Taking Accountability: Disability Shouldn't Be An Excuse

Recently, a friendship and professional relationship changed for me. It started me reflecting on disability, inclusion, and something I hadn't really considered before.

How Do We Carry Disability Theology Forward? Balancing Faith, Healing, and Harm

Following the disability conference, I’ve had a few people ask how to move forward. They loved the Bible studies, the closing talk, and the honesty about ableism, Scripture, and lived experience. They left encouraged, but unsure how to move forward while honouring disability theology and the spiritual belief in healing, wholeness, and sin. They want to support disabled people without falling into the traps we named. It’s a valid question.

God Must Hate Me: Disability Conference Talk

There is a belief many disabled and neurodivergent people carry quietly, formed by years of being treated as problems by churches, Scripture, and faith.

Pushed Into Complicity

I’ve written about ableism for years, naming the quiet harm disabled people carry, the assumptions people make, the jokes people think are funny, and the way systems misunderstand us long before they understand our needs. I’ve written about privilege, accessibility, independence, autonomy, participation, equality and equity. Topics that need discussing. Today I’m writing about something harder. Complicity.

Disability Sunday: The Disturbing Truth

Disability Sunday is next week. For the first time, I’m pleased to say, my church will theme a service around it, and I’ll be preaching.

Sleeping with FSHD: When Your Body Wants to Move but Can’t

The more my FSHD progresses the more sleep becomes complicated for me. I’ve written before about pain, anxiety, and the long nights where my body refuses rest. Something new has crept in. I say it’s new, it’s been happening more and more over the last two years and is now a problem. It’s subtle, but it’s constant, and it’s becoming one of the hardest parts of sleeping with FSHD.

Coming to Terms with My ASD Diagnosis

I thought getting my diagnosis would be the end of the story. It felt overdue and strangely comforting. Autism explained parts of my life and early childhood and filled in the gaps left by the personality disorder diagnoses that never quite fit. When the assessment arrived, I felt relief. Not floods of tears, because that isn’t me, but the quiet version of emotion that makes me withdraw and process.

When the Church Acts: A Response to the New Clergy Conduct Measure

The Church of England, through the General Synod, has approved the new Clergy Conduct Measure, and I felt something I didn’t expect. Relief. Not because the system is perfect or harm will suddenly disappear. Relief because the Church is naming what many of us have lived through for years. It’s listening and acting.

FSHD: What’s Changing

Although I write openly about my health, I don’t track what I’m losing or what FSHD is doing. Every time I see my specialist he asks what’s changed, but I don’t give him the whole picture. I forget things and kick myself after. This post is a way of tracking it better.

The Dentist Visit

I went to the dentist yesterday. The dentist herself is lovely and we often end up talking about faith while she works. She is warm, calm, and genuinely kind. I still hate going, though. I always have.

Emotional Overwhelm

This week has been stressful. War and Order, the game I enjoy and play, became a second workplace. I’m the alliance leader. We’ve had a few personal dramas that match many real life communities. Personalities collided, tempers rose, and I found myself dealing with conflict from every direction over three weeks. I managed it at the start, yet, by the third week, the emotional cost built quietly. Arguments and defensiveness just kept hitting me. My normal conflict diplomacy wasn’t working. I reached the point where I knew I needed to step back, regulate, and delegate to my friends, but emotional overwhelm sat underneath it all.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Report: What you need to know

The Church of England released the Fearfully and Wonderfully Made report in February this year, but I know many have still not read it, even though it’s one of the most important pieces of research on disabled and neurodivergent clergy the Church has ever commissioned. It shapes how I live as a disabled Christian with FSHD and autism, my children and disabled friends lives, my calling and ministry, and how I navigate the ordination process.

I’ve mentioned it many times here but I realised I’ve never actually broken it down or explained it in a way that helps people understand what it says, why it matters, and how it affects real lives for those who haven’t read the seventy‑three page document. This post is my attempt to do that. A guide for anyone who wants to understand disability wellbeing in the Church of England.

Neurodiversity and the Church: Archbishop Sarah Mullally's Synod Statement

This week Archbishop Sarah Mullally shared that neurodiversity is a gift, not a problem to be solved, while speaking at Synod about the need for neurodivergent-led training, structural change, and a network of Neurodiversity Champions across every diocese. She spoke openly about her dyslexia, the assumptions made about her, and the way she learned to see herself as intentionally made by God. Reading this felt like a blessing that landed at a time when I’m still processing my own ASD diagnosis, the battles it took to get it, and everything it has reframed, especially as I received my ASD assessment report the same day this article was published.

When Driving Stops

I reached a point recently where driving no longer feels like the right option. It's been coming for a while. I didn’t want to admit it at first, since driving has always been part of my independence. It's how I've gone to church, grown ministry, supported youth, attended ordination meetings and school visits, and everything else that fills my week. It was the way my long distance relationship lasted with Hannah, how I maintained access to the boys, and how we’ve gone on all our adventures over the years. It was freedom, routine, and normal. It’s not normal anymore.

When Honour Meets Barriers

Tomorrow we gather to honour my curate, Sue at her thanksgiving service. 175 people have signed up. Our church fits around 140 – 150, and more will likely arrive. The hall across the road is our overflow space, livestreaming the service for those unable to fit in the church. It will be a big day. It should be. She was an incredible presence.

Privilege: The Invisible Barrier

Having a disability means I see other people’s privilege. It’s not loud or aggressive. It sits in the background of everyday life, unnoticed by the people who benefit from it, have no idea they do it, and pretend they don’t when they do something wrong. It is often an invisible barrier.

Presence vs Participation

Over the last few months I’ve written about equality and equity, accessibility and usability, independence and autonomy, and survivors and victims. These are topics that people often confuse, yet the gap between them is where disabled people live. Those gaps are important. The difference needs to be discussed. This time, I wanted to discuss presence vs participation.

Finally Understanding Myself: My ASD Assessment and Diagnosis

Anyone who has followed my mental health posts will know the journey hasn’t been simple. I’ve shared my breakdown in 2012, the years of rebuilding, the Dependent Personality Disorder diagnosis, the slow climb back to stability, and the long process of understanding who I am. I’ve also written about communication differences, sensory needs, routines, overwhelm, and the traits I recognised in Will and James long before I recognised them in myself. It all led to this moment.

World FSHD Day: The Day After

World FSHD Day 2026 is over. Many people worldwide with FSHD, spread across countries, cultures, and communities came together for one cause. Not all 8,000, but enough to make me feel united. They shared their stories, photos, orange‑segment smiles, and honesty. I have loved it. I’m not alone.

World FSHD Day: A 2026 Reflection

World FSHD Day has arrived again. Despite posting on Facebook each year, I last wrote about it here in 2018, and looking back now is like opening a time capsule. I knew my condition and feared the future but didn’t understand it yet. I walked, even when it was difficult, constantly fell, experienced pain and vulnerability, and felt trapped in my body. 

My FSHD is different now. I no longer walk. I still fall, but it’s progressed to my core. The pain, vulnerability and trapped feeling have deepened in ways I never imagined. Everything I was worried about has now occurred and I've been living with it for several years. That’s the nature of FSHD. It’s not just degeneration, but progression.