Flexibility is the key

Diane Driedger is a writer, poet, painter and adult educator. She is the author or editor of five books, of which three are on the disability movement. Diane is currently a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba.

Diane says:

When I think about my experience as a woman in the economy there are two things that come up: my work as a volunteer and my transformation from able-bodied to disabled worker. First, I grew up in a Mennonite home where service in the community was emphasized, so I always wanted to do that kind of work. When I received an opportunity to help organize an international organization of disabled persons, I jumped at the chance. It was a voluntary service job with the Mennonite Central Committee, Canada. This meant that I worked for a year and was paid a subsistence allowance. At age 20 it was all a grand and idealistic adventure. I volunteered, the people in my church said I was wonderful, the assignment was wonderful. I traveled to Asia and we organized that disabled peoples group.

Next, I volunteered for committees while I studied at the university. I sat on some five committees at a time and chaired some of them and hired staff for new projects for disabled persons in the community. I had a missionary zeal. But, over time, one can get burned out and others can expect that same fervor of voluntary work from you and well, you aren't being paid and you're getting tired and oh well, yes, I was still told I was wonderful by the people I was serving. But, after a while, you see that others in your peer group don't do this volunteering anymore, especially the men and you see that there are a lot of women that you are volunteering with. You realize that the men are out making money, not volunteering. So, then is women's work voluntary work? The work still needs doing and then you realize that disabled persons' projects are not the most attractive to mainstream society either, and in fact, the funding is very low for disabled people's groups.

Then, I became a person with disability myself. Before I was an ally and I wanted justice and equity for all people. But, now, I dealt with disability twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. This is a totally different experience than being the volunteer or the office worker. I never got away from disability. It was always with me, in my body, being carried from place to place, a backpack that I could never put down. I wasn't used to the new role. This meant that it wasn't just wonderful allying with disabled persons anymore, this had to do with me. It was now a reality TV show…it spun its plots in my every waking hour. With chronic pain and less mobility due to fibromyalgia, a kind of arthritis of the muscles, I found I couldn't do much volunteer work anymore and in fact, now I had to find the energy to be able to do enough paid work to support myself.

This was a dilemma. How can I have volunteered so much and then when I need the help of the community to survive, this doesn't seem to count? That is, I needed job accommodations like flexible working hours and part time hours and working at home so that I could rest in-between. It was hard to find a well paying job that would "let" you do this. I was offered jobs and then when I said I needed to work at home so that I could rest, they said, "No, you have to be in the office to be part of our team." The fact that this could have been worked out, so I was in office at 'team meetings' was not discussed. In other words, if we cannot 'see' you working in front of us, you are not working. This is difficult for a girl raised a hard-working Mennonite…I felt lazy, I felt less a part of society.

I decided that I needed to try to get well. I saw that the harsh Manitoba winters made me worse for at least six months of the year. All that cold didn't interface well with sore muscles. I looked to Trinidad, in the Caribbean, a place I had worked in while working with the disability movement. The Disabled Women's Network there wanted me to teach a self-esteem and body image course for them over the winter months. I decided to go to Trinidad for the winter of 1997-98. I volunteered once again and this experience taught me about being a woman with a disability. Yes, I was the teacher in a class of women with various disabilities, ages 12 to 80, but they taught me a lot. We shared about our physical difficulties moving around, finding an accessible society, finding flexible work, but we mostly talked about what it meant to be WOMEN with the disabilities we lived with. We published a booklet of essays and poems resulting from the self-esteem course. It was launched with Cabinet ministers present and it was reviewed by the national newspapers. I stayed in Trinidad another two winters. Finally, I felt a lot better and I decided to return to Canada full-time.

I looked around for accessible job options. That is, where can I find the most flexibility at the best pay so that I can make a decent living with the energy that I have? I decided to enter a Ph.D. program in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba this year. It's a hard slugfest to grind out the classes and the papers with fatigue and pain, but I know that already, I can do this, because I can work at home, lie down when I need to, get extensions on assignments as my disability becomes exacerbated. When I graduate in two and a half years, with a doctorate in the area of language and literacy, I hope to be better situated to obtain a more flexible job in a university or college setting.

To learn about the experiences of other women with disabilities and to read one of Diane's poems visit Economics of Ability.

To see Diane's writing profile visit the Manitoba Writers' Guild.