LAUSR

We explore the complex ways in which mothers of visibly physically disabled children manage moments of abjection in their relationships with their children. Two women’s stories are told in order to illustrate the power of their disturbing experiences and the ways mothers strive to share the unsharable, thereby empathically connecting with themselves and their children. We argue that understanding maternal experiences is important in and of itself, and that such experiences offer a model for how others may find ways to embrace disability rather than reject, avoid, or hate it. A model of maternal ambivalence that can show how mothers negotiate the abject may go some way towards thinking about the unthinkable. In this way, a deeper social acceptance of disability becomes more attainable.