A call to fellow little people - please stop saying you aren't disabled
Growing up as a little person, I didn't think I had a disability. I went to school, hung out with my friends, participated in music and sports. I was involved with Little People of America (LPA), where I was told that I wasn't disabled, just different (specifically: short). When I began competing in swimming at the national and international level, I shed many tears over the labels of "disabled" and "handicapped" surrounding the events I competed at. I preferred "challenged", or "physically different." I understood the concept of "disabled" as something bad, something I didn't want to be, a small, limiting box of an identity that my life just didn't fit into. As I started using a scooter more, it began considerably more difficult to deny that I was disabled. As I met more people with disabilities and started reading online about disability advocacy, my idea of what it meant to have a disability expanded, and I r