A Message from Theo Braddy: Life Happens
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Hello again. This is Theo W. Braddy, Executive Director of the National Council on Independent Living, bringing you another message. This one I call “Life Happens”.
One of my family members is in his seventies. Until recently, he lived a life most people would describe as healthy. No major hospital stays. No daily medications. No need for help getting through the day. His body mostly did what he asked of it, when he asked.
Then life changed.
He became ill suddenly, and in ways he was not prepared for. Bladder and kidney issues now require him to use internal catheters. He needs medication. He needs assistance. And he is not handling it well.
He struggles with the catheter. He resists the medication. He has an especially hard time accepting care from others. What has shaken him the most is not just the illness; it is the loss of independence he never imagined losing.
Watching him has stirred a reaction from me and caused me to write this message.
I have lived with a disability since I was fifteen years old. I have used both internal and external catheters. I have needed assistance with daily life activities for most of my life. This is not unfamiliar territory for me. This is my everyday reality.
That contrast between his shock and my lifelong adaptation has been impossible to ignore.
For many people, independence is taken for granted. It is invisible until it appears. You do not think about your bladder until it stops cooperating. You do not think about needing help until you cannot get through the day without it. And you do not think seriously about disability until you are forced to confront it.
Millions of people live every day with what society often labels “major health issues.” That causes them to use catheters, medications, needing assistance and lifelong supports. Even navigating systems and an environment that were never designed with them in mind. This is not a temporary disruption. This is life.
Yet too often, these realities remain poorly understood, not because people are unkind, but because they are uneducated and unexposed. We have built a culture where disability is something to feel sorry about, not something to learn from.
If we truly want to be better prepared for the realities of life, education must come before crisis.
Education means listening to disabled people, but it does not stop there. It also means interacting. Working alongside us. Being in community with us. Learning from our lived experience before you need it yourself.
Understanding disability cannot come only from sympathy or secondhand stories. It comes from proximity, participation, and honest engagement.
My family member’s struggle is not a personal failure. It is the result of a society that does not teach people how to live with changing bodies, and shared support, or interdependence. We teach independence as the goal, but we rarely teach the ability to adapt as a skill.
Disability does not only arrive through birth or accident. Often it comes with age. Sometimes it comes quietly. Sometimes all at once. But for most people, it comes eventually.
The real question is not whether life will change us.
The question is whether we will have taken the time to learn before it does.
I have been living these lessons for decades. My family member is being introduced to them abruptly.
My hope is that others do not wait until life forces the lesson. Seek education now. Engage with disabled people now. Learn how millions of us navigate our days, not as an abstract idea, but as a lived reality.
Because when life happens to you, what you will need most is not only medical care, but also knowledge, adaptability, and the understanding that none of us, I mean none of us, gets through life alone.
So, I will leave you with these questions:
If your body changed tomorrow, would you be prepared or would you finally start learning from the people you once overlooked?
Lastly, what happens when life hands you what others have been living with all along? Life happens!
This is Theo W. Braddy, Executive Director of the National Council on Independent Living. Until we speak again. Bye-bye now.
Theo Braddy
Executive Director
National Council on Independent Living
About NCIL
NCIL is the longest-running national cross-disability grassroots organization, driven by and dedicated to people with disabilities. Since its founding in 1982, NCIL has represented thousands of organizations and individuals, advocating tirelessly for the human and civil rights of people with disabilities across the United States.
