Megan Linton

how are you doing?

I am doing ok. I am someone who is privileged enough to be self-isolating, and so I feel incredibly privileged by that. 

Beyond that, I feel like the grief of this moment has started to seep through my bones. I am doing a lot of grieving, a lot of being grumpy, a lot of connecting with community, and a lot of checking in with my needs. 

how do you feel?

Thank you for separating the two! I am doing ok, feeling absolutely heartbroken. Last year many of my disabled and Mad friends passed away, and I remember feeling this overwhelming grief for my community and this desire for respite from endless loss. But being disabled, we do not get a reprieve from grief.  This year it has continued, right now many of the people that have passed away I do not know. And I do not know them because so much of our community is institutionalized, I grieve that I do not know them, I grieve that we continue to live in a society that normalizes institutions.

I am also feeling SO grumpy. I feel grumpy at people who think the hardest part of this is staying inside. I feel grumpy that people are not LIVID at the politicians who allowed this conditions to fester. I feel so grumpy that people are surprised by this. I feel so grumpy that people are just starting to listen, when we have been yelling for years. 

what do you need?

I need time to grieve, time to process, time to organize, time to revolt. 

I need to hear a plan for deinstitutionalization within the community. I need abolitionists to be calling for the end of all forms of institutions. I need to see radical care that allows for mad and disabled people to always be in community. 

I need people to grieve. I need people to feel furious, to share their rage. I need people to never forget about the violence of institutions. 

I need a revolution. I also need a hug, a joint, a bowl of noodles, a nap, and to cry with my community.

what do you wish was different?

I wish that disabled folks were able to qualify for CERB. I wish that institutions were made irrelevant by community living so strong and beautiful. 

I wish that we were in a place where we did not have to remind people that Disabled people and lives are valuable, that we could begin our politic from further. I wish for a utopia where there are no forms of institutions, prisons, long term “care”, group homes, or psychiatric institutions. I wish for a utopia that is interdependent.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha coined the term "Crip Emotional Intelligence." What crip intelligence, whether emotional or otherwise, that you have developed is coming in handy right now? 

I was reminded of the quote yesterday that “Writing from bed is a time honoured disabled way of being an activist and cultural worker” (Care Work). As a Crip I have always loved working from bed, writing from bed, making my nest of snacks, heat packs, weed, water, coffee and thinking for the day, I have now been given permission to do so. I remember being lectured for doing this, for violating proper “sleep hygiene”, and now this is how we are all getting through. 

Crip emotional intelligence has taught me both the power and legitimacy of mourning for our community. 

I think that lots of the emotions and feelings that I have been pathologized for are being legitimized. Mad people know the depths of loss and sadness in the world, we also know how to live through, how to mourn through. The efforts by the government through CBT to pathologize our emotional responses to this are so outrageous. Madness has taught me to sit with my sadness, learn from my sadness, accept my sadness. Madness has taught me to be friends with sadness, to treat my emotions with kindness, pour them tea. Current rhetoric relying on toxic positivity is violent, do not tell me to focus on the positives, let me sit with my grief. 

what are you dreaming of?

Literally? I have been dreaming of candy, endless tables of cakes piped with soft pink icing and maraschino cherries, raspberries so sweet, blueberries so bouncy, and giggles of the friends I have lost. (those are the nice one)

I have been day dreaming of hugs, of pulling the doors off of long term care facilities, cold water, laying down in grass, ghosts haunting politicians, and soft fabrics.

Interview by Bára Hladík
Read by Emilie Kneifel