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.

Disabled and Proud of My ‘Cyborg’ Self

Game developers will never embrace accessibility — unless they realize how much the medium means to disabled people. So, continuing with the theme of last week’s column, I want to talk a bit about “Star Wars: The Old Republic” (SWTOR),…

Eating a Monster Meal with Friends

Last night, I asked my dad what I should write about for my next column about life with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). “Why you don’t write about the struggles you have with eating?” he suggested. I laughed. “No one wants…

Turning Improbabilities into Possibilities

I experimented with highlights in middle school. I wanted to get this professionally done, but my mother, who’s been dyeing her own hair for probably longer than I’ve been alive, insisted we use a box kit, like the kind you find at Target. It became a…

A Storyteller’s Tale: On Being Seen

I have called myself a writer for the longest time, and in many ways, I suppose I still do. I am, after all, a writer. But I have long since changed my Twitter bio from “writer” to “storyteller” because “storyteller” is far more reflective of who I am…

SMA: The Wolf Finally Frees Itself

I was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at nine months of age. No one ever knows what SMA is, so I always say it has something to do with my cells and their ability — or, I suppose, inability — to communicate. My brain tells my body to…