The LAMN Blog

Hi! I'm Mandi, the Queer Christian Disabled host of Beyond Beautiful: Disability, Liberation, Love. Beyond Beautiful is my space to share stories, truths, and tools that help us reimagine and build a world where disability, justice and love are at the center. People who have followed my journey for some time may remember when I first started podcasting, I created a podcast called Find Your Beautiful: Life through the Eyes of a Christian Disabled Woman. At the time, that title

Sometimes the greatest act of courage is simply being yourself. People will always question who you are, or worse, make assumptions based on their own reality or their ignorance. Never feel obligated to build your home on someone else’s toxic land. Those who truly love you will never need an explanation. Those committed to misunderstanding you were never looking for one. For many of us, especially those of us in the disability community, the world teaches us early to shrink,

Hi everyone, my name is Dwayne; I will be 58 years old in March. I was diagnosed with Late Onset Pompe disease (LOPD) in November 2018 when I was 50. I live in Southern California in the City of Irvine with my wife and mother-in-law. I am a father to four sons, in which our oldest son passed from a brain tumor at age 22 about 7 months before my diagnosis. I am a grandpa and have 2 granddaughters, ages 3 and 5, and a new grandson born last Nov. My passion is to connect with ot

How the Woods Pulled Me Back — and Why I Want Everyone to Get There. Life doesn’t always go the way you plan. One minute I’m a kid who grew up loving hunting and the outdoors in PA, the next I’m lying in a hospital bed because a dive into a lake in 1999 left me with a spinal cord injury that changed everything. I broke my neck at the C4-C5 level and suddenly I was living life from a wheelchair — quadriplegic. Doctors told me I’d never walk again. I wouldn’t have the same str

Why it's OK not to be joyful when things suck. It’s been a strange new season of packing up, unpacking and going through memories as we've moved into a new home. Some of this has been very emotional, packing away memories we have made and some of it is just fatigue from my energy being next to nil. One of the things that is super important to the hubby is finding a decent church to plug into. For me, I want kind people that understand that I don’t have the spoons to run progr

As she enters her final year at Yale Law School, one of our incredible LAMN Scholars is continuing to blaze a trail for disability justice. After a summer in Boston working in health law, she’s now diving into a research project examining how the American healthcare system perpetuates the disability poverty trap—all while wrapping up her role with the Yale Law Journal, mentoring future leaders through the Disabled Law Students Association, and, when time allows, squeezing in

When you meet Keisha Greaves, the first thing you notice isn’t her wheelchair, it’s her smile. Bold, warm, and full of determination,...