LeftyByDefault.com – Laura Overstreet

The text of this blog is short to tell you about the podcast I just did with Many Worlds Network creator Alexander Kaminsky.  We chatted about my perspectives and experiences with disability.  Good fun for a Sunday.  Check it out here!  It plays for about 28 minutes.

Rachel Simon, bestselling author of Riding The Bus with My Sister, is releasing the paperback edition of her latest book, The House on Teacher’s Lane, on Tuesday, May 25th. I read Riding The Bus with My Sister, a memoir about Simon and her sister Beth who has developmental disabilities, when it came out in 2002 [...]

I am honored to have my first guest post at FWD! Cross-posted at FWD/Forward: FWD (feminists with disabilities) for a way forward Book Review – Dancing at the River’s Edge: A Patient and her Doctor Negotiate Life with Chronic Illness by Alida Brill and Michael D. Lockshin, M.D. Alida Brill first landed on the “other [...]

Monday I put on my well-worn disability awareness speaker hat and spoke to a college class about ableism, able-bodied privilege. (Well, it’s not really a hat but more of a speaker voice I tune. It’s only slightly different than my usual voice. I can’t command it, it just happens.) It was a human services class [...]

I have spent most of this week hoteling it. We had vinyl floor taken up in the kitchen and hardwood floor put down, and that floor along with the other existing hardwoods, were sanded, stained, and protected with polyurethane. Dusty, smelly, and obstacle-creating. The hotel existence was odd though. The first time I’ve stayed in [...]

I have spent the past couple of months working on a few retrospective writing projects. In doing so my senses have been in overdrive and my memories have seemed to rush through in new and invigorating ways. Yesterday was no exception. I made a trip to Shepherd Center and Piedmont Hospital for an appointment with [...]

The ABC medical drama Private Practice, a spin-off of the popular Grey’s Anatomy, has been a favorite of mine since it began in 2007. The show is about two private holistic medical practices in Los Angeles. They do a little bit of everything: psychotherapy, fertility, alternative medicine, pediatrics, sexology, general practice, genetics, and super duper [...]

Yesterday was a an absolutely gorgeous Georgia day. I believe the temperature got above 70 degrees, and I was dressed in my favorite spring attire: smooth, khaki colored dress pants, a pink and white striped Oxford shirt, and a white pullover cable-knit sweater. I was just a few colors short of an Easter egg. With [...]

I am the Maid of Honor for one of my best friend’s, Johanna’s, wedding coming up August 1st – woohoo! I am very honored that she asked me and looking forward to the big day. Getting a Maid of Honor dress has been a little more difficult, simply because I need separates and sizing is [...]

Recently, I have noticed some bloggers discussing the pressure they feel to be happy, funny, proud, and/or any number of similar adjectives at all times despite the pain, frustration, or any number of similar experiences of disability and chronic illness. I will not recount all of the theoretical issues that make up these arguments because [...]