As society frames it, disability is a loss and a deficit—seemingly pathological in its very existence. This is also the personal experience of a large portion of the disability community. Acquired disability is perhaps the best example of this: many people, your author included, experience acquired disability as a profound sense of loss, and a source of despair.

What if, instead, we reframed disability of all kinds as a source of gain, as the Deaf community has? This is a large part of the mission of the Disability Studies field, seeking to reframe disability as not just a loss, a deficit, but instead an expression of human difference and variation, and thus a valuable part of the human experience.

Each portion of the disabled community expresses their gain differently: each disabling condition has its unique effects, and each individual experiences those effects differently. Disability is by nature diverse, and it is our differences that we have in common.