“I guess I’m in between” A conversation with my mother about disability.
by Ylva Söderfeldt “Disabilities? I don’t have any!” This is my mother making a joke when I asked her if I could interview her for the blog. She’s visiting from Sweden to hang out with her grandkids (and me), something she does often as she’s mostly retired from her work as a neurologist. My mother is a professor of neurology, holds an M.D. and a Ph. D., and still practices medicine sometimes. She has four children and seven grandchildren. Born in 1946, she belongs to the post-war generation and although she was quite busy raising children and building a career, she has also been a life-long activist. She is also hearing impaired since birth and now has a cochlear implant. I’m her youngest child, now a historian, and have focused on Deaf history for most of my career, a topic I got acquainted with through her. I wanted to talk with her about the many ways in which disability figures in our lives. The thought I had was to have a conversation with you about disability from different