Hannah Diviney: Aspirations - episode 2

When I was a kid, I loved drama and I did go through a phase of wanting to be an actor.
And that was a very aspirational, shiny, bright life that I wanted to have.
So began a childhood of exploring, creating, feeling frustrated, feeling different, feeling pretty invisible.
Because I also didn't have any real frames of reference for disabled people, either in imagined worlds or the real ones.
And if I saw disabled people represented as a kid, I saw them one of two ways, which was Paralympic success, which obviously only happens every four years.
Then the other option was road safety ads whether that be not to drink drive, not to speed, not to drive tired.
And obviously, like the best way they could reinforce that fear, the most striking image they could give you was a person in a wheelchair who very much felt their life was over.
And for me as a kid, like obviously cerebral palsy is a permanent disability, It's something I've had since I was born and it's something I will continue to have for as long as I'm on the planet.
At like six, seven years old, kind of internalising that like my life is meant to be over before it begins and then it was like, Whoa, where are the disabled actors?
And then you realise, Oh, there aren't any.