A stone in my boot is the metaphor for my life. How does it feel to walk with a stone in your boot? Slowly. Awkwardly. Painfully. Putting one foot in front of the other. Searching for that spot where you can take your boot off, shake out the stone, put the boot back on, and keep walking. However, there’s another stone in your boot before you know it. And you can do nothing about those stones except learn how to live with them—without anger. Those stones remind you that you’re alive and experiencing a human existence. It’s over when you can no longer feel the stones in your boots.

Canada’s disability support system operates like a light switch: you’re either “on” and fully disabled or “off” and completely on your own. There’s no middle ground for the millions of Canadians with episodic, partial, or fluctuating conditions. If you can’t work full-time in a traditional 9-to-5 setting, the system doesn’t see you. It treats disability like a binary yes-or-no instead of a spectrum of capacity, contribution, and need.