently now than I would have 10 years ago, you know? And so that it’s all just been so good.

where the person that I am now and the way that I see people, not just my kids, not just people with disabilities, but just people in general has shifted to a point where I feel like, like love and grace are the things that I’m defaulting to first. and that’s the person I’ve always prayed to want to become, you know, and I feel like the process of getting is trying to get closer and closer to that. Just.

Amy Julia (38:54)
Hmm.

Carrie Hahn (39:00)
is the good, is like the best life I could have imagined, you know, is feeling that peace and feeling innate love for people with ease, where it’s not hard and you don’t have to try really hard to just love people, you know? That’s where I feel like this journey has brought me and I’m so much happier with this life, you know? I mean, I wouldn’t go back and trade the different parts of my life for, you know…

Amy Julia (39:15)
Yeah.

Carrie Hahn (39:30)
for what I have now because what I have now I’m really, really grateful for.

Amy Julia (39:33)
Mm.

Well, that’s a beautiful place, I think, to end this conversation because it does speak to the fact that sure, we can talk about, you know, using the right words and wanting to have this right posture. But what’s really happening in us through that process is a development of the heart that actually is not like restricting it and saying only these things are okay, but actually expanding it and bringing us like a different sense of self and a different sense of the kind of beauty and wonder of

these humans that we get to interact with all the time. So thank you for helping us on that journey.

Carrie Hahn (40:07)
Yes, yes, thank you so much.

well, thank you. Thanks for having me.