Dusty Wentworth

  Why Disabled People Are Either Pitied or Pedestalised If you spend enough time as a disabled person, you begin to notice a pattern. People rarely see you as simply another human being. Instead, they tend to place you into one of two categories. You are either a tragedy to be pitied or an inspiration to be admired. There seems to be very little room in between. I have experienced both. I've seen people look at me with genuine sadness, as though my life ended the day I became disabled. I've also had complete strangers tell me how "inspirational" I am for doing things that most people wouldn't think twice about. Going to the shops. Taking photographs. Going for a ride on my mobility scooter. Getting out of the house. Apparently, existing while disabled is enough to qualify for hero status. The reality is rather different. I am not a tragedy. I am not a hero. I am simply a man living his life. Yet society often struggles with that idea. The Comfort of Simple Stories...

“They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Personally, I think whoever coined that phrase never had to navigate a shag-pile carpet in a wheelchair while trying to remember whether they actually liked olives, or if that was just a pre-aneurysm personality trait.” If my life were a car, it would be a vintage Land Rover dropped from a Hercules transport plane and then declared “probably stress” by the mechanic. Welcome to my world: a whirlwind of military-grade PTSD, Fibromyalgia, Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), and the aftermath of a ruptured brain aneurysm that decided to delete fourteen years of my life like a bored teenager clearing browser history. The Great Identity Heist Living with a Aquired Brain Injury (ABI) is like waking up halfway through a film. You are the lead actor, but you have forgotten all your lines and the script is written in Cantonese. Fourteen years are gone. Vanished. Weddings, birthdays, friendships, arguments, entire chapters of life that every...

  April 3rd does not arrive quietly. It sits there in the calendar like a marker you cannot ignore. Not a date you move past, but one you circle back to whether you want to or not. Two years ago, on April 3rd 2024, my brain aneurysm ruptured. At the time, I was already an inpatient in a neurological rehabilitation centre, trying to get a handle on Functional Neurological Disorder. I was already in the system. Already under observation. Already someone needing help. And still, everything changed in a moment. That matters. Because there is a quiet assumption people make about medical events. That if you are in the right place, under the right care, things will be contained, managed, resolved. That assumption does not survive contact with reality. What followed has not been a clean narrative of recovery. It has been two years of disruption, loss, adaptation, and, at times, a kind of forced recalibration of who I am. This is not a story about overcoming. It is a record of what re...

  Redefining the Man in the Mirror I spent most of my adult life in environments most people would cross the street to avoid. The Army first, then private military contracting, then close protection. War zones. High risk operations. Situations where the wrong decision carried permanent consequences. I was fit, strong and trained to operate under pressure. My confidence was not bravado. It was earned, tested repeatedly in places that stripped away pretence very quickly. What I discovered after being medically discharged with PTSD was that civilian life was harder for me than any operational theatre. The ordinary rhythms of day to day existence unsettled me in ways combat never had. High risk environments made sense. Instinct had value there. The version of myself I understood was still useful. Then my body began to fail. Fibromyalgia came first. Doctors linked it to PTSD. I carried on as trained, pushing through, minimising symptoms, treating pain as background noise. Until Oc...

  Recovery Planning Is Not Just for Mental Health Recovery planning is often associated with addiction or mental health, but it is just as important for people living with physical disabilities and long term illness. In this context, recovery does not mean cure. It means living as well as possible within ongoing limitations, maintaining stability, managing symptoms, and reducing the impact of setbacks. A recovery plan provides structure when health fluctuates, energy is limited, or capacity drops. It shifts the focus from fixing the condition to protecting function, independence, and quality of life. How to build a simple recovery plan Define what stability looks like for you. Be realistic. Identify early warning signs that things are worsening, such as fatigue, pain, missed medication, or reduced function. Decide in advance what helps when symptoms increase, including pacing, rest, assistive equipment, or scaling back commitments. Be clear about what does not help, as well int...

  A World Not Designed For Us There is a window in my room. On the days when my body refuses everything else, when getting up is impossible and the world has shrunk to four walls and a ceiling, I sit and watch through it. If the sun is out, I see people passing. Children playing. Ordinary life unfolding at a distance. It feels close enough to touch, yet completely out of reach. This is what disability looks like from the inside. Not laziness. Not a lifestyle choice. Not a calculation about whether work pays more than support. It is a window. And sometimes, no matter how strong your will is, you simply cannot get to the other side of it. I live with PTSD from military service, fibromyalgia, Functional Neurological Disorder and acquired brain damage following a ruptured brain aneurysm. There are weeks when my body confines me completely. The world carries on without me. The isolation is not just physical. It reaches back into eleven months of hospital admissions and brings that da...

  How rhetoric shapes public perception of disability and benefits Welfare reform in the United Kingdom is routinely presented as a matter of fiscal management and administrative efficiency. The stated objectives are sustainability, fairness and fraud reduction. These are legitimate governmental concerns. However, beyond the policy detail lies a quieter force that exerts considerable influence over public perception: language. Language does not simply describe reform. It frames it. Over time, that framing has shifted the cultural tone of welfare from social support towards behavioural scrutiny. The vocabulary surrounding contemporary welfare policy is instructive. Terms such as assessment, conditionality, compliance, capability and sanction dominate official documents and ministerial statements. They are operational words, drawn from management and enforcement. They carry a procedural logic. Yet when applied to individuals experiencing chronic illness, disability or prolonged une...

  There is a quiet crisis unfolding in contemporary society. It is not marked by sirens or headlines, nor measured in casualty figures, but it is no less consequential. It is the erosion of authentic manhood, replaced by performance, imitation, and confusion. Modern culture has perfected the art of the mask. Curated personas, borrowed confidence, and exaggerated declarations of strength frequently conceal insecurity and disorientation beneath the surface. Men today are presented with a false binary. On one side, they are told to shrink, to apologise for their nature, and to regard traditional masculine instincts with suspicion. On the other, they are encouraged to inflate the chest, dominate others, and mistake aggression for strength. Neither path leads to maturity. Both are hollow imitations of something deeper. The result is a generation of men caught between contradiction and accusation. Masculinity is criticised as toxic in one breath and ridiculed as weak in the next. Olde...