The Public Loves Resilience Because It Costs Them Nothing

Resilience is one of those words people like to use about disabled people.

They say it with admiration.

They say it with warmth.

They say it as though it is always a compliment.

But I have become wary of the word.

Not because resilience is false. Disabled people are often resilient. Chronically ill people are often resilient. People living with pain, trauma, neurological conditions, fatigue, mobility loss, and bodies that no longer obey instruction often have to adapt in ways most people never see.

The problem is not resilience itself.

The problem is how easily society praises it while refusing to ask why so much of it is necessary in the first place.

Resilience is praised most loudly by people who do not have to pay the cost of it.

That is the uncomfortable truth.

When a disabled person manages to leave the house, people see determination. They do not see the planning behind it. They do not see the medication, the pacing, the transfer from wheelchair to car, the recovery time afterwards, or the quiet calculation of whether the journey is worth the physical price.

When someone with chronic illness keeps going, people call it strength. They do not see the fatigue that sits behind the eyes. They do not see the cancelled plans, the lost work, the sleep that never restores, or the body that punishes effort hours after the world has stopped watching.

When a wheelchair user navigates a badly designed street, an inaccessible building, or a system that was clearly never built with them in mind, people call it inspiring.

I find that telling.

Because very often, what they are calling inspiring is simply a disabled person being forced to overcome something that should not have been placed in their way.

There is a difference between personal strength and public failure.

We blur that difference far too often.

I know what adaptation looks like.

I have had to rebuild my life around Functional Neurological Disorder, Fibromyalgia, PTSD, brain injury after a ruptured aneurysm, sight loss in one eye, hearing loss, pain, seizures, tremors, spasms, and the reality of being a full-time wheelchair user.

None of that came with a neat manual.

It came with trial and error.

It came with grief.

It came with anger.

It came with learning how to live inside a body that no longer offers the same guarantees it once did.

There are days when getting washed, dressed, downstairs, into a chair, and through the basic demands of life requires more effort than many people will spend on an entire working day.

There are days when the public version of me looks composed, while the private version is calculating how much pain I have just bought for later.

And still, life goes on.

The ordinary demands of the day remain.

Appointments still need attending.

Family life continues.

Forms arrive.

Bills arrive.

Systems demand evidence.

None of it stops because the body has.

So yes, disabled people adapt.

But adaptation is not the same as ease.

Coping is not the same as being fine.

Enduring is not the same as justice.

Society often prefers the language of resilience because it keeps the focus on the individual. It turns disabled life into a personal character test. It asks whether we are positive enough, brave enough, determined enough, grateful enough.

What it avoids asking is whether the world around us is fair enough.

That avoidance matters.

Because once you ask that question properly, the responsibility moves.

It no longer sits only with the disabled person trying to cope.

It sits with government.

It sits with councils.

It sits with housing providers.

It sits with employers.

It sits with public services.

It sits with medical systems.

It sits with every part of society that claims to value inclusion while still making ordinary life harder than it needs to be.

Are public buildings genuinely accessible, or merely compliant on paper?

Are pavements safe, or are wheelchair users still expected to navigate broken surfaces, blocked routes, and badly planned streets?

Are benefit systems humane, or are disabled people still made to prove their suffering again and again?

Are medical services joined up, or are complex patients passed between departments until exhaustion becomes part of the process?

Are housing providers listening, or are disabled people left trapped in unsuitable homes while everyone explains why nothing can be done?

Are employers realistic, or do they only support disabled people when disability remains convenient?

Are disabled people believed before they are exhausted?

Or does society only recognise the struggle once it has already caused damage?

Those questions are harder.

They require responsibility.

They require money.

They require policy.

They require people to admit that many disabled people are not struggling because they lack resilience.

They are struggling because they are repeatedly forced to survive avoidable barriers.

That is less comfortable than calling someone inspirational.

It is also more honest.

I have seen this in my own life.

When I get out on my Scoozy, a large all-terrain mobility scooter, people may see freedom, fresh air, and a man refusing to give in. They would not be entirely wrong. There is genuine freedom in that. There is joy in moving through the world again with some independence.

But that freedom also exists because other parts of life became smaller.

It exists because walking disappeared.

It exists because my wheelchairs became necessary.

It exists because getting outdoors now often depends on equipment, access, planning, transfers, fatigue, pain, distance, weather, and recovery.

It is not a simple story of triumph.

It is a complicated story of adaptation.

The same is true of wheelchair life.

People often admire the visible bit. The pushing on. The effort. The determination. The smile in the photograph.

They rarely see the cost of the photograph.

They rarely see the transfer.

They rarely see the body dragged into position for the shot.

They rarely see the return journey.

They rarely see the evening after.

They rarely see the next day.

Resilience has a price.

Disabled people pay it.

Society applauds the transaction.

That is where my discomfort sits.

I do not want a world where disabled people are stripped of dignity, spoken over, denied access, left waiting, forced to fight, and then praised for managing not to break.

I do not want admiration to become a substitute for change.

I do not want the word resilience used as a polite way of avoiding responsibility.

Because there is nothing noble about making life harder than it needs to be.

There is nothing inspirational about inaccessible systems.

There is nothing admirable about someone having to battle for basic dignity.

And there is nothing compassionate about a society that praises disabled people for enduring what it has failed to fix.

Of course resilience matters.

There are times when it is all a person has.

There are mornings when resilience is the difference between getting up and staying under the weight of it all.

There are afternoons when it is the only reason the form gets completed, the appointment gets attended, the pain gets carried, or the next difficult conversation happens.

I am not dismissing resilience.

I am saying it should never be used to excuse the conditions that demand so much of it.

A humane society should not measure disabled people by how much hardship they can absorb.

It should measure itself by how much unnecessary hardship it removes.

That is the standard.

Not how bravely we climb over barriers.

How seriously those barriers are taken down.

So the next time someone praises a disabled person for being resilient, perhaps the question should not end there.

Perhaps it should go further.

What did they have to endure?

What made it harder than it needed to be?

Who had the power to change that?

And why are we more comfortable praising their strength than challenging the system that required it?

Because a modern society should not need disabled people to suffer gracefully before it decides they are worthy of access, dignity, and support.

Resilience may be admirable.

But it should not be the price of entry into ordinary life.

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