We often think of disability as something we can see—a white cane, a wheelchair, a prosthetic limb, hearing aids, someone with an obvious gait variation. But many disabilities aren’t visible to the eye. Some are hidden, some non-apparent, some called invisible. Each word gestures toward the same truth: the body and mind can carry immense stories others may never notice.
A hidden disability is one a person chooses or needs to keep private. A non-apparent disability isn’t immediately recognizable, even if disclosed. An invisible disability is simply unseen, though its effects are deeply felt.
Telling my story is how I make what’s hidden and invisible known – it’s how I give shape and language to experiences that live in the shadows. It’s how I make my inner landscape visible, truthfully, and in my own words.
A Week for What’s Unseen
Every October, during Hidden Disability Awareness Week, the world pauses—if only briefly—to recognize the millions of people whose disabilities aren’t immediately visible. For some of us, that recognition feels deeply personal. Our bodies and minds may carry histories that don’t announce themselves to the world yet shape experiences and choices and ability.
For me, that’s the truth of living with non-apparent and hidden disabilities.
My Hidden Story
I live with chronic, complex post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m a cancer survivor. I have life-threatening food allergies. I have hearing loss and a vestibular disorder that makes the world tilt and spin when others think it’s standing still.
My earliest memories are stitched with a feeling of being numb.
I was three years old when my alcoholic father put his cigarette out on the face of my favorite doll. That same summer, he sliced a snake in half in front of me because I had called out to him—it was slithering near the blanket where my baby sister and I sat.
My mother ran from the house, scooped up the baby, and disappeared inside. My father flicked his cigarette into the yard and walked away. I folded the blanket neatly and put it in the hall closet. I was told to “watch the baby.” I did a good job.
At five, the neighbor assaulted me. Afterward, I went outside sat in a mud puddle, flicking muddy water over myself for hours. My therapist says that was a dissociative moment. I just remember feeling gone.
When I was seventeen, I joined what turned out to be a religious cult. I was assaulted there too—so many times that the memories blur. I remember running down a dorm hallway, searching for a shower, then melting into the floor. Another dissociative moment.
At age thirty, doctors named another layer of my reality: vestibular migraine—a disorder that brings vertigo instead of head pain and is often tied to hearing loss. I learned that I could float down hallways instead of walk. I liked that—my therapist says those were dissociative moments too.
At fifty-two, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. During radiation prep, when I told the oncologist that bending my head backward would make me dizzy, she slapped my face and forced me into position anyway. When it was over, I got so dizzy I collapsed and threw up on the floor. I don’t remember how I got home. My therapist says that, too, was dissociation.
By fifty-five, I was seeing little blobs of light—ghost friends, maybe—who seemed to follow me and hang out with me. Once I woke up in a parking lot in a town I didn’t recognize. “Rogers, Minnesota,” the store clerk said when I asked where I was. “Is that anywhere near St. Paul?” I asked. Another dissociative moment.
I’ve spent the past ten years in intensive therapy, filling in the spaces between these moments, learning how trauma lodges in the body and distorts balance, hearing, memory, and thought.
The through lines of my life are clear: support has been hard to find.
My mother picked up the baby and left her three-year-old to fold the blanket.
My father left—with his cigarettes.
Leaders assaulted me.
An oncologist slapped my face.
I found comfort on concrete sidewalks and cement shower floors.
I’ve had to learn that my way in the world is hypervigilant. Sometimes I hurt all over. Sometimes words vanish. Sometimes I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do. And sometimes the weight of it all makes me want to disappear.
The Cost of Being “Fine”
I’ve heard every variation of dismissal our culture offers:
“You look fine.”
“You’re smarter than that—what’s your problem?”
“What do you mean you can’t remember, we were both THERE!”
Fluorescent lights in stores make me feel like I’m in a wind tunnel, searching for a wall to hold. Designers insist dizzying patterns are “beautiful,” and I fight to have them removed because, for me and many others, they’re painful. When I tell people I have hearing loss, some turn away as they speak. I ask them to look at me, and they exaggerate their words, annoyed at having to repeat themselves. Someone shows up at a party proclaiming, “This dessert is so yummy, but you can’t have any because it has peanuts.”
Yet not everyone responds that way.
There are people who give me extra time, who face me when they talk, who don’t mind repeating themselves. Friends who consider allergies when planning a gathering. Colleagues who respect my expertise in mental health disability and even enjoy my goofiness.
Their kindness proves how simple understanding can be when empathy leads the way—and how powerful it is when the unseen becomes seen.
Why Hidden Disability Awareness Week Matters
Hidden Disability Awareness Week began through the Invisible Disabilities Association to make experiences like mine visible and valid. It coincides with National Disability Employment Awareness Month, reminding us that inclusion doesn’t end at what is apparent.
Across the world, people mark this week by sharing their stories, wearing the sunflower lanyard, hosting discussions, and urging workplaces and communities to design with everyone in mind. It’s a time to believe in one another, to offer support to those whose hidden reality is disabling, and to remember that every disability is valid—visible or not.
Noticing What’s Hidden
If you know someone living with a hidden disability, believe them. Don’t make assumptions. Ask what helps—and respect the answer.
If you live with one yourself, it may not help to try to convince people of your reality. It may be worthwhile to seek a community of belonging. If needed, you are entitled to workplace accommodations. You have a right to rest, to request time to heal, to seek safety. You have a right to take up room in this world exactly as you are.
Telling our stories is an act of visibility. It bridges the gap between what is hidden and what is known. Whether we call our experiences hidden, non-apparent, or invisible, they are real—and sharing them makes space for understanding.
Our disabilities may be hidden; our humanity isn’t.
When I tell my story, raw, imperfect, and real – I become more connected to myself and more connected to others. I truly believe that our stories are interesting and helpful to build solidarity and belonging.
Bringing it Back to My Work
Last summer, I was hosting the MCD exhibit booth at the Polk County Fair. A fellow exhibitor noticed us setting up. He kept looking over—curious, but hesitant. Throughout the week, he’d stop by and study our mental health posters without taking one.
Finally, on the last day, he walked over and asked if he could have the poster “Passage Through the Formidable Night”, which depicts a mental health journey.
“Of course,” I said, handing it to him. “It’s been nice working alongside you this week.”
He paused, smiled, and asked quietly, “So this is about disability, right?”
“Yep,” I said.
He nodded and said, “I belong with you guys.”
We were both hidden in that barn, tucked away in our comfort zones. But in that small moment of honesty, we found belonging.
That’s why telling these stories matters. Because stories about hidden disabilities don’t just reveal what’s unseen—they invite connection. They remind us that visibility isn’t about being looked at; it’s about being known. When we speak our truths, we help others recognize themselves, and we build a world where belonging isn’t conditional on being understood at first glance.
When we name what’s hidden, we draw a new map of understanding—one where no one has to disappear to be believed.
Turning Setbacks into Steppingstones
Growing up, stuttering shaped nearly every part of my life, how I spoke in class (or whether I spoke at all), where and how I joined activities, if and how I had friend, and how others treated me. Because I stuttered, I was often bullied, marginalized, isolated, and unsure of where I fit. But over time, what began as a limitation became a teacher. It taught me how to economize my words, how to listen deeply, and how to empathize with others who have been marginalized in different ways.
Stuttering runs on the male side of my father’s family, a shared experience, though each of us speaks to it differently. For me, it began as a moderate to severe stutter. After many years of speech therapy and counseling, it’s milder now, though it can still become pronounced depending on the situation.
Overall, though, I would say that my stutter is non-apparent; it’s not immediately obvious to others. That can make things harder when it surfaces unexpectedly. For that reason, I often try to get ahead of it and explain that I stutter, especially when I’m stepping into a speaking role.
For the first half of my life, I leaned out of my disability. These days, I lean into it. My hands, at times, moved faster than my tongue, and that’s how I became fluent in American Sign Language. That journey led me to the Deaf Community, and from there to the broader disability community. I may not know what it’s like to be Deaf, or to use a wheelchair, or live on the spectrum, but I do know what it feels like to stand at a ticket counter, unable to speak, under the gaze of impatient travelers, to be judged as “stupid,” or even asked “what’s wrong with me,” when I’m simply trying to get the words out.
Stuttering is the proverbial horse I rode in on, the one that carried me into disability advocacy. Not simply as routine job, or even as a career in public service, but as a mission: to turn what I once saw as adversity into opportunity, and what I feared was a setback into a steppingstone.