The Wolf Finally Frees Itself - a column by Brianna Albers

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Brianna Albers (she/her) is a crip cyborg storyteller living in Minneapolis-St. Paul. In 2016, she founded Monstering, a magazine for disabled women and nonbinary people. She consults as a patient ambassador for SMA My Way and writes the column “The Wolf Finally Frees Itself” for SMA News Today. She is currently revising THE SAINT AND THE SPIDER, an adult space fantasy with #OwnVoices disability representation. Find her on social media @briehalbers.

As Someone With SMA, the Fight for My Life Never Ends

It’s become a sort of ritual. Once every few weeks around 3 p.m., my mom will drop by my room. “So,” she’ll say, with ridiculous amounts of forced brightness. “So.” Code word for “We need to talk.” Code word for “I just checked the mail, and you’re not going to…

My SMA Friends Remind Me That It’s OK to Rest

You already know that for the longest time, I didn’t want friends with SMA. I was young and desperate to be seen as “cool” (whatever that means), but more than that, I was dumb. I thought that being seen with “people like me” would ruin my street cred —…

How a Head Cold Saved My Life (Figuratively)

We all know that I hate getting up early. Just like I hate adjusting to a new wheelchair — I’ll do it if I have to, but that doesn’t mean I won’t complain about it. So you can imagine my dismay when my caregiver sent me the most dreaded…

For the Love of Frozen Breakfast Food

For the longest time, winters were a joyful occasion. It wasn’t that I liked the snow, or the sickness, or the slog of self-isolation. I didn’t want to stay home for a third of the school year. I didn’t want to wrestle with long division and cellular anatomy all by…

I’m Learning to Embrace a New Shoe

I’m notorious for despising new wheelchairs. It’s not just the discomfort. It’s the painstaking process of calibration — tweaking and experimenting and grumbling under my breath, because my head needs to be tilted a certain way, and how am I supposed to adjust to a completely different headrest? Not to…

This Year, I Want to Be Brave

Inspired by Susannah Conway, I’ve started to assign a word — yes, a single word — to the upcoming year, as a kind of landmark. Something to focus on as I go through the seasons, so I don’t lose track of what’s important to me. Your word is, in essence,…