inclusion until it’s uncomfortable

The last week I have been upset, so upset. And I’ve been asking myself why this situation has got under my skin the way it has.

I think it’s because what we’ve witnessed in the backlash toward John Davidson has exposed something deeply uncomfortable about how society really treats disability.

There is a fundamental difference between a neurological tic and intentional harm. If someone genuinely cannot recognise that distinction, they are choosing not to understand.

John has spent decades campaigning, advocating, and educating people about Tourette’s. What happened on that stage was not a man choosing offensive language. It was a neurological response he cannot control. The context was known. The condition was explained. And still, the outrage spanned across continents.

What makes this even more ironic is the setting itself. He was in a room celebrating a film based on his own life, a story that lays bare just how brutally Tourette’s has impacted him, including how close the lack of control over his own body has pushed him to the brink of suicide. Yet, in that very space meant to recognise and honour that journey, the empathy still fell short.

I want to be clear, we can hold two truths at once.

1) Hearing a racial slur, in any context, can be deeply upsetting. That reaction is human and valid.

2) Piling onto a disabled working-class man for symptoms he cannot control is not accountability. It is cruelty and disgustingly ableist.

Maybe this hits close to home because I, too, live with a neurological disability, a hidden one at that. Moments like this are a stark reminder of how conditional society’s empathy really is.

We say we accept disability.
We say we champion inclusion.

But too often, that acceptance only stretches to the disabilities people find comfortable, visible, or easy to understand. Hidden disabilities. Complex neurological conditions. The messy, unpredictable realities. That’s where the understanding suddenly runs thin.

In the past week we’ve watched influential voices take aim at someone whose body quite literally betrays him at times.

To be clear, the BBC absolutely have a responsibility to handle sensitive content carefully. Safeguards matter. The burden should never fall on a disabled person for the involuntary symptoms of their condition.

If your version of inclusion only works when disabled people are quiet, controlled, and convenient, then what you want isn’t inclusion, it’s convenient. Every time society chooses outrage over understanding, it tells disabled people exactly where they stand: welcome in theory, inconvenient in reality.

If we are serious about supporting ALL disabled people, then we need to start proving it in the uncomfortable moments, not just the easy ones. All disabled people, visible or not, comfortable or complex, deserve a world that understands the difference between what we choose and what our bodies choose for us.

the grammy’s were more about the music this year

 The 2026 Grammys weren’t just about music. They became an unexpected stage for a deeper, sharper conversation about immigrants, identity, and who gets to call America home. Watching it unfold felt eerily connected to something I had written only a week earlier about immigration.

Two moments stood out. Bad Bunny, addressed US immigration enforcement head-on:

“ICE out. We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”

It was blunt. Human. Impossible to ignore. In one sentence, he dismantled the language so often used to dehumanise immigrants and reframed the debate around dignity rather than legality.

Olivia Dean spoke about being “a granddaughter of an immigrant.” Saying she was “a product of bravery.” Where Bad Bunny confronted power, Olivia reflected on legacy.

Together, those moments turned a music awards show into a statement on belonging. And the timing mattered.

That’s why the contrast felt so sharp to me. One week, I’m writing about raids, removals, and fear. The next, I’m watching immigrant stories be applauded on one of the biggest stages in the world.

Both of my parents are immigrants, though their stories are very different. My dad was born in India and came to the UK when he was just four years old. He didn’t choose migration. He grew up learning how to belong somewhere that wasn’t originally his, carrying a culture he didn’t leave behind but had to adapt. My mum is Indian, born in Uganda, and was forcibly displaced when her community was expelled. She didn’t move for opportunity, she was pushed out. Her life reset not by ambition, but by politics she had no control over. These stories aren’t distant history to me. They’re the foundation of who I am.

That’s why moments like the Grammys feel both powerful and uncomfortable. Immigrant stories are celebrated when they produce success, awards, art, culture, headlines. But they’re criminalised when they exist in survival. When they’re undocumented. When they’re poor. When they’re simply trying to live.

Immigrants are welcomed when they build the future, but questioned the moment they try to belong to it.

Countries like the US and the UK would not be where they are today without immigrants. From labour to music to business, immigrant communities have been foundational not supplementary to growth. Yet the same systems that benefit from that contribution are often the ones enforcing fear.

Watching artists honour their parents and grandparents on that stage felt refreshing. Necessary. But it also echoed the anger behind my post last week.

Visibility without protection isn’t enough.

Because behind every speech, every award, every headline, there are families like mine, shaped by displacement, resilience, and quiet endurance.

im so angry

What’s happening in Minnesota isn’t an anomaly. It’s a warning.

Immigration raids. Armed police operating with sweeping authority. Communities terrified. People harmed. Accountability diluted. We’ve seen this pattern before and every time, it’s framed as necessary. It’s framed as control. Every time we’re expected to accept it. The truth is simpler and harder to face, we’ve turned a blind eye. 

Because it felt far away. Because outrage is exhausting when injustice is constant. So we protest and we post. We share. Then we move on. Having hope and trust that visibility is enough. It’s not.

Protesting for a free Palestine cracked something open. It revealed just how many people understand injustice instinctively even when governments refuse to name it.

But protests was never meant to be the end. Too often it becomes symbolic rather than structural. The marches fade and the headlines move on. Those in power wait. They know attention is temporary. Listening requires inconvenience. Change requires disruption. Power rarely gives either willingly. 

There is a myth that systemic racism is contained and that once a community is acknowledged, the work is done. But that’s not how systems work. Systems don’t discriminate emotionally. They discriminate structurally. Once a framework is built to control, detain or dehumanise one group, it doesn’t stop there. It adapts. It finds new targets. This is why it is never just “us” vs “them”. It will always be about power, and who gets to use it without consequences.

At the centre of every conflict is the same question. Who holds power and who is protected by it.6)3 people writing the rules don’t live with the consequences. They don’t experience stop and searches or raids. They are free to issue generic statements whilst others experience pain and face the destruction.

Audre Lorde warned: “The masters tools will never dismantle the masters house”.

We cannot fix a system using the same logic that but it. The word reform means “to make changes in order to improve it”. It is sold to us as reassurance. In the UK, this word has been twisted and is misrepresented politically. The reform party doesn’t just borrow rhetoric from America, it’s mirroring it. The obsession with borders and framing migrants as threats. These are just a few of the policies that America is using to “justify” these raids, enforcing the military on the streets, and normalising violence under the guise of protection. 

It’s  a different accent but the same playbook. When fear becomes a political strategy, the outcome is always the same. It means fewer rights, more force and a public encouraged to look away as long as they feel temporarily safe. People often say that it will never happen here. History tells us otherwise. History tells us it always starts somewhere first. What we excuse sets precedent.

If we don’t challenge who holds power, how they use it and who they are willing to sacrifice to maintain it, then Minnesota won’t be a warming and by the time we realise it, it won’t feel shocking anymore.

2016

Everyone is reminiscing about 2016. The late 2010s are being spoken about with an almost unbelievable level of nostalgia, even though it feels like they happened yesterday. It is strange to miss a time that does not feel that far away, yet feels completely out of reach.

2016 gets remembered as pure happiness. Not because life was perfect, but because it felt simpler. Social media felt fun rather than heavy. The internet felt playful instead of exhausting. There was excitement without constant comparison, connection without constant performance. We were online, but not consumed by it. Everything felt less polished, less strategic, less serious.

What we are really reminiscing about is how it felt to live then. Life moved slower. Days felt longer. Moments felt more present. There was more room to be bored, to be spontaneous, to exist without documenting everything. We were not constantly thinking about optimisation, productivity or self improvement. We were just living.

The nostalgia feels intense because so much has changed so quickly. In less than a decade, the world became louder, faster and heavier. The late 2010s now sit right before a period of constant disruption, global anxiety and digital overload. Looking back, that time feels like the last stretch of collective ease before everything became more serious.

It also feels closer than it is because time has sped up. Our brains compress recent years because life has become repetitive and overstimulating. When everything blends together, it feels like no time has passed at all. So 2016 feels like yesterday, even though it was nearly a decade ago.

The reason the nostalgia feels so strong is because it represents a version of ourselves that felt freer. Less aware. Less pressured. Less tired. We miss the feeling of being excited about the future instead of bracing for it.

I’m convinced 2016 was not magical because of the year itself. It was magical because of how it felt to live inside it. And when people say they miss it, what they are really saying is that they miss ease, presence and a version of happiness that did not feel so hard to access.

the yearly appointment

Yearly check-ins are a quiet reality when you live with a lifelong illness.

This year’s visit wasn’t much different. The same waiting. The same low-level anxiety. The same wondering whether the brain scan would show changes from the year before. You brace yourself for news before it even arrives.

And then came something I never expected to hear.

“You might not have to take forty four tablets a day anymore.”

Relief doesn’t even cover it. Ecstatic comes closer. Because those tablets are a daily reminder. A reminder that my brain works differently. A reminder I sometimes try to avoid by forgetting them on purpose, just to feel normal for a moment.

But hope, with illness, rarely comes without an asterisk.

“We have to be cautious,” the doctor said. “Your brain disease is rare. We don’t have the data. I don’t want you to be the patient we experiment with.”

And just like that, relief tangled itself with confusion. With sadness. With the possibility that forty four daily tablets might still be my reality.

It’s a strange emotional balance. Being grateful for the chance of change, while also sitting with uncertainty. Feeling lucky to be monitored, supported, looked after, while still wishing things were simpler, clearer, easier.

I don’t know what the next year will bring. I don’t know whether the number will change or stay the same. What I do know is that living with a lifelong illness teaches you how to hold multiple truths at once.

Gratitude and fear.
Hope and caution.
Relief and disappointment.

And above all, gratitude for the opportunity to keep checking in, even when the path isn’t certain.