Erin, who is a supported employee with Somerset Council working with HR Admin and Payroll, has shared a very powerful poem she crafted about her experience of living with a disability. You can read the poem below:

I never had a choice in what I have, all I wanted was acceptance and support.

I didn’t choose to have a disability and struggle in education.

I didn’t choose to need support.

I didn’t choose to get discriminated against just for being born with a disability.

I didn’t choose not to be able to get the education and the support I deserved.

Just remember with almost every disability it was never the disabled person’s choice.

So, make your choice to try and help remove the barriers society sets for them.

Then they can live life to the fullest potential they deserve.

Erin has shared how she came up with this amazing poem:

“I was just thinking when I was in a meeting observing and talking about my lived experience. I had to complete the PowerPoint for the inclusion day, and it just came to me – I just started writing with passion and feeling of what I’ve experienced and what others have experienced.”

“The passion and hyper-focus just came, and I typed and typed! When I was finished, I realised I had written a poem on acceptance and support, not just for me, but for every individual living with a Disability, and about the fight we must go through every day just to get the same rights as those without.”

Thank you so much to Erin for sharing her words and her experience. Let us keep fighting to remove those barriers, so Erin and others can flourish.