Eventually, I realised that I wasn’t sharing everyday experiences in the same way as I used to with my friends and family, I was entering a community previously unknown to me. The disability community and all the inequities that comes with it.

Necessity has driven humankind to strategise, design, create and innovate. This need has resulted in contributions, both beneficial, and at times detrimental because we have always strived for ways to fulfil a real or perceived need.

I didn’t always fly, drive and travel with a disability. I took the ease of the booking and travel process very much for granted until Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy (LGMD) forced me to reconsider how I travel, where I travel, and whether travelling was actually worth the effort, in an ablest world where processes, planes and accommodation is very rarely designed for disability.

Enjoying an outing today are we? This was a question I was asked when at my local garden centre recently. One small comment but one huge indictment on society’s perceptions of disability.

For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…I said this to Leanne more than 30 years ago; I meant it then and I mean it now. Plenty of us have said these words, and I bet few of us really thought about what they meant. Few of us really could.

Caring for someone in a physically or mentally vulnerable situation can at times be a more draining, compromising and lonely experience than their afflicted charges bear. Our disabled are marginalised, and our carers are seriously overlooked. I discuss how we can all help the support people around us.

My life would be so unimaginably 'less than' without my wonderful, supportive, unpaid carer AKA my husband, Gaz. And like millions of unpaid and loving carers around the world he doesn't question his role because he's that kinda guy and we have always been a team.

I saw buying my first wheelchair as a pragmatic choice, thinking of my safety, the convenience of those around me and my quality of life; but looking back now, I was not in touch with my true emotions and was harbouring a generous amount of resentment and sadness towards my situation.

Revelatory experiences come in all shapes and sizes and mine came in the form of a five-day stay on one of Australia’s tropical treasures - Hamilton Island. The peaceful, palm-filled hilly mound is a tiny part of the island enclave known as the Whitsundays in North Queensland.

My epiphany was:

‘I am – undeniably – physically disabled.’

In the winter of 2016 Gaz and I became the owners of a Kia Carnival. Not our empty ester vehicle of choice but you can’t have everything. In spring of that year I became the wheelchair-using passenger in the newly accessibly modified Kia Carnival.

The independence brought by being in the driver’s seat is generally unspoken. So what happens when the ability to drive is no longer or has never been available to you due to circumstances out of your control, your disability?

Acquiring the symptoms of a progressive condition takes some getting used to but why do so many of us feel the need to cloak these changes in an ugly cape of lies (to ourselves and others), excuses and denial? Why do we cling to the old normalcy so frantically? And what harm are we doing to ourselves in the process?.