95. Disability Identity, Chronic Illness and Community: Owning Your Story with Sarah Napoli

“It is valuable for our culture and our society to work towards disability rights, disability justice, and a disability inclusive lens, because it's going to benefit all of us.”- Sarah Napoli

Each of us, at some point in life, will have some type of disabling experience whether that’s from natural aging, illness, burnout, trauma, accidents or structural factors. Building communities of care and mentorship, and undoing ablism is integral to our collective sustainability and wellbeing. In today’s episode, disability activist Sarah Napoli and I talk about visible vs. invisible disability, why chronic illness and experiences like long covid count as disability, and the bridges between mental health and disability communities.

In this episode we discuss:

• the importance of disability identity and mentorship
• why ablism isn’t just about access
• invisible disability and overcoming the ‘pity’ or ‘superhero’ narratives
• why disability rights benefit all of us
• owning your own narrative
• why chronic illness communities should start to use disability and power in unity
• learning different types of rest
• dating and having relationships with disabilities
• difference between disability rights, disability inclusion, and disability justice
• mental health and disability intersections
• passions hobbies and the things that make us feel alive - bridging hip hop and activism

Bio

Sarah Napoli has been teaching and training in the field of social justice, diversity and inclusion, intercultural relations, advocacy and human rights for over 20 years. She is originally from northwest Indiana, outside of Chicago and has called Japan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington, Vermont, England, New York and currently New Jersey home. She is the learning services director at the Disability & Philanthropy Forum. From 2019-2023, she acted as the lead disability inclusion project officer within the people and culture Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity team at Open Society Foundations, where she developed and facilitated disability inclusion learning and embedded proactive disability inclusive practices throughout the global network. Sarah spent many years teaching and conducting training on social justice and advocacy in higher education and nonprofits, most recently as the director for the inaugural Center for Inclusion at Manhattanville College and as the assistant head of Goodricke College at the University of York, England. She specializes in facilitating engaging workshops and designing curriculum that challenge and encourage participants to foster a culture of inclusion.

She holds two MA degrees, one in social justice in intercultural relations from the SIT graduate institute and one in applied human rights from the University of York. She identifies as a proud disabled person and enjoys chatting about Geek culture—all things fantasy and sci/fi and her former life as a hip hop researcher and dancer. Her research on how hip hop creates human rights identities was recently published in the University of Michigan press text, For the Culture: Hip Hop and the Fight for Social Justice.

She has conducted workshops and training all over the USA and in the world, including Japan, Guatemala, throughout Europe, South Africa, and Canada.

Sarah's LinkedIn

The Disabled Mindset - Embracing My Disability Identity

For the Culture: Hip Hop and the Fight for Social Justice

Links