"In their new, long-awaited collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime disability justice …
• It’s not assuming. Anything. It’s always asking: if you can touch, what you call your body or your sick, what you need, if you even want suggestions for your issue or if you just want listening. It’s understanding that each disabled person is the expert on their own body/mind.
• Crip emotional intelligence is understanding isolation. Deeply. We know what it’s like to be really, really alone. To be forgotten about, in that way where people just don’t remember you’ve ever been out, at meetings and parties, in the social life of the world. How being isolated, being shunned, being cut off from the social world of community is terrifying because you know that it can literally kill you. And that being alone also does not always have to be killing; it can also be an oasis of calm, quiet, low stimulation, and rest.
• Crip emotional intelligence is not taking it personally when someone cancels and continuing to invite them to things. To not forget them.