Wandering the Lines – a Column by Sherry Toh

Sherry “Elisa” Toh (she/her) is a Singaporean native navigating life with SMA Type II and chronic neuropathy. She was diagnosed at 13 months by none other than Dr. Lee Wei Ling, after a referral from a GP. Sherry is a hopeless romantic whose loves include fairy tales, mythology, antiheroes, video games, and tea. She is planning on pursuing a BA in English Lit, but for now she’s enjoying freelance work and volunteering for communities and causes she believes in. She hopes her columns will offer community and catharsis to those who need it. Find her @musiquevers on social media.

There’s No Success Without Rest

As you get older, proper rest tends to become an appointment you have to schedule. It’s something you have an abundance of when you’re an infant, but its presence steadily decreases in your life once school, work, and social engagements take up increasing space. I’ve witnessed this phenomenon among my…

The Terror and Beauty of Miracles

I had different plans for this week’s column. As I write this, I have a spreadsheet open with my column schedule. Next to the deadline date I’ve typed “TFIOS column,” which stands for “The Fault in Our Stars,” a young adult romance novel by John Green that explores how…

To Me, Eugenics Proves That Society Is Inaccessible

How would you expect someone with a disability to react upon reading an account of a nondisabled man essentially telling a disabled woman she shouldn’t exist? Would you expect them to react with despair? Fear? Rage? I reacted by laughing hysterically. The chronic pain and increasing fatigue caused by the…

Houston, We Have a(n Intersectionality) Problem

If Broadway’s Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a musical based on my column, the word “value” would be a leitmotif with its own melody. Anyone who reads my column regularly will know I talk about the value of disabled folks often, that it’s what every one of my arguments boils down…