Richard Van Holst Reviews Dorothy Ellen Palmer’s Falling for Myself

Dorothy Ellen Palmer. Falling for Myself. Wolsak & Wynn. $20.00, 240 pp, ISBN 9781989496039

Having been deposited at the door of the Children’s Aid Society by a mother determined to put a traumatizing date rape behind her, Dorothy Ellen Palmer (not her birth name) was placed in foster care and adopted at the age of three. Despite the kindness of her adoptive father and grandmother, she felt the stigma of her illegitimacy and was often made to feel like a burden and a charity case by her adoptive mother. So as a young girl, she looked for information about her birth parents, and she found some—only to eventually discover that a lot of what she thought was true wasn’t. 

Now if this were all, Palmer’s autobiography, Falling for Myself, would be quite dramatic, even shocking. It would leave the reader with the satisfying feeling that one more adoptee’s heroic struggle to discover her roots had led to a dénouement that was mostly happy, a little bittersweet, and very inspirational.

But this isn’t all there is to Palmer’s story, nor would the author thank me for putting her name in the same sentence as the word inspirational. Palmer was born with a severe deformity in both feet which resulted in excruciating pain, as well as a loss of balance. During her life this landed her, quite literally, in many awkward and embarrassing situations. In spite of, or in some weird way, because of her disability, she felt she had to do everything she could to “pass for normal.” Not only that, she passively ignored or actively persecuted others who were not “normal.” She realized only later in life that it was ableism in its many forms that caused her to commit some of these shameful acts: “I fully and freely confess I treated my first boyfriend like crap,” she writes.

“I pushed a young man who loved me to his knees and shoved him out of my life. Able to side with ableism, I did. Like Vichy, the wartime French government who sold out to the Nazis, I collaborated for the same cowardly reason: to keep myself safe at another’s expense.”

Palmer presents ableism as being an insidious and extremely destructive type of prejudice. It persecutes those who cannot pass for normal—one concrete example being Palmer herself, who had to make her own adaptations to her shoes, eventually needed crutches, then finally a walker. And because of her limitations she was excluded from venues where she ought to have been accommodated. Of going to restaurants, she says: “Sometimes, after phoning to confirm accessibility, I’ve arrived, taken one look at the steps staff swore weren’t there, or at the Mount Kilimanjaro masquerading as a ramp, and had to leave.” Ableism tolerates a few select disabled, only because they look and act in ways that do not challenge the basic tenets of this warped worldview. Those who cannot pass still have some use, as long as they accept their lot (up to and including death) with the uncomplaining docility of Dickens’ Tiny Tim; otherwise their job is to function as charity cases which allow abled people to feel warm and fuzzy about their own generosity. So it is the responsibility of disabled people and all their allies to do all in their power in the fight against ableism.

One of the strengths of Palmer’s autobiography is its unflinching honesty. She confesses her past faults but she also tells about positive events and genuinely caring people who accepted her uncritically. I think it is her willingness to present the bad along with the good that prevents her from coming off as a patron saint or martyr of disability.  Another factor is the irrepressible feistiness with which she discusses thorny issues, such as the unpalatable terminology foisted upon the disabled without their consent. “Don’t call me ‘diffabled,’” she growls, “unless you’d like me to diffable your teeth.” 

As I have cerebral palsy, you might expect that I identified totally with this memoir, which is by turns both sassy and sensitive. And you would be right, but in a way I identified too much for my own comfort. Through much of my life I have tried to pass for normal, or at least to do things as “normally” as possible. I have pondered over the connotations of terms used to describe the disabled. I have smarted at being called Tiny Tim to my face, and been angered by the language of what Palmer calls “inspiration porn.” But like Palmer, I have also occasionally been uncomfortable in the presence of other disabled because their condition was so obvious that it was harder for me to keep up the pretence that my condition was not.

So, let the reader beware. This is not a safe, cozy book that you can race through and put down with a happy sigh. It will probably make you squirm. But if you approach it with the right spirit, it will make you think seriously about where you stand on the issue of ableism.

Richard Van Holst is a research assistant and copy editor at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario. He reads voraciously and enjoys films and classical music. The author of three published short stories, he won the Short Works Prize in Fiction (2014) and the Hamilton Emerging Artist Award for Writing (2017). He has also acted as judge for the Short Works Prize and the Silver Quill Award (both 2015).