Episode 16: Disability Justice & Adaptive Sports

Today’s guest, Danielle Lancelot Watson, MS, OTR/L, is an occupational therapist specializing in hand therapy. Danielle grew up on Long Island and after graduating from NYU with a degree in Art History and Philosophy lived and worked in NYC. She was extremely active, participating in activities like snowboarding, endurance cycling and rock climbing and often travelled to other places including in foreign countries to engage in these things. In the summer of 2011, while rock climbing in Colorado, Danielle fell and sustained a T6-level SCI.  She went through several surgeries and an extensive rehab process as a result and later went back to school to earn a Master’s degree in OT at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. Danielle competes regularly in a variety of wheelchair and adaptive sports and involved with multiple adaptive sports organizations. With a passion for advocating for disability justice, she currently works as an OT in Yelm, WA, with a specialty in hands. 

"We are pathfinders. We enable occupations that heal. We cocreate daily lives. We reach for hearts as well as hands. We are artists and sci- entists at once. If we discern this in ourselves, if we act on this understanding every day, we will advance into the future embracing our ethos of engagement. And we will have reclaimed a magnificent heart. " ~Suzanne M. Peloquin

Resources & Recommendations from this episode:

• Deep: Real Life with Spinal Cord Injury, a book by March Joy Epstein  and Travar Pettway
• My Last Step Backward, an autobiography by Tasha Schuh
• Slagle lecture by Suzanne M. Peloquin, Embracing Our Ethos, Reclaiming Our Hearts (2005)
• Power Not Pity - podcast about disability justice

Connect with Danielle:

• Website/blog - No Excuses No Regrets  
• Danielle's contributions to The Mighty 
• Danielle's story on Mythogenist
• A short biographical film about Danielle and her injury - Falling into Place