Unapologetic
1 in 4 people lives with some kind of disability. If you don’t often see people with disability it’s not because we don’t exist. It’s because we exist in a world that’s often inaccessible.
There’s a moment almost every FAer knows. You’re running late because transferring took longer than you planned. You’re asking someone to slow down, to repeat themselves, to grab something off a high shelf. You need the aisle seat, take an extra three minutes at the counter. And there it is — that “sorry” forming in your mind before you speak.
Stop for a second. What exactly are you apologising for?
You Have Nothing to Apologise For
Nobody is born apologising for existing. It’s learned. It creeps in slowly — after enough sighs from strangers, enough impatient looks, enough well-meaning but clumsy comments — until “sorry” becomes a reflex that precedes almost everything you do in public. Sorry for the wheelchair taking up room. Sorry for needing a hand. Sorry for talking slower, walking slower, taking longer.
But Friedreich Ataxia isn’t a personal failing. It's a genetic condition. None of us chose it, we didn’t cause it, and we certainly didn’t do anything wrong to deserve managing it. Apologising implies fault. There is no fault here — only a body doing something different than most bodies do, in a world that was mostly built without that difference in mind.
That last part matters. A lot of the friction FAers apologise for isn’t actually about us — it’s about environments that weren’t designed with us in mind. A step instead of a ramp. A conversation that moves too fast for anyone to keep up if their speech takes more effort. Those are gaps in design and attitude. They are not gaps in our worth.
Not a burden
This is worth saying plainly: needing help is not the same as being a burden. Every human being needs other people. That’s not weakness — it’s the entire basis of how communities function. The person who needs a hand with a jacket today might be the person whose sharp wit gets a friend through a hard week tomorrow, or whose advocacy work changes a policy that helps hundreds of people they’ll never meet.
Worth was never measured in physical independence. It never should be. If you find yourself keeping a mental ledger of what you “cost” the people around you — time, patience, adjustments — it’s worth considering where that ledger came from. Chances are it wasn't handed to you by the people who love you. It was handed to you by a culture that’s still learning how to value people properly.
FA is part of the story, not the apology
FA shapes how we move through the world, but it doesn’t diminish what we bring to it. It’s a thread in our story, not a debt we owe anyone. We’re allowed to need accommodations without justifying them. We’re allowed to ask for what we need without a three-sentence preamble explaining that we wish we weren’t “like this.” We're allowed to take the seat, the time, the space, the support — fully, and without shrinking ourselves first.
Think about the FAers who’ve gone before and pushed for change, here in Australia and around the world — the ones who fought for accessible entrances, for the NDIS, for a seat at the table in disability policy, for research dollars. None of them got there by making themselves smaller or quieter or more convenient. They got there by taking up exactly the space their lives required, unapologetically, again and again, until the world had no choice but to adjust.
What Unapologetic actually looks like
Being unapologetic doesn’t mean being rude, or refusing kindness, or never saying thank you. It means something much simpler: not treating your existence, your needs, or your pace as something that requires forgiveness.
It looks like:
Asking for an accessible table without a lengthy explanation of why you need it.
Taking the time you need to answer, to move, to arrive — without narrating an apology for every extra second.
Correcting someone who talks over you or to your support person instead of to you, calmly and without guilt.
Saying “I need help with this” the same way you’d say “I need a coffee” — as a plain fact, not a confession.
Celebrating your wins — in boccia, at work, in advocacy, in daily life — without minimising them because they came with adaptations.
None of that is arrogance. It’s just accuracy. You’re stating what’s true about your life without wrapping it in shame first.
A different habit to build
Old habits don’t vanish overnight, and nobody’s asking you to swap “sorry” for defiance on day one. But next time it’s on the tip of your tongue, try pausing. Ask yourself: am I actually sorry, or am I just used to shrinking?
If it’s the second, try a different sentence. Instead of “sorry for the wait,” try “thanks for your patience.” Instead of “sorry to be a hassle,” try “thanks for helping me sort this out.” Same moment, same need — but one framing carries guilt, and the other carries simple, plain dignity.
For FAers FA is part of who we are. It’s not a flaw needing correction, not a debt needing repayment, and not a reason to make ourselves smaller in rooms we have every right to be in. You get to take up space, ask for what you need, and move through the world at your own pace — unapologetically, because there was never anything to apologise for in the first place.