Just because a person’s disability can’t be seen doesn’t negate the fact that action should be taken to support them. And just because our coworkers’ battles aren’t visible doesn’t mean that they don’t exist and aren’t very real and prevalent in their personal lives. When I came across this New York Times article detailing the struggles that employees with invisible disabilities experience in the workplace, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of passion for a topic that hits so close to home.Ī popular phrase in the workplace is, “if you see something, say something” – but I would question that way of thinking because we can’t always see others’ struggles. But Sydney knows that she’s not normal and as she’s grown up, I’ve watched her work hard to appear like everyone else, silently struggling to cover up the fact that she has an invisible disability. As a family we established habits of holding her hand at nighttime, reading her subtitles during movies, and never asking her to drive. Her eyes shake, she wears glasses on top of contacts, small or fast-moving objects don’t appear to her, and visibility mostly disappears in the dark.
Because of this, she struggles to see like most people. At birth, she was diagnosed with bilateral cataracts which basically means she was born blind and had her lenses removed at two weeks old to have a chance at sight. Growing up in my house, helping my younger sister Sydney was just normal. Yet, as a society, we still tend to shy away from those who don’t seem to fit the mold of our concept of “normal.” If I have learned one thing since dipping my toe into adulthood, it’s that no person is perfectly “normal.” No set of traits makes up the perfect human because everyone struggles with something out of the ordinary, some are just able to hide their differences more than others.