I Didn’t Invent Any of This

People sometimes talk to me like I came up with these ideas myself. I didn’t.

Everything I do sits on top of decades of work by disability rights movements around the world, Social Role Valorisation, the UN guidelines, researchers and advocates who fought for language and frameworks long before I showed up. I’m not the source. I’m someone standing on their shoulders, trying to pass it forward properly.

I think that matters to say out loud. It’s tempting in this industry to make yourself the hero of the story, the one who figured it all out. Honestly, I didn’t figure much out alone. I read, I listened, I got things wrong, and I leaned on work that already existed.

What I try to add is grounding it in what I’ve actually lived, not just what’s written in a guideline. The frameworks tell you what’s right. Lived experience tells you what it actually feels like when it isn’t.

Whose work are you standing on that you don’t say out loud often enough?

If you want tools built on that same foundation, real frameworks, made practical, Self Advocacy Unleashed is where I’ve put it. Join the waitlist.

Madeleine x