Transcript for
Parenting with a disability and responding to stigma

Narrator (00:02):

Welcome to the Emerging Minds Families podcast.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (00:05):

Hi, I’m Nadia Rossi, and you’re listening to an Emerging Minds Families podcast. We would like to pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We also pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, their ancestors and elders past, present, and emerging from the different First Nations across Australia.

(00:30):

When stigma happens to our families, it can be really hard to know how to respond, but there are many ways that families can and do respond to stigma, discrimination, and injustice to hold onto their family’s dignity and support their children’s wellbeing. This podcast is a part of a series where we explore some of the ways families do this. Maybe you will connect with some of their stories and skills, or maybe they will spark some ideas for facing stigma in your own family. In this episode, we are talking about parenting with a disability and the stigma that many parents with a disability and their children have to navigate.

(01:07):

Our guest today is Eliza Hull. Eliza Hull is an award-winning musician, writer, and disability advocate. She is the creator of the ABC podcast series, We’ve Got This, about parenting with a disability. She also edited and created the book with the same title, We’ve Got This: Essays by Disabled Parents, which features parents who identify as disabled, deaf, or chronically ill. Eliza has appeared on TV and radio using her lived experience of disability to reduce stigma, and we are excited to have her as a guest on our podcast today. Welcome, Eliza. It is great to speak with you.

Eliza Hull (Guest) (01:42):

Thank you very much for having me.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (01:44):

Eliza, can you tell us a bit about who makes up your family?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (01:48):

Yeah. So I am a mother of two. I have a eight-year-old girl, Isobel, and a three-year-old, just about to turn four little boy called Archie, and then my husband as well, Karl.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (02:02):

Eliza, you live with Charcot-Marie-Tooth. Can you describe to us what that is?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (02:08):

Yeah. So it’s kind of complicated to talk about because it can affect people very differently, but it is a nerve disorder, and so that means that I have what is called like a myelin sheath around the nerves and it actually has holes in that. And so it means that the messages find it difficult to reach, especially areas like the hands, feet, legs. I’ve had it since I was five years old, and the reason that my parents started to notice that something might be a little different was just that I started to fall over at school most days, and then I was taken to lots of hospital appointments, and finally diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth. It does affect me differently every day. I guess, for me, it’s like fatigue easily, I’m in pain, I have muscle spasms. I guess the most visible part of my disability is the way that I walk, so I do walk very differently, and I can’t get upstairs because of muscle loss.

(03:11):

I still fall over a lot even today, but also affects my hands as well, and even my internal organs. So it’s kind of one of those disabilities that can affect all parts of your body, but I guess in more visible ways is the way that I walk. But many people with CMT, a wheelchair uses some walk, and some are diagnosed really late in life, some people don’t even know they have CMT until they’re in their 60s. So it is one that really affects people very differently.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (03:45):

Thank you for sharing that with us. You mentioned you are a mother of two. Can you tell us about your experience when you decided to become a parent?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (03:55):

Yeah. So I was really excited I’d met the person that I wanted to have kids with and I really had always wanted to have kids. Even since being a young person, I remember saying to mom and dad that’s what I wanted to do in my life is do all the things with my career, but also be a mother. And when we decided to become parents, I went to my neurologist who I’d been really seeing since I was quite young, and so we had formed a relationship, and he was somebody I really trusted as well. And so, I went to him and said I decided that we’d like to start potentially trying for children, and I think that’s when I really noticed how much stigma there is when it comes to parenting with disability, and he’s a kind person, but the way that he really handled it was, in my opinion, not positive at all.

(04:49):

He really was silent for a while and then reading on the computer without giving me much eye contact, and then said to me that he didn’t think that I could manage being a parent and was worried that what if I fell over or would I be able to do all the things that parenting requires. He also was nervous about the fact that I couldn’t pass on my disability as well, there is a 50% chance. At this point, both my children are not showing any symptoms of my disability, but I think that can bring up a lot of shame and vulnerability when someone starts to question whether you should have a child because they’ll be like you, it hurts.

(05:32):

So, at that time, if I completely be honest, I really kind of almost thought, “Well, you know what? Maybe you’re right, maybe I can’t do this.” And I went back to my partner and said what had happened, and he was like, “Actually, this is not true, we can do this, and we can do it as a team, and I think that you really need to not listen to this medical professional.” And thank goodness, my partner was there to support me because now we have a great family, and yes, I might do things differently, but I make a great mother.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (06:06):

And did that start you on a journey of finding the right practitioner for you? So from there, what did you do?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (06:13):

I never went back.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (06:14):

Yeah.

Eliza Hull (Guest) (06:15):

Yeah. I never went back and I actually don’t have a neurologist to this day, so I tried to create a different team around me. So now I feel like I really have people on my side, but that’s taken a long time to find the right people to work with me with my disability.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (06:32):

What would you like those who live with disability who want to become parents know?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (06:39):

That it’s possible, that there are a big support network of people out there. There are many online groups on social media where if you type in parenting with disability, there are just so many wonderful groups of people and community waiting to support you, and there are ways to adapt and parent in a way that suits you, and that I think we live in a world that is inaccessible often, and also that has a lot of stigma when it comes to disability. But I think people with disability, because we live in a world that’s inaccessible, we’ve had to really navigate that and learn all these wonderful skills of flexibility, being creative thinkers, problem solvers, adaptable, all of those skills end up really serving you well when you decide to be a parent.

(07:31):

I’ve realised that I have patience like no other, I can quickly be flexible with how my child is feeling any given day, and I think that those skills come from living with a disability. So I would say that actually if someone tells you not to because you are disabled, I would push back on that and say, “I think I can do this, and I just need the support around me to make it possible.”

Nadia Rossi (Host) (07:55):

And I think that’s what your podcast and your book does as well. It just shares all those different examples of people that have found their way, and there are so many different ways of doing this in becoming parents and becoming a village creating that kind of the family that you want and people around you that you need as well. It’s not just down the straight path that everyone.

Eliza Hull (Guest) (08:19):

Exactly. And I think disability looks like all different things, it might look like being blind, or being deaf, or having a chronic illness. And I think what the book and the podcast shows is that actually being a parent with a disability ends up creating these beautiful kids that are resilient and also accepting of difference and others and kind humans. Like all the kids that I was able to go into the houses to interview these families for the podcast and the kids are all incredibly kind. I don’t think that’s a mistake, I think that that comes from having a parent with a disability that might’ve done things slightly different. And for instance, some parents that have chronic illness, they might live a bit of a slower life, but actually I’ve noticed that those kids have an appreciation for like walking a bit slower and smelling the flowers and taking things in instead of being this constant rush to life. They live a slower life and it actually is really beautiful.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (09:21):

I’m wondering if you can share a bit about what kinds of stigma you have experienced and what that has meant for you and your children.

Eliza Hull (Guest) (09:30):

I guess last night was an example. Funnily enough, last night someone came up to me and said, “Where do I know your limp from?” And that was in front of my kids, so it’s like, “Why did you bring that up? Why did you bring up the way that I walked in that way instead of just saying, where have I seen your face?” Funnily enough at the same venue that we’re all at for dinner, I had another person say to me that, “I do know you in the same group, and I see you wobbling around town, and you’re constantly hobbling in and out of the fruit and veg shop.” And it’s like, I think it’s just that language that hobbling and wobbling, I really don’t feel like it is an explainer of who I am actually. And I think that that confuses my kids because they see an empowered person that speaks about their disability in a really positive way, not in a kind of deficit language.

(10:25):

This particular person also said how could I be happy having a disability. Again, that made my eldest daughter very confused because I am a happy person, I live a great life. So I think it’s this kind of constant pushback on the way that society sees disability, and in our home, difference in all of its ways is something that’s not feared, it’s celebrated. So I think those little things that you face daily are the hard things.

(10:55):

One other example is when I was lining up to the kindergarten with my daughter, this was a couple of years back, and a child said to their mother, “Why does she walk like that, and what is wrong with her?” And that’s fine because he’s a child and he doesn’t have that kind of education and disability awareness, but it was interesting that only a couple of weeks back, I had been speaking to that particular mother telling her that I was a disability advocate, I have a disability, I’ve got a book out about having a disability, and yet she said to her son in front of me that I’d been in an accident and that something had happened.

(11:30):

So, again, it’s that kind of stigma that comes with the word disability, but also the associations that come with having a disability. I guess I don’t want to say that that is their fault, but people are mostly afraid of the word and afraid of getting it wrong, and I think that’s because of such a lack of representation of disability that we’ve seen historically in the media, on TV. We just haven’t really seen it, and not only have we not seen it, but we’ve never really seen it in that positive way, or even just a neutral way that actually it’s neither positive or negative, it just is. And that is society, we are different and that’s wonderful.

(12:12):

So I think that’s where stigma comes from. And I guess daily, I get stared at, daily, people will tell their child not to look at me. There’s often groups of people, generally men, where they might laugh or point, and I think that’s really hard for the kids to see those things take place because, again, they don’t see me in that light, they don’t see that my disability is something to be laughed at.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (12:38):

And in those situations when you do have your kids with you, how do you help them make sense of what’s going on?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (12:44):

I’m pretty straightforward with them. I think it’s important that we obviously speak in a way that’s age appropriate, but I try and just say that for a lot of us as older people, we just really haven’t had those beautiful children’s books that we now have, that has disability in them that we’re really starting to see that shift representation and that because of not really seeing many people with disability. And often people with disability have been segregated at work or segregated at schooling, and so we didn’t really get to experience the diversity as we do today. But I think it’s just talking about the why that this could still be happening, why people might think that disability is something that is to be feared or to be laughed at, and that hopefully more conversations and more books, more picture books for kids that we can start to change that.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (13:42):

I’m wondering if we talk about books because we did speak previously about when you did read a story to your child’s class. Are there big or small ways that you’ve found to respond to stigma and how it’s affected your family?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (13:57):

Yeah. So I guess there’s two examples there. One is in the book We’ve Got This is a very good friend of mine, Mandy McCracken, she’s a quadruple amputee, which means that she had sepsis, which was an infection, and she had both her arms and legs amputated. And she was really experienced to discrimination when she would drop her kids off at the school. Kids would be hiding from her, they would be scared of her, and they wouldn’t want to come up and speak to her, and then that really impacted her children.

(14:28):

So she decided to, instead of trying to ignore it or do anything other than what she thought would be actually that the thing that really needed to happen, which was to go into the school and take all her prosthetic attachments, so her different arms that she uses, she also uses a hook prosthetic attachment, and she took them all in and gave them around to the room and said, “This is what I use, and this is what happened to me, and I identify as having a disability, and would you like to have a feel of my arm, and would you like to have a feel of the hook?”

(15:03):

And then kids were like loving her because it took away that stigma, it made the kids feel part of it. And that’s something I’m really trying to do as well because often when I was dropping my kids off, the kids would be staring at the way I look. And I don’t want my kids to feel that feeling of just being on show, and so I decided to go into every single class in my daughter’s school, which took a whole day, and did read my children’s book, which is called Come Over to My House, and then sang a song that I’d written about disability, and showed one of my music videos because I’m a musician as well, I’ve me walking and there’s a disabled dancer in that.

(15:46):

And then just spoke about my lived experience of when I was a child, I had a disability and I would use a wheelchair throughout school, and just ways that we can talk about disability and just to tell the kids that it’s not something that needs to be scary or something that needs to be feared, it’s just what makes this world and diversity is what really makes it a beautiful world. And then I got the kids to do a drawing of ways that they can make the world more accessible, and to really help them understand the social model of disability, which is that the world is disabling and it’s not something we don’t need to fix the person, we need to make the world more accessible so that people can live in a way that is inclusive.

(16:28):

And so, the kids drew things that I hadn’t even thought about, yeah, it was absolutely incredible, like lowered ice cream trucks for people that were wheelchair users or ways to get into the park for everybody, ramps up, and a swing, and a slide for wheelchair users, and just all these really incredible ideas. And I think that just made me feel so incredibly proud and happy because kids are the future. And if they’re seeing the ways that we can change the world and seeing disability is not a deficit or a negative, but seeing that the world is actually the thing that is disabling, I think that’s a really beautiful tallying of where the future is going.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (17:13):

Yeah. If we could all be more in the kid world and not so much the adult world, I think it seems like they came up with just amazing ideas and just giving them that opportunity as well.

Eliza Hull (Guest) (17:25):

Yeah, exactly. Why is disability not in the curriculum? I don’t really understand that considering 20% of the population have a disability.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (17:33):

I’m wondering about unsolicited advice, which I’m sure you have received in your time. How do you manage that unsolicited advice that comes your way?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (17:43):

Yeah. I think I always listen to people’s advice, but I just try and keep knowing who I am, knowing my own limitations instead of believing in others’ ideas of what those limitations are. An example of that is even people the closest to me might say, “You can’t walk holding your child down the stairs and you should never even consider going down the stairs with your child”, then I was like, “Well, I go down the stairs in a different way with my child. As soon as my child could move, we would go down the stairs one by one on our bums.” I have stairs that was front of my house, so it was only six stairs, but we would just make it a fun game so that we could both get down the stairs together safely. So I guess it’s realising that of course I’m going to do everything in my power to be as safe as possible, or this idea that I shouldn’t get my child out of the cot.

(18:44):

Again, I always held on to the cot as I was getting my child out, would have the chair right near me, everything was calculated, and I guess it was just realising that I can do this, and there was never anything that would jeopardise my child’s safety or put my child at risk. So I think it’s trying not to listen to those things, and also realising that we have, as people with disability, the skills to use adaptive technology in a way that really assists us. For instance, when my children were babies, I would use assistive technology to give them a bath safely. So there’s a way that you don’t have to use your hand so much, it’s like an insert into the bath that keeps them safe.

(19:27):

So it’s like everything that you do is done in a way that, A, is safe but, B, uses those skills that I was talking about, those problem solving skills, adaptive technology. And so I think I’ve just had to know who I am, know my own limitations, and try not to listen too much. Of course, there are times where people might give me great advice, so I’m not saying that, but there are some times where you just don’t actually need it.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (19:55):

I think that’s some great advice for our listeners as well and our audience of managing that unsolicited advice, like what you said, trusting yourself and almost knowing your body.

Eliza Hull (Guest) (20:05):

And I think I learned that the most through birthing my two kids, for the first birth, I wasn’t allowed to move from the bed in case I did fall when I was giving birth. Luckily, due to my own learning, and advocating, and listening to others with disability, and obviously making the book before I had my second child, and then going into that second birth going, “No, I am going to move actually, and I know that I have a right to.” And then having the most incredible birth in the shower and moving around and on the ball and I was like, “This is what I should’ve been allowed to do the first time.” So again, it’s just that trust yourself and you know your own body better than anybody else.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (20:46):

This is kind of touching on what we were talking about as well, but how have you navigated when you’re not being listened to, if you have any advice to our listeners about if you’re not being listened to?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (20:57):

I think staying strong in yourself, researching as much as you can to know your rights, because I think that we can often get pressured into believing that we have no power when that is actually not the case. Also, finding community, so finding local community support groups, people out there that have similar experiences to you so you feel less alone. I think that making the book and the podcast really brought all of those parents together, and I think we were like, “Ah, you’re going through that as well.” It’s so nice to have people on the same like dealing with something that you feel often can feel really alone in and isolated in. So I think finding community, and again, going back to that, trusting yourself, knowing your rights, researching as much as you can to be as educated as possible is really my advice.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (21:52):

When we’re talking to children about disabilities, what are some helpful ways that you have found to talk to your kids about disability or stigma?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (22:01):

For me, it’s like not being afraid to say disability, I think that we are definitely moving into a time now where we are not using euphemisms like differently, abled, special, handicapped. There’s been a lot of disability slurs that we used to describe people with disability, and now we’re moving into a time where I think everyone identifies in different ways that maybe somebody identifies as autistic or might identify as deaf and not disabled, or having a chronic illness. So I think it’s about trying to teach children that it’s important to know that we all might speak about ourselves in different ways.

(22:42):

But I think I try, and I guess to use my own lived experience to try and just teach my kids that there’s so many people in this world that have a disability, that some people are born with disabilities, some people acquire them later in life, sometimes it might be that people find it difficult to find their own community or their own identity, and that it might take certain people time to even identify with the word, but that doesn’t mean that it is a bad word or something that we should be scared of, and that it can actually make families really fun.

(23:20):

As I said, I made a children’s book called Come Over to My House, and each family are really vibrant, there’s a lot of colour in the illustrations. And for instance, there’s a mother in that book that’s deaf, and she’s dancing with her kids and the music is going, and she might not hear the music, but she feels the vibrations. And I think it’s just that, again, showing that, yes, might do things differently, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s okay to be different.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (23:51):

Yeah, I love that, it’s definitely okay to be different. What about when stigma can turn into shame, have you found ways to stop this happening or when you feel that creeping in?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (24:03):

It’s such a great question, and I think it’s not something that you can ever, in my opinion, completely solve. I think take each day as they come, and some days you feel it more. I can’t really know why that is, why sometimes it hurts more, why sometimes stigma can turn into shame, but I think the shift that I’ve found within myself, it’s taken a long, long time to feel okay with who I am. But I think once I started to realise, as I was saying, that the world is quite disabling and that I can go to my friend’s house for dinner and go into their house, and get straight through the door. And then other times I might go somewhere and they’ve got 12 steps that I can’t get up, and it’s like they’re the different experiences that I can have in the physical world where one world is really disabling, one world, I’m able to be included.

(25:01):

And I think that that can really also be people’s attitudes, so people saying that disability is bad or how could I be happy living my life. And that really used to hurt me when I believed it, but I think once you start to shift and see the value in yourself, understand that you make contribution to the world and that you are wonderful and beautiful just the way you are, that’s when through that kind of self-love and being authentic and true to yourself, knowing who you are, knowing your own power, that’s when you shifts the power away from them and you go, “Actually, you know what? I think that you are just feeding me information that you’ve been taught over the many years, and that actually I’m really comfortable with myself, and I live a great life.” So it’s just kind of flipping that narrative, but it’s not always easy.

(25:56):

And there’s still one thing today that I still struggle with and that is going to the pool or the beach. So we’ve got a family holiday coming up to Thailand with a group of family friends, three families, and it’s really stressing me out because my legs look different, my feet look different, I’ve got toes that curl, I’ve got scars all over my feet, my feet looked slightly, I guess what you’d call deformed because I’ve had so much surgery. They look very different and the way that I walk, they kind of flop on the ground. So I guess it’s the most visible part of my disability is when I’m going to the pool and you can see my legs and feet. And I still hold a lot of shame, and that’s still really, really tricky, and I feel like I’m going to get there, I feel like I’m going to be able to do it in one day, just push through that.

(26:49):

And again, just remembering that it’s not me that needs to change and I don’t need to be fixed like I am who I am, I’m wonderful. It’s just, again, that self-love, self-talk that can flip the narrative around, and try and realise that probably people might not even care, or be worrying about their own bodies, or thinking about themselves. What I guess I want to say is that don’t guilt yourself if you feel shame, and it’s a constant day by day, and it’s constant kind of self-work, and it takes time.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (27:28):

I think really a strong message to send because it does happen and it takes work to get through it. What would you want those who do not have lived experience of navigating a disability to know about how to stand against the stigma and support families who do? So a question that gets asked a lot from able-bodied parents is what do they do if their child is staring at someone with a visible disability, so what is your advice to them in that situation?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (28:02):

Yeah, that’s very tricky, I really feel for parents. It’s tricky on a couple of levels. One is that I think it’s really important that we don’t tell people to look away in a way or like don’t look, don’t engage with that person is kind of what you’re saying. So if you’re a child, you’re basically being told that that person is a problem, and that you shouldn’t be looking at that person because they’re different. And it almost kind of reinforces the stigma that comes with disability in a way. I feel that because I know what it feels like when a parent says that to a child, I’ve been on the other end of it. It makes you feel like it’s almost like you’re a monster, to be honest a little bit. But the other part of that is that it’s not really up to people with disability to be answering lots of questions about their own bodies and lives.

(29:02):

And I know that a lot of people with disability have children and parents that are trying to do the right thing and going like, “Okay, well, we don’t want to push you away from staring, don’t look, don’t look, you’re not allowed to look,” so they might go up to the person and just say, “My child was just wondering why you have a facial difference, or why you walk like that, or why you’re in a wheelchair.” And I think some people with disability really appreciate that because it’s the way and you’ll find that you might answer the question, and then suddenly it’s like the child’s like, “And what is it like going down the hill on the wheelchair?” And then suddenly it flips it, and then suddenly they don’t care and they’re like, “I love your hat,” or they’ll start talking about other things.

(29:47):

So I think some people with this disability really appreciate it, but then I guess there’s others that might think, “You know what, it’s not up to me to educate your child.” And so I think that then goes back to trying to get more representation in your home. So if you have more conversations with your children about disability, and you have more picture books of all the representation of people that are blind, people that are deaf, people that have dwarfism and/or people that have limb difference and might use a hook, and using a hook is not something that’s evil, which has been portrayed in all the kids’ films, really, think about Captain Hook, or a scar or a hook is being used to portray somebody that is bad and evil, whereas flipping that and going, “No, a hook is great for somebody that needs it to pick things up, and it’s incredible that they use it,” so flipping that narrative for children. I think you’ll find if you have those conversations, you have those picture books, they’re not going to be that interested when they’re out in the world because they’ve already spoken about it.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (30:45):

And I think you’re so right about the lack of education and the lack of representation, because as soon as you describe it to a kid, they’re like, “Oh, okay, cool. Got it.” I guess from your experience and from the conversations you’ve had with other families, Eliza, do you find that parents navigating a disability and their children in particular have some invisible skills that other families don’t have?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (31:10):

Yeah, definitely. Just as I said before, that kind of ability to quickly problem solve, I know a parent that has dwarfism and that couldn’t change her baby on the change table because it was too tall and go, “Oh, well, I’ll just cut the legs off, and then just stand it back, so it’s perfectly stable and it’s just the right height now.” So it’s just like that quick thinking or finding the right technology to get your baby out of the car, or using a big tray on your wheelchair so that then when you’re holding your baby, they can be held by you and the tray, or just finding fun ways to make your wheelchair part of your parenting.

(31:50):

So I’ve seen lots of parents that when their children are at the age of roller skating or they’re holding onto the wheelchair and they’re roller skating with their parent on the netball courts, and yeah, it’s just incredible to watch kids see it as something that can be fun and exciting. I think the way that we as people with disability are really resilient in the way that we have been told that we shouldn’t be a parent, like it’ll be too hard, it’s often the narrative, but we still do it anyway. And I think that that’s incredibly rebellious in many ways, but in a really strong way. So I think that they’re our skills, and I think, as I said, that kind of flexibility and adaptability in how we live our lives in our homes and how we show kids what’s possible.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (32:39):

I was just wondering, when you say there is a community out there, if someone is listening and they’re just like, “I don’t have a community,” or, “I don’t know where to even start,” do you have anywhere you would direct anyone to?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (32:52):

Yeah. So if you are a parent with a disability?

Nadia Rossi (Host) (32:54):

Yeah.

Eliza Hull (Guest) (32:54):

So, on social media, if you type in Disability Parenting Project, there’s 8,000 of us that exist in the world, and it’s a really supportive group, so that’s one. If you’re a mother, there’s Disabled Mums, we are an Australian group. We also meet in-person sometimes and also online, just constant advice giving and sometimes just people there to listen as well, so it’s definitely there waiting for you. And I guess also the book, We’ve Got This is a really great resource if you are a person with disability or chronic illness that might just want to feel less alone in either your decision to become a parent or just in your parenting that you can kind of feel the sense of community that is within that book.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (33:39):

Thank you. Thank you so much. Do you have a final message you’d like to leave our audience with?

Eliza Hull (Guest) (33:46):

Just don’t be afraid to be different, don’t be afraid to be yourself, believe in who you are. And I guess, if you are a person with disability, know that it is completely possible and that there is a large group of people waiting for you in the community that are ready to support you and give you advice and tips and little hacks that we’ve found that work and that you can do it even if you’ve been told you can’t. And I guess, if you are a parent with a disability to go gentle on yourself and just try and block out the people that tell you or make you feel shame or stare, or maybe point that you are just incredible parent and that you’ve got this.

Nadia Rossi (Host) (34:33):

Thank you so much, Eliza, for sharing so much of yourself with us today.

Eliza Hull (Guest) (34:37):

No, thank you so much for the opportunity.

Narrator (34:43):

Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au/families for a wide range of free information and resources to help support child and family mental health. Emerging Minds leads the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, the centre is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.