Some conversations entertain you.
Some inspire you.
And some quietly confront you.
My conversation with Janelle Skinner did all three.
Janelle is a counseling psychologist, disability advocate, and a powerful voice for accessibility and inclusion in Barbados. But what stayed with me most was not just her work. It was her presence. Her honesty. Her humor. Her clarity. The way she could speak about pain, adjustment, systems, faith, family, and purpose without losing her light.
When people talk about strength, they often imagine noise. Big speeches. Dramatic moments. Visible triumph. But sometimes strength looks like patience. Sometimes it looks like adapting. Sometimes it looks like learning how to rebuild a life you never planned for, while still choosing to show up with grace. That is what I saw in Janelle.
A life changed in an instant
During our conversation, Janelle shared that she became a wheelchair user at 21 after what began as a normal evening doing hair ended in emergency spinal surgery. She explained that she had a tumor on her spine, underwent urgent surgery, and came out expecting things would eventually return to normal. They did not. More than 26 years later, she is still navigating the consequences of that moment.
That alone is enough to stop you.
But what made me think even more deeply was how she described disability: not as one event, but as an ongoing process of adjustment. Her body has changed over the years. The tools that once worked no longer always work. New complications have come. New routines had to be built. New realities had to be faced. In other words, adaptation did not happen once. It has had to happen over and over again.
That is a lesson many of us need. We often think of healing as a straight line. We imagine that people āget through itā and arrive on the other side. But some lives require a different kind of resilience, one that keeps adjusting, keeps learning, and keeps moving even when the finish line never comes in the way you expected.
Grief is not only about death
One of the most important things Janelle said was that grief is not just about losing a person.
It can also be about losing ability. Losing goals. Losing a version of yourself. Losing dreams you once had for work, family, relationships, and the future. She spoke openly about having to grieve the life she imagined before disability entered the picture. She also spoke about how dangerous it would have been to dwell only in the loss. She had to find a way to acknowledge the grief without letting it define the rest of her life.
That landed heavily with me.
Because a lot of people are grieving things they do not know how to name. Sometimes it is not a funeral. Sometimes it is a business that failed. A body that changed. A dream that had to be rewritten. A relationship that no longer fits. A path that closed without warning. Conversations like this remind us that grief deserves language, even when it does not come in the form people expect.
The everyday things many of us never think about
There was a point in the interview when Janelle simply walked me through a normal day in her life.
And honestly, it shifted me.
She explained the transfers from one chair to another, the time it takes to shower and get dressed, the scheduling required to manage bladder and bowel routines, the need to plan around fatigue, the challenge of entering and exiting vehicles, and the reality that something as simple as opening the door or getting ready to leave home is not always simple at all. She said something that stuck with me: time is not the same for her. Her hours in a day do not function the same way many able-bodied peopleās hours do.
That line says a lot.
It reminds us that productivity, mobility, punctuality, and convenience are not experienced equally. Yet society is often designed as if they are. We judge people quickly, without understanding the amount of effort it may take for them just to arrive. We build systems around the āaverageā body and then act surprised when others struggle to fit inside them.
Accessibility is deeper than a ramp
Janelle also helped make accessibility plain.
Not theoretical. Not corporate. Not performative.
Practical.
Yes, a ramp matters. But so does the bathroom. So does the width of the doorway. So does whether a sink can be reached, whether soap is accessible, whether the layout allows someone to move with dignity and independence. She spoke about having to call ahead to ask whether buildings and restaurants are wheelchair accessible, and how often people are unprepared to answer that question.
That should concern all of us.
Because accessibility is not a luxury issue. It is not a āspecial caseā issue. It is a human issue. It is about whether people can participate in society without being blocked by avoidable design failures. It is about whether inclusion is real, or whether it only exists in slogans.
People with disabilities still have ambition
This is another point that deserves more attention.
People with disabilities still have goals. They still want to contribute. They still want to work, build, lead, create, earn, serve, and grow. Janelle spoke about building her practice and focusing on helping persons with disabilities adjust to disability in healthy ways. She also spoke about contributing to research around the lived experience of persons with disabilities in the workplace, with the hope that it can help shape better policy.
That matters because too many people still view disability through the lens of limitation alone.
Janelle challenged that thinking. She spoke not only about the need for empathy from employers, but the need for systems that recognize the humanity of the person first. She made an important point that not everyone wants to explain every detail of their disability in order to receive accommodations. That is worth sitting with. Because real inclusion does not begin when someone has fully exposed themselves. It begins when people are willing to design for dignity from the start.
What I learned personally
This conversation checked me.
It made me think about how much many of us complain while overlooking what others navigate daily. It made me think about how easy it is to be ignorant without intending to be. It made me realize that sometimes the gap is not hatred, but lack of exposure. And that exposure matters, because when a reality becomes visible, empathy has a chance to grow.
It also reminded me that we need to see people properly.
Not just for what they carry physically, but for what they carry internally. Not by the chair first, but by the character. Not by assumption, but by contribution. Janelle is not valuable because she has āovercomeā disability in a way that makes others comfortable. She is valuable because she is thoughtful, capable, insightful, committed, and deeply human.
And maybe that is part of the bigger lesson here.
A more inclusive society is not built only by policy, architecture, or compliance checklists. It is also built by perspective. By listening. By learning. By asking better questions. By refusing to reduce people to the first thing we notice about them.
The gem
If I had to leave one takeaway from this conversation, it would be this:
See people beyond the obvious.
There is often more strength, creativity, intelligence, discipline, and courage in front of us than we recognize at first glance. But we have to be willing to look again. We have to be willing to listen long enough to understand what someone elseās life actually requires.
Janelle Skinner reminded me that inclusion is not pity. Accessibility is not charity. And disability does not cancel purpose.
It simply asks society to do better.