Tools for People with Disabilities from a Person with a Disability
"Access Your Drive and Enjoy the Ride is fun, practical, and no-nonsense."—Stephanie Thomas, TEDx Speaker and founder, stylist, and editor-in-chief of the disability fashion lifestyle website, CUR8ABLE
#1 New Release in Physically Disabled Education
Lauren “Lolo'' Spencer provides a candid and real inside look into the life of being a person with a disability. This disability advocate embarks on the importance of visibility for the disabled community because representation matters!
Words from someone doing the work. Lolo Spencer gained popularity as a YouTube personality. On her platform, Sitting Pretty, she encourages viewers to achieve their dreams through making strong choices. Lolo shares how she navigates daily life with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
You are more than your limits. Choosing to see herself as more than a person with a disability and wheelchair user, Lolo chooses to live a bold and courageous life now because representation matters. She created this intersectional guide to provide tools for people with disabilities to thrive in personal growth, independence, and community building. Add this guide to your list of inclusion books!
Inside, you’ll find:
- An intersectional guide on how to grow personally and professionally
- Tools for people with disabilities to live a full life despite limitations and expectations
- Words from the inspiring Lauren “Lolo” Spencer, your favorite disability advocate
If you're looking for gifts for people with disabilities to get encouraged like Disability Visibility, Demystifying Disability, or Rolling Warrior, you’ll love Access Your Drive and Enjoy the Ride.
From the book:
I moved from Stockton, California, my hometown and, in hindsight, a much better place for me to grow up than the big city of Los Angeles, at six years old, a few years after my mom and dad divorced. Stockton was one of those small towns where everyone knew everyone, even intergenerationally. My friends’ parents were childhood friends with my mom. You could end up making a new friend in school and later find out you’re technically blood cousins. Stockton was large enough to stay on your side of town and never really venture off to other parts of town your entire life if you wanted. It’s a place full of humble beginnings I appreciate to the fullest. I knew it was where I wanted to be when we took our first visit to K-Mart after moving from LA and ran into one of my six uncles and my cousin. When my cousin and I learned we were going to be at the same elementary school together, we were elated. I liked this place already!
I recognize now that my mother’s decision to do what was best for my sister and I at the sacrifice of what she wanted would change the trajectory of our well-being forever. My mom was always a person who moved to the beat of her own drum. Those who know her know that my mom does not play when it comes to her kids. I remember one time having a conversation about my friend who traveled the world alone and she told me, “There is no way I could handle you or your siblings traveling the world solo. My heart couldn’t take it. I’d have to go with you guys.” That’s the kind of mom she is. We have always come first to her, sometimes even before herself, but if you ask her, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She was never able to spoil us with material things. We just didn’t have it like that, but she spoiled us with her love and support. Not a game, dance performance, or award ceremony was EVER missed. My mother decided to put our wellbeing first, and her decision laid the foundation of morals I carried with me through my experiences growing up.
We grew up in our maternal grandparents’ home, where playtime with my cousins was a constant lit ass time. I was very physically active as a kid. We ran around the house like wild, sliding down the stairs on slippery cushions, and running back up the stairs to do it all over again. We didn’t get away with this for too long though because Grandpa would come around the corner and yell at us to stop before we hurt ourselves. We were constantly in the pool and bunked in the living room when we got to have sleepovers together. Each of us would have our own sleeping bags and wear grandpa’s old t-shirts as pajamas. We put on fashion shows and dance routines for our parents when they came home from work. In the afternoons, when our grandparents would babysit us, we ran Fortune 500 companies with our grandma’s old briefcases and legal notepads with “meeting notes” scribbled all over. Imagination was fully encouraged within my family since our family is rooted in creativity, especially music and performing. My grandpa is revered as one of the best saxophonists to ever live, one uncle is an award-winning drummer, two uncles perform on The Las Vegas Strip together (one on saxophone the other on trumpet), and another is a DJ, while my sister was a hip-hop dancer and my younger brother (who was born shortly after we moved to Stockton) played piano and made beats when he was in middle school. Oh, and everybody sings. Attending live shows growing up was normal for me. Witnessing my family on stage in front of crowds of people that would sing, dance, smile, and have fun was something special that I knew the average person didn’t have the talent to do. It was their superpower, and it made me proud to be part of the family.
By the time I started high school, I didn’t see myself on any stages. I didn’t have any superpowers (so I thought at that time). I had accepted myself as the normal one in my family. I was more brown-skinned than my mom and sister. I had shorter, kinkier hair that my mom did her best to manage with Just For Me perm kits and hot rollers every morning, and I had a gap-toothed smile that I loved. All I wanted to do was go to school, hang out with friends, talk about my unhealthy obsession with B2K, and become a journalist. I didn’t need to be on stage like the rest of my family. I decided to accept myself for naturally being different from my family—which was truly a subconscious decision because it had nothing to do with any negative influence from my family or friends at all. After observing everyone I was around, I’d found where it made sense for me to exist as the teenager I was. I always knew performing music wasn’t my thing. Being proud to say they were my family was rewarding enough for me. At this time, my mom was renting her first house: a humble house full of love and good times that was all her own. Life was good to me, but a very random incident would shake up my world completely.
One night, my mom called us to the kitchen to eat dinner. I rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a dinner plate with my right hand from a top cabinet, and once I gripped the plate my entire arm dropped to the counter. I stopped in pure confusion because I felt my arm drop, but the plate was still gripped in my hand. I didn’t drop the plate, but I felt my arm drop completely as if the plate weighed 500 pounds. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t make any sense of it. I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there looking down at my arm in confusion, like “How did I just do that? Am I trippin? I know I felt my arm drop, but the plate is in my hand. This is weird. Maybe I’m trippin.” Then I went to the table as usual. I knew better than to bring up something that was wrong to my mother unless I was positively sure of how I felt because she would get concerned. I didn’t want to scare her, so I kept it to myself. Although I was scared, I felt there was nothing I could do, so I brushed it off hoping it was just a one-time occurrence.
According to my mom, when I did finally tell her something different was happening to my body, I was telling her how I noticed I couldn’t jump as high as I felt I should have been able to when I was in gym class. She knew it was a real concern for me, and in true mom mode, she took me to see a doctor. However, neither one of us could’ve predicted that visit would be the start of over a year-long journey where we would continue to go from doctor to doctor. My mom would later tell me, that for her, it felt strange that the doctors never seemed to have an answer regarding my sudden change in physical strength, but she knew she needed to figure out what was happening even if that meant having to go visit another doctor or do another test. She was determined. My 14-year-old brain was not concerned at all about what was going on. This was actually a fun time for me. At 14, any reason to go to school late or leave early, spend the day with my mom, and have lunch “off-campus” (which was a huge luxury as a high school freshman), was a win for me, even if it was only to go to the doctor. I had no idea the seriousness of what was really happening.
