This column article was written in January, 2001.
Why is it important that we talk and write about invisible disabilities? Because by writing and talking about invisible disabilities, also knows as IDs, we can affirm their reality. Articles and letters and lectures and journals and discussions and notes and books can start to teach people that IDs are big and real and important and can be just as disabling and serious as better known and visible disabilities.
If you don't talk to your friends about your ID, or show them writing about it, they have no chance to get over the standard western cultural stereotype - thinking your problems are minor, temporary and only an inconvenience.
General articles like my Open Letter To Those Without Fibro/CFS can be printed out and spread around to friends and family, increasing their general knowledge about your individual disabilities and about IDs in general.
If somebody makes an ignorant comment in discussion, you can make a point of taking them aside then - or later on when it's more appropriate - and explaining politely why they were wrong and some alternate points of view. Tell them what's true for you, without sugar-coating it. Perhaps offer to show them some writing, or talk to them more later, if they're interested about it.
Once a person has read a well-done article about invisible disabilities, or had an in-depth discussion and grasped the concepts involved, they have no excuse for ignorance. They cannot trivialize or minimize your problems anymore, and if they do then you can call them on it, "Remember what you read in that article? Remember what I was telling you the other day? That applies here!"
And once all the people with invisible disabilities educate themselves about IDs ... and then they educate their families ... and then they and their families all educate their friends ... pretty soon everybody on the planet will know somebody with an ID. And then finally people will start to think it's "obvious" that IDs should be treated seriously and with respect. Sounds impossible? It's pretty much what has been being done over the past decade by people with visible disabilities and it's worked for them! A decade might sound like a long time, and perhaps it'll take even longer because our problems are less obvious, but it beats sitting down and waiting for something to happen all by itself.
Change begins at home. Change begins with you and you and you and you and you.
So why is it important that we talk and write about invisible disabilities? Because then they won't be invisible anymore.
