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It’s only been a month since I started using Periscope, thanks to the wonderful Amiyrah Martin and her Periscope session at #TypeACon, but I think I know what I’m supposed to do now. I joined the #PeriGirls for the support of wonderful women on Periscope, and they have been wonderful. I joined #LoveTribe to promote myself more within another supportive community. But within the last week, as I’ve been fighting off a nasty chest cold in addition to my regular assortment of chronic illnesses, I realized there was still a need for a niche support community that did not yet exist: disabled scopers.
People with disabilities of all kinds already populate the Periscope support communities I belong to, but what makes us all unique is only “what we scope” to those communities at large. But our unique challenges and abilities are only part of the pitch to get people to follow us. I want a place where we can support each other and share advice about how even turning the video camera on ourselves can be a challenge that we overcome each and every time we broadcast.
So I created one.
If you are on Periscope and have any sort of visible or invisible disability – mental, physical, neurological, etc. – join the #ABLEscope Facebook group during its founding stage. I can’t do this alone, and that’s kind of the whole point. We all need each other. Here are is our mission statement:
#ABLEscope is a supportive group to help promote disabled scopers. Our goals are to provide and promote awareness, advocacy, education, and community for people with varying ability levels.
You can be as active as you’d like (or are able to be) in the group, even if that means we don’t see you for weeks at a time. We all have our own “stuff,” and we’ll only ever have kind words and encouragement for each other. I want to help people who may be physically isolated from others due to their disabilities to connect with people online through Periscope, which I feel is a much better platform for getting to know each other than any other medium. Facebook and online support groups are good, but they’re only text. When you see me on Periscope, you get to know me better as a person. When I see you on Periscope, I get to know you better as a person. We make better connections that way.
I know this group may never take off, but I believe that it will. I believe that everything that has happened to me up until this point in time may have been leading to this moment. I got my Master’s Degree in Applied Social & Community Psychology because I wanted to help people. I had to leave the field only a little more than two years after I joined the workforce because I was not emotionally strong enough to handle the empathetic strain of the heartbreaking work I was doing with kids at a local psychiatric hospital. I was without purpose for a few years before I found my place as a writer and a social influencer. And now, on this Periscope platform that had intimidated me until only a month ago, I think I may be able to put my unique combination of skills and personal experience to good use.
Join #ABLEscope for support and to be supported, to educate and be educated. Let’s help each other find our places in this too-often ableist world of ours. Together, we rise!
That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.
