Having only “discovered” Shane Burcaw and his work fairly recently, I’m a bit late to the party of Laughing At My Nightmare (I mean he’s already written an entirely new book, Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse, its already out and looks awesome, just FYI). Since I’ve enjoyed his work on Youtube and Instagram, I thought to pick up a copy of Laughing At My Nightmare and give it a go. I went with the Audiobook version, and listened a lot in the evenings before bed.

I enjoyed the lighthearted and humorous way that Burcaw writes in, it was definitely fun. Shane and I actually share the same rare condition; Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Because it’s a rare condition, I often feel a bit of an affinity when hearing stories of people with SMA, and this book was no exception. Though Shane and I appear to be different types on the SMA spectrum, I had so many “yep, I know how that feels” moments while reading. Growing up in Muscular Dystrophy communities, I understood the culture of the childhood MD camps he went on, as I went to many myself over the years. I know the frustration of getting measured up for new wheelchairs or how SMA bodies work – the whole “I need my leg to be in this exact angle in order to hold myself in this particular position” was something I really related to. People who don’t have a disability like that, just do not understand how delicate that balance can be when your muscles are weaker, especially when it comes to seating in a wheelchair.

The thing that I reflected a lot on in Laughing At My Nightmare, was how Shane understood himself as a person with a disability, and how he related to other people with a disability in the book. For me, as a disabled person, though I acknowledge all people with disability are different, as an adult person, I don’t differentiate that much from other disabilities in my head. I see how we’re different, but I also acknowledge we have some shared life experiences. In Laughing At My Nightmare, there is a lot of discussion in which he appears to differentiate himself from other types of disabilities and the people who experience them. Sometimes these experiences negatively frame a person with a vastly different disability to Shane – when I read some other reviews online, that was the one main issue I saw repeated from the disability community.

All people with disability experience disability differently. For Shane, I got a really clear sense he was trying to assure the reader he was not like this person or that, but entirely himself. It’s not a bad thing, though given this book was written a few years ago now, it’s possible his views have changed. It’s also important to note Shane was a young person himself and still trying to find his way in the world, so you can’t really blame him for having views that are not entirely formed. I wonder if this view of himself in relation to disability has changed, or if at the time of writing he was aware of that perception. It’s not a criticism by any stretch, merely an observation – we all change how we feel about ourselves and how we see others over time, and this may have happened for Shane too, I’ll have to read his next book to find out (I definitely will be picking up a copy soon!).

I know for me, my experience and view of disability has adapted and changed over time. I used to see this same distance between me and other people with a disability when I was quite young, but more and more as I grew up, I saw the sense of community, of shared fights for access – fights for access socially, culturally, for support, for accessibility itself, the list goes on and on. Though we might have very different disabilities or impairments physically, the experience of disability in a socio-cultural sense is shared. The things we experience as a result of inaccessibility, of ableism, of discrimination, of unequal human rights – are shared. For me, though I acknowledge I am an individual, my individuality is not diminished because I share experiences with other marginalised people. If I diminish those experiences in a sense, I also diminish my own experience of disability.

I guess that point could go on an even deeper tangent, because it is a question essentially of what makes us the same vs what makes us individuals, and how should we embrace which aspect at a given time – but I think I’ll leave it there for now for myself and others to ponder.