[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Welcome to Disability Empowerment now, season four. I'm your host, Keith. Ravi Dinsini. Today I'm talking to Joe Kible and Kelly Cox, actors in New York City with disabilities.
Joe and Kerry, welcome to the show.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: Thank you for having you. Yeah.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Now, I know one of you a lot better than I do the other. Terry. We go back.
Melania.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: No, it's like 15 years. 15, 16. The number changes every time I think about how long ago undergrad was. It's been a long time.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: The College of Santa Fe, or what.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Would then know, may it rest in.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Peace, says, yeah, yeah, we had Jim Peaches.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: It was a great time, though.
I really, really enjoyed my time there and talk about it a lot. I don't know about you. I know that things. The school shut down while we were there, so a lot of people scattered and it changed. But the original incarnation when we met was a very special place. It was very interesting place.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Very interesting.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: The night since where you.
We also work for a wave theater company in New York called Theater Breaking Through Barriers.
And we had actually gotten back in touch a few weeks before I decided to follow you up to and surprise you after a show you were doing.
Can you talk about what was going through your head when you heard, oh, your friend Keith is waiting outside to talk to you?
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Oh, it was very nice. It was very cool. And I was surprised that anybody came out to Queens. I mean, Queens Theater has been doing so much for the disabled actor community. They started the theater for all actor training programs that I had done for a couple years, and they've done short play readings and then they were putting on a production of Barefoot in the Park. And Brandt Russell, who I had met doing the short play readings for Queen's Theater, reached out directly and asked if I would do it because Queen's Theater and Taryn Sacone, the people involved, really wanted to just do a play where they cast some of their disabled actors from the program just as characters, which you still don't see very often.
[00:03:40] Speaker C: Shocking.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And getting to play Corey, who's a very like. There's a lot of physical comedy written into it. She comes in to having climbed up a bunch of stairs at the. When you very first meet her. So them even casting me at all was kind of amazing. But the thing with Queen's Theater, they're this wonderful theater and they do so much work with underrepresented communities and a lot of work with indigenous communities and new plays and they. They do music and dance and all sorts of things. But if you're coming from Manhattan or anywhere else. It's. It's a track. It takes so long to get out there. But I always encourage people to go out and check out Queen's Theater. But it took me like an hour and a half every day to get there and then to get back. It was an amazing time and it's so worth it. But it is ironic that, like, this theater doing such progressive work is still hard for us to get to. They tried their best. They would do shuttles to try to help the disabled actors get there, you know, and it speaks to how good their programming is that people were so committed to getting there because it was so worth it. And now they're doing zoom versions, too, to try to bridge that. But it was amazing to me that you even came and that you showed up like. And that any of my friends came and Christine Bruno came and a bunch of other friends from. From college. It's. It's amazing when people go to see anything, but I was very touched and excited to see you. It was very nice.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: How long ago would that. I. It was 1918.
Certainly it was.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Okay, I can figure this out. But I think it was 2019 because I had just. I had done Glass Menagerie at the Guthrie, then was coming back, did that briefly in between, then going to Nashville, and that's when I started talking to Joe and met Joe and then the pandemic happened.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: So I know that it was the end of 2019.
Yeah.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: Yeah, that would be right.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: It was like winter of 2019.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: So we were at a cat's party a few months ago and reach. I was enraptured by the stories you guys told and have lived through this one moment in particular where I could not stop touching Jode's leg.
I'm staring at his shirt.
So let's start there because that's where the hilarity of that night begins.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah. You say that you've known me so much better, but I'd say that you two bonded. So. Yeah, there was a connection. There was a. I mean, Joe has that. I'll let you speak to that, too. But Joe has that effect on. On. In general, Joe is just a very charming, oh, wonderful person. I'm like, I'm lucky. And I mean, very good looking. Especially for the people who aren't watching this on YouTube, for the people who are just listening in. Need to understand.
Yeah. But he's more than just a pretty face. I'll let him. Let him talk.
[00:07:14] Speaker C: I. I like to. I like to look at it. As I try to be very open with people. And when you're very open with people, they want to be open with you. And you can create a, a nice chemistry through that openness.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: That's a good way of.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: There was a certain video that Carrie was talking about.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Really spurred me to really be a professional goofball for the next two and a half hours. Talk about that.
[00:07:50] Speaker C: So I had posted this video, which, which I, you know, it's a story I've told quite a few times. I've told it on Tick Tock and I decided to put it on Instagram where I was walking with my cane in a Target. This was years and years ago. And I saw this little kid and he was staring at me and then staring at his mom. And little kids always love to point out the disability stuff or say something. So I knew he was going to say something. I didn't know what it was. And so I'm watching as he's like his wheels are turning. He's staring at his mom, and she kind of looks over at me and we all know something's about to happen, but we don't know what. And he just goes, mom, why does that man walk so fancy?
And I thought it was just such a cute way of, of describing it. So I was like, yeah, I'm a fancy walker. That's, that's, that's perfect. And so I shared this story, which I thought was a very mild, funny, cute story. I put it on Instagram and then it started getting traction. Now, to date, since I've posted it, it's almost at 18 million views.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: And it's not just the story, it's not so.
[00:09:07] Speaker C: Okay, you step in here. Okay.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Joe has, like, for his young years, has lived quite a life and is a very fascinating person and a writer and a natural storyteller. And you do a lot of. Also educating about disability and HIV and being born with HIV. And you just have 8 million stories. And a lot of what he'll do is put the story in text while he's maybe standing and sipping some coffee or smiling at the camera, allowing people to read the story at their own pace. Just sometimes you'll speak too, but you do hear variety sake. You change it up. Yeah, I think what really got people about this video, almost more so than the story itself, was just your ease in, in standing and looking at the camera and you're like smiling gently at the camera and then at one point you smile at one of the cats and then you look back at the camera and People just lost their minds over how just naturally attractive you are and how safe you feel. I think safe in that attraction and welcoming. And your smile. You always get a lot of compliments on your smile.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: So what were ads, the most prominent comments?
[00:10:37] Speaker C: Well, I, I like, spurred off by like one person. It feels like who I was just like, I have to like, say that you're like, very attractive or can we just like, take a moment? And then that started getting like, I mean, comment after comment. It was like tens of thousands of comment replies and like 40,000 likes. And everyone was just going on versions of what they. The attractiveness that they thought he was.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Saying that they had to replay the video multiple times because instead of reading the actual story, they couldn't stop looking at him.
[00:11:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: And then people agreeing and so finding camaraderie and that. Oh, good, I'm not the only one. Oh, good.
[00:11:16] Speaker C: Yes. And then I think we. You commented in there. And then that started getting.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: I want everybody to know that I agree and that I appreciate. I'm not a. I'm not a jealous wife.
[00:11:29] Speaker C: I like.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: I, I'm trying to choose my words correctly. My instinctive to say I get off on it, but that's not exact. I, I appreciate when people appreciate you.
[00:11:42] Speaker C: That's a good one.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: So that story really kicked off the. Well, two can play that game.
But I also wanted to because it was the third time Joe and I were meeting. I had heard about him for years. And the third comment you made was when I met you.
I did. Finally, Joe, I finally meet you. It's. It's really you. And I'm like, she doesn't shut up about you at all.
Well, it helped that I pay her not to shut up about you. And your wife didn't meant to beat. And she would like, you're okay with me having another sugar daddy, aren't you, honey? And.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Oh, did I.
[00:12:53] Speaker C: Was that.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't remember that. I don't.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So anyway, we'll edit that out.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Don't worry.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: But it's.
I.
I follow your videos quite closely. You're very prominent in what you post.
Both of you are very outgoing, outspoken. How did you two meet?
[00:13:39] Speaker C: So do you wanna. Do you want me.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: I feel like I've been talking too much. Please.
[00:13:43] Speaker C: So we had met through Facebook several years ago before while we were in other relationships. We had just like, friended each other because the disabled community, disabled actor community is very small really. And like, so we started connecting on Facebook because we were with the same agency and we Were both trying to find people that were doing the thing and acting and had a disability. And so we had connected that way. And I had like, messaged you, I think, a year before we started to really talk, just asking you how the disabled actor stuff was going in New York, because I was in L. A, I was living in Los Angeles still. And then you had posted about a year later, you had posted about coming out as bisexual. And I was just, like, enamored by that because it was something that I had been struggling with coming out fully about for years at that point, because I had gone through a whole different coming out of being. Coming out as HIV positive and then struggling with being identified as that heterosexual HIV person to help educate. And I just, I wrote this message being like, if so amazing that you were able to come out and just speak so, like, bravely about it. And I. I just. We just started clicking and talking more and it really steamrolled pretty quick.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: It became very clear that it was like, oh, this guy is really cute. I've known that he's cute for a long time and that he's nice. But then it became very clear you were also very intelligent and very funny and that you had a lot to say and that we had a lot to talk about. And it just kind of turned into me using all my free time outside of the play I was doing to talk to you. And, like, I'd get so excited to get on the bus because then I had time to be talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:15:42] Speaker C: And when, you know, we had do that for a little while and we're going to meet up and Carrie was going to come to LA and we had a whole plan and she had a ticket.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: I was going to do a play. I was going to do Cost of Living in Detroit, and there was going to be a few weeks in between. And I got tickets and. And we booked the hotel room.
[00:16:06] Speaker C: We just did the tickets. And then the tickets were like, for like March 24th, 26th or something like that, 2020. And then the pandemic hit and everything changed.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: We had even had a conversation at one point.
[00:16:22] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: And because I. I knew that you have hiv. And this is. So this was in terms of how I was thinking about things at the time. And I was like, oh, I'm going to try to approach this in a way that I don't want to be offensive or anything. I was like, is me coming and traveling during this time? Because Covid had just started. Like, people were buying hand sanitizer. That was like, where we were.
[00:16:44] Speaker C: I feel like people. I mean, people were more.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: And sanitizer.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yes. This is.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: We can't forget toilet paper.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Exactly. That was even before that. This is before the. The toilet paper thing was. Was happening. And I had said, oh, should I be concerned, or do you think this is going to be okay? No offense, I don't mean to offend you, but what with COVID And you, like, laughed about it almost.
[00:17:10] Speaker C: Well, I mean, yeah, because we were.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: All kind of like, yeah. You thought it was sweet that I was.
[00:17:16] Speaker C: Yes, I thought it was very, very kind of you. And I think I was just more like, I don't. You know, we didn't know where it was going yet. It was still very, like, unreal in a sense.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: And I were having a reaction at the beginning, I think, of like, okay, everybody's panicking. Everybody calmed down. And then it was like, oh, no, the panicking was totally justified.
[00:17:36] Speaker C: Yes. And I was thinking, you know, I. I had already. And that's the thing with. When a lot of people who were already disabled at that point or had chronic illnesses. I think we also had a little bit of, like, a toolkit where we felt like, well, we were prepared to do things that people hadn't. Who didn't have any of these things weren't doing ever. And so I'm like, well, I take care of myself. I use hand sanitizer already. Like, I was thinking about the normal things. I'm like, well, I take care of myself during flu season. I already know about that kind of deal. And so I just didn't think it would be more than that. And then it was. And it was very much more than that.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:11] Speaker C: As we know.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: Really quick. And then it was eight months before we met.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Person.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: It took eight months. And then when we. When things started opening up, we just were flying back and forth from LA.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: To New York a lot on, like, empty planes.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: And.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: With really cheap tickets.
[00:18:27] Speaker C: Yeah. And then we did that for. For a while, and it was very clear right away that you were my person and you were my soulmate. And so for me, it was. It wasn't a hard decision when we were like, how long do you want to kind of do this?
I grew up in Brooklyn, and so I'm originally from New York, and so for me, it was like, I'll just. I'll just move there. It's like a full circle. I'll come back. And so we had made that plan in, like, late 2021, but then I think, what, in August of 2022. We decided. I decided I was going to move out and Carrie flew out to me. We gathered up the pets and put everything into the car. And before we set out on the road trip, I proposed because I knew I didn't. I had the ring at that point. And initially I was going to wait till we got to New York. And then the idea of holding on to an engagement ring the entire road trip with boxes.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Very smart, Joe.
[00:19:27] Speaker C: I was like. Which was unfortunate. I was like, here.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: You.
[00:19:31] Speaker C: You have to hold on.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
You know, us that.
[00:19:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: You know, I'm the one more likely to lose a thing. But.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: But at least I would have done the thing at that point.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: It would be my fault.
[00:19:42] Speaker C: Very. No, but it was nice.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: We had like, I had moved into this apartment in the meantime, knowing that you were still going to move. But we knew, okay, we got to find an apartment with two bathrooms.
[00:19:55] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: We. We had the whole setup, you know, which I think is a lot of. A lot of disabled people or a lot of people with chronic illnesses where both people have those issues and understand the importance of having access to a bathroom.
[00:20:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: And for not one person not needing to wait to use the bathroom. We had already set up kind of our life here before you moved.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Yeah. And it was just. I mean, every. The blending of it all was just really wonderful because Carrie already had two old senior cats and I had a senior dog and a senior cat, and we got them all together and it's just this little Brady bunch.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: They're all 14.
[00:20:33] Speaker C: All 14 years old.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Vet bills are ridiculous.
[00:20:35] Speaker C: But you just went yesterday to one for one.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: They're so. They're so great.
[00:20:39] Speaker C: They are so sweet. Yeah.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Harry.
God may all made me a incredible gift, Joe, that I still have to this day. And I'm about to show it on screen.
It made me cry so hard when I opened it several credits ago because it was.
It is a spot on like Ned's of my dog.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: I had so much fun doing that because what was the little. Should I get the one that I was. Was that dirt. That was during the pandemic. Right. I think I was doing a bunch of those for.
[00:21:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: For people. As like a giving goodwill kind of thing. But we've got a matching one. I'll go grab it real quick. That I sent to Joe.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: Oh, yes. This is. I love this card. I capture. This is so sweet.
This is very, very, very rich.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: It's nice to have the. The time to be doing these. What We've got one with the Joe and Yoda.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: Yoda looks a lot bigger than he is because he's in the foreground, but.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: He'S also larger than life.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so, wow. I mean.
And Carrie, you judge, completed writing a beautiful play that I have not read yet, but the title draws.
It's all I know about it. And it's just a great title. And it's based on your personal life. So tell us more about writing and how that.
How acting has influence that.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, sure. I'll start and then I'll pass it to Joe because Joe is a screenwriter and has lots of. Lots of things that you've written, too, based on your personal experiences.
But I've been writing for a long time, and if I've written a lot of plays. And I started really taking it seriously in undergrad when John Jorey was the acting teacher at Santa Fe University, and he was the founder of the Humana Festival and Actors Theater of Louisville. And he is a writer, also a pretty prolific playwright.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: When did you graduate?
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Sorry, that was 2012.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I graduated a few years. They just.
Yeah, timeline purposes continue.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: It's all very confusing, and I get that. And then I took a year off and then went to grad school. But I started writing back then. And I've written six plays. This is my sixth play. And they. They're all kind of personal in some way. This is the one I'm finally like. What I always do is I write these plays, I get them to the stage of having a staged reading, I do some tweaks, and then I start hating them, and then I move on to the next play and I just start writing a new play. But so this one, I'm. I'm really pushing and trying to get it out there, but it's based loosely on my experiences with becoming disabled and my resistance to accepting my disability being tied to a version of survivor's guilt that I have from when I was a teenager. My brother had cancer and he passed away from cancer. And I was also having medical issues at the same time. And at one point, we were hospitalized in rooms right next to each other for six weeks in the hospital. And we actually had, like, it was an awful time, but it was also a great time and this very unusual experience for teenagers to have. And so it's this play that. It's a comedy, but it takes place in modern day and then flashes back as this main character tries to find her community. But the primary thing is having to shift her work, life, identity, and what that means. And all the questioning of like why, why do we find our worth in our, in our capitalist productivity? And anyway, blah blah, blah.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Code alleged. You have your health.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: Yes. At least you have your health. And that comes from a little bit of.
When you've witnessed someone go through a very serious illness, it's hard to not compare everything to that. And my brother had cancer and cancer is kind of.
It's, it's the illness that people can't argue with. You know what I mean? It's the.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:20] Speaker C: The rock of the paper scissor.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you get diagnosed with a rare condition that people. I have Ehlers Danlos syndrome and people don't at least that.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: What is that?
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Ehlers Danlos syndrome is a connective tissue disorder. So my collagen in my body doesn't work correctly. I have the hypermobility type but for me it's also caused my lungs collapsed repeatedly. When I was a teenager I had a mild heart condition that then I grew out of, which is very strange. But it also gave me scoliosis and a lot of pain. And I, I walk with a cane and use a wheelchair sometimes, but it's not especially when I was getting diagnosed it wasn't a very well known condition. And all that they tell you're in immense pain but all that people tell you is to, to take Tylenol and, and do physical therapy. Luckily now there's a lot more education about it.
But yeah, that, that's what that comes from is and the kind of the ways that we gaslight ourselves and internalized ableism and it's all, all mixed into this package that I'm hoping is very funny. I'm hoping it is.
[00:27:33] Speaker C: It's very funny. As someone who's read it, it's very funny.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: We both appreciate dark comedy a lot and I think that transition, believe me.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: I, I, I know that.
I know want that too.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: That's what the place that we're all in after the pandemic too is. I don't think people want to be talked down to. I think people want reality but laugh at the same time. And all of your writing is, is yeah, like that I'd say too very.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: Much in the dark humor and very based on personal experiences in my life. And I feel like, you know, I've, there's certain writers out there that are. The way I've always looked at is like there are always going to be writers who can do sci fi, who can always do action, who can always do these outlandish films. But I have a Specific background and a personal story that is unique to me. So why not at least start with sharing that stuff? And so I. I have a few different screenplays that I've written that have been getting traction now over the last few years with writing festivals and on Blacklist. One of my scripts, the Way We Walk, which is a romantic comedy about two people with disabilities, one who is born disabled, one who is newly disabled, which was written before my marriage and before meeting Carrie. So it's almost like I manifested it into existence.
But it's about you.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Tell me more.
[00:28:58] Speaker C: Well, it's mainly about a disabled. A born disabled writer who meets a newly disabled former ballet dancer. And it's about their relationship to disability and how drastically different it is. And how even though the main character, who is loosely based on me, was born disabled, he in fact has more internalized ableism and more disconnect to the disability community.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Funny how that works out.
[00:29:25] Speaker C: Yes, and his desire to be quote, unquote, normal has pushed him away from a community that could be really wonderful for him. And so it's about an exploration of that and that's done really well on the blacklist. It's gotten an 8 out of 10 on the blacklist and a few other wonderful sites. And my other coming of age film, which is called Capitola, which is about the other part of my life which was being born HIV positive. So I was.
My father unknowingly contracted HIV after being unfaithful to my mom. And he transmitted it to both my. Well, my mom, who then gave birth to me and my twin brother. And my twin brother passed away at 16 months. And so, you know, as I grew up and dealt with HIV in the early 2000s and the late 90s, I had to be very quiet about that because there was so much stigma and bullying and my relationship to my father was very distant. And after he passed, we had this. I had this desire to write about it and this kind of stemmed from that, which is just this film about how do you forgive someone who couldn't ask for forgiveness? And how do you move on from someone who's no longer here and can't participate in that? And a young teenager who's born HIV positive is asked to do the eulogy for his distant father who is the cause of all his grief. And so how do you tackle that? And so that's what this script has been. It's been doing and it's doing pretty well. And I'm doing on a rewrites on it as right now, but for Me, it really is important to tell my story, and it's almost an exploration of these things through writing. It's therapeutic. It's. It's catharsis.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: It's.
[00:31:12] Speaker C: It's all these different.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: You have so many stories that come from your life that sometimes in the writing process, you have had to simplify things that you've already written because there's almost too much.
[00:31:24] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: Too many stories. And it's like, maybe that's a different film. Maybe that's for another.
[00:31:28] Speaker C: Or there are times when I get too specific and I'm like, it's so funny how in a film version of this, it seems so unrealistic, yet it's literally what happened.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:37] Speaker C: And so. And I've been tackling a memoir to kind of handle that as opposed to, you know, trying to fictionalize things to make them less complicated.
I just work on a real story that is. You know, my life has been a little crazy. And so.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: There's always something to. To write about.
[00:32:01] Speaker C: Yeah. We have our writing that we do together, Right.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah, we're trying talk about that.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: We did a short film for Easter Seals Disability Film Challenge called Adoptive, and we knew that we wanted to participate this last year. And we also, at the same time, were toying with the idea of a pilot that we wanted to write together. And we've been wanting to write something generally about us and how we get through the day and just what our life looks like and how it differs from people's expectations.
[00:32:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Just even how we get around the world. And then also the idea of family planning and. Which brought us to the topic of adoption. And knowing that, and then through research, finding out really how complicated. Very complicated and potentially problematic adoption is.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: It's.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: I mean, it's a. To say that is. Is. Is. It's such a broad thing. And adoption in this country is very deregulated. And there's a lot of private adoption.
[00:33:09] Speaker C: Agents, which I really didn't understand until we started digging in how unsupervised the entire process of adoption is.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Beast. It's huge. And there are, like. So there are love. Lots of lovely stories. I always want to say that there are lots of successful stories.
[00:33:24] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Of adoption, where the adopted child and the adopted parents are very happy and everything turned out great. But for all of those stories, there are lots of stories of children growing up with trauma from the process, from feeling disconnected from their racial background or just their biological background.
[00:33:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: Children being abused.
Children who are adopted are much more likely to have a medical condition or to have a disability. And those children are much more likely to be rehomed.
[00:33:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: At some point, like dogs and cats, which you shouldn't do with dogs and cats either, but you certainly shouldn't do with a human. But it happens a lot. And especially with these private adoption facilities agencies, a lot of that is able to be kind of hidden or swept under the rug or people are able to do things in a way without disclosing a lot of information about where children came from and what their trauma might be.
[00:34:21] Speaker C: And then on top of that, just the stigma and the ableism that is in adoption with people who are disabled, who want to be parents, and the struggle to even get on the list.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: Something like 8% of, if I'm remembering this right, 8% of disabled couples who try the adoption process feel blatantly discriminated against. And then there's an even bigger number of people who just end up on these lists and just wait for years and years and years and never hear anything because they're quietly moved to the very bottom of the list of viable parents. And there was one story that I've been telling, talking about in podcasts and things, one story of a couple who waited 15 years. They were both disabled. They waited 15 years, finally were paired with the child, and then the husband died like three weeks after they finally got their child, you know, and I, I don't know how that then turned out. I don't know how it resolved if they. Then the mother and child stayed together. I don't, I don't know what happened. But 15 years is a really long time to wait, especially if people know that they're ready for a family now, you know, that they want to help now.
[00:35:37] Speaker C: And while we couldn't basically get into all that, which we hope to do eventually. An actual show.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:43] Speaker C: We decided to distill it into something a little bit more that you could.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: Do in five minutes.
[00:35:47] Speaker C: That you could do in five minutes.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: And fit the money comedy category.
[00:35:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Again, it's more practicing of like, we have all these ideas of how to tackle subject matter that is sticky and dark and complicated. But then how do we make a light hearted comedic version of that that maybe hints at some of it? Right.
[00:36:05] Speaker C: And I think people are more willing to learn through that sometimes through laughter and through feeling unarmed by just something that's going to be a little quote unquote lighter that they realize, oh, I've, I've learned a lot in this process as well. And it was a very wonderful experience. We wrote it Together. We directed it together, we produced it together, and we starred in it together. And it ended up being nominated for Best Writer.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:30] Speaker C: Which was really wonderful.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: It was super fun. And now we want to use it as. As potentially a sizzle reel to pair with a pilot that talks about all that other stuff.
[00:36:38] Speaker C: So what I mean, you know, I feel very grateful to have a partner in life and a writing partner and a career partner in every step of the way.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: We talk about our feelings all the time, almost exclusively. Yeah. We never don't know, like, what the other person is feeling and going through. And I think that helps with everything that we try to do together.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah. I shared a comment with Joe on Instagram. Could I geek out on your photos?
The one where you two are in Central park just melted my heart, Judge. And I said your pictures together make me happy and make me cry at the same time. The love you have for each other, it's so evident and it is beyond clear that you are her whole wide world and that no one could ever make her smile or laugh like you do. And I'm absolutely positive that you feel the exact same way about her. It was in reference to post where you defended your husband for coming out as HIV positive.
Could you talk more?
Because that's an interesting juxtaposition, what we started with, which I goofed up at, about him having so much chemistry.
And then we all. We had a long, fun discussion about how did that work? How did you make that work for you two? But then you have this other side where you have to defend each other and you have to. I don't want to say a lot, but you've had to do it more than once. Talk about that.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Well, I think that post that we were talking about was talking about being pansexual.
[00:39:23] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Which you get. But it is an interesting intersection because people react to that information with the context of you being HIV positive and disabled. I think they. All of those things combined create the reaction that you get.
[00:39:44] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: It's complicated. And first of all, just to acknowledge, social media, especially lately, has become kind of a cesspool. It feels like. And it feels like everybody.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: You don't say.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: It feels like everyone is getting the bullying that everybody is receiving across the board. It has skyrocketed. And it's just. It's. We always want to reiterate and remind people, remind ourselves that it's not the real world. It affects the real world, and it's a microcosm of the real world, but it. It is people who are Very angry and who need to get that out. They're, they're concentrated in these places. And so it's important to put the phone down and to go spend time with the real people who you really care about and all of that. But we end up defending, defending ourselves in these moments, mainly because of the, the, the movements that are happening right now to try to suppress the queer community. Books being banned, people being denied health care, and the potential that even gay marriage is on the chopping block. It feels important to respond to some of this hate just for the, the young queer people who are potentially coming across these comments to see that people stand up to them. But we go back on whether to stand up to them or to just delete and move on. But you want to speak to.
[00:41:11] Speaker C: Well, I think just, I think on the personal level and on the level of like why we end up having to defend ourselves or why I even am quote, unquote attacked in a way regarding these issues. I think it isn't just like on the individual level of people being upset about pansexuality or be people being upset about hiv or people even being upset about disability culture. I think it's something about the combination and then the way that people will find me. You know, if you want to loop it right back into this idea of like, I got a bunch of followers because people were very enamored with my video or about like my.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: Dude.
[00:41:58] Speaker A: But my video.
[00:42:00] Speaker C: Yeah, but I think it is literally in direct response to that. I think what happens, and I find myself doing this now almost on a weekly basis of this routine of gaining new followers who are interested in a certain aspect and then losing followers or gaining hate due to another thing. It's because we look at disability and we look at people with disabilities often in just nature of inspirational, of these, of these heroic figures. And without trying to. If I'm just sharing certain aspects of my life or funny stories or just things that I have gone through which are on a. On an individual level, they could be seen as inspiring to people who are going through similar things. That's totally valid and that's fair. I think people then create this ownership of me, of this idea of I'm their inspiration vessel now and I'm their means for media consumption is, oh, I want to go to this page and I want to feel good about myself. So then when you pair that with a person just being a real person, because I'm not cultivating a page that's made to be inspirational. I'm just sharing things that you happen to find inspirational.
That creates an anger and that stirs up a feeling from people that they feel like they've been cheated or they've been. There was a swerve or like they were tricked into following an account that suddenly is going in a different direction than they thought was going to happen. And so then when I talk about being pansexual and then like, wait, wait, wait, that's not what I'm here for. Why are you talking about that now?
And the same thing with hiv. People are very willing to praise me for being born HIV positive and what I've gone through. But the moment that they think that, that HIV potentially is linked to a sexuality.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: You see that thumbs up.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Isn't that weird that it just doesn't.
[00:43:56] Speaker C: I don't know why. Yeah, that's.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: Yeah. We were doing something on the Microsoft Teams and we kept making fireworks and balloons go off in the background. We're like, we don't know what we're doing. We didn't.
[00:44:06] Speaker C: I know, we're think thankfully that we weren't like giving condolences to somebody at the same time, just.
[00:44:11] Speaker A: Or not.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: But it's all that much be on your end because I have no idea.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: I don't know. See, now it's not. I'm giving a bunch of thumbs up and it's not.
[00:44:24] Speaker C: I have no idea.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: I don't know. We're so many years with this technology and we're still figuring.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: So it's interesting because.
And I talked to Joe about this as well.
That post we're referencing about pansexuality.
It was so moving and engaging, particularly the last little bit where you said, joe, two pansexuals do not equal a heterosexual couple or marriage. And I wanted to find out more about that, not as punch back, but just because I am naturally curious about hearing more.
That's a very insightful truth bomb you dropped, as most of your videos are. And so talk more about that and how that knowledge had shaped your relationship.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean that's the thing that people, I think got so mad about because a few different misconceptions. First of all, for people who are seeing the, the queer community as a scapegoat right now or, or don't understand it or vilifying it. It's. People keep making this connection of a person's sexuality is just about what they do in the bedroom, which we all know is not true. And if you studied history at all, you know that that's not true and that it's about love, it's about community and it's about identity. So for people who took so long grappling with a part of themselves and then also witnessing the queer community, maybe from a distance, and wanting to be a part of it and wanting to be a part of that culture, but not being able to see yourself as part of it because of bisexual erasure.
[00:46:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:46:52] Speaker A: That to then enter into a relationship that appears heterosexual on the outside, it was important to us to acknowledge with each other where we are and that that's a piece of each other that needs to be at least just validated so that we don't feel like a piece of us is missing.
[00:47:11] Speaker C: No. And people like to think that, well, now that we are together, oh, it doesn't matter anymore because you're with a woman and you're, you know, the woman's with a man, so you guys are just heterosexual and it doesn't matter. And also this idea which is so interesting we've been facing, which is this idea that like, once you're in a marriage or once you're in a relationship, suddenly you're just ability to comprehend or acknowledge that someone outside of the person you're with is attractive and that somehow that's like just not even allowed or just on a factual basis, like to be able to look at someone and be like, yeah, that person's attractive. Which is so interesting because the heterosexual community does it non stop. There are plenty of people who are married who are like, oh, I find, you know, Brad Pitt attractive. Or oh, I find whoever, you know, Scarlett Johansson attractive. And that's like, it doesn't mean that their marriage is broken and that they're no longer in love. It's just.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: And you can have a, you can have an acknowledgment and go, okay, our relationship is not open at this time.
[00:48:14] Speaker C: No.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: But I know that our longevity is more important than anything. And I don't want you to ever feel like you have to go and cheat to get what you need. So there's just an acknowledgement of before anything were to ever happen that would damage our relationship. Let's talk about it. You know, like marriage is if it works out, right. It's long and so you know what's going to happen and how you're going to feel. Letter and to have that openness and also an understanding that we both share very similar experiences in our childhood, in our teenage years. We bond a lot over those experiences. And then in our general relationship we are not particularly. Gender.
[00:48:55] Speaker C: Gender dynamics are not traditional.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:48:59] Speaker C: At all. And so like how we do things, how we go about chores or how we go about livelihood or who's the.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: Vulnerable one and who's the strong one that like shifts very equally. It's a very equal.
[00:49:13] Speaker C: So like to say that like our queerness is completely gone the moment we're married is just kind of ridiculous because it plays into every part of our relationship. It plays into how we talk with each other, how we. What we expect from each other.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: And people get reactionary, like very defensive. I think that they see our marriage as to disabled people and particularly if they're non disabled, they look at it and they go, oh, like that's so sweet. Without maybe even acknowledging that there is a sexual aspect to, to our relationship or without thinking that we are adults, that we're grown ups like everybody else and that our relationship is a grownup relationship. And then also that as two disabled people, like with anybody, but there's a chance that one of us might die before the other one. And so if I were to die, Joe could easily then fall in love with a man after me.
[00:50:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:05] Speaker A: And that's just part of who he is. And that's just acknowledging just that that's part of who he is is just a kind thing to do. It's. It's not about ownership. Yeah. Or saying like, yeah, let's go find a guy for you to cheat on me with right now. It's not just seeing you.
[00:50:22] Speaker C: And I also are. I also think some people just innately have the wrong definition of what they think pansexual is. And I think they think it's polyamorous.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: Polyamorous.
[00:50:30] Speaker C: Polyamorous.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: Which is also fine.
[00:50:32] Speaker C: Also fine.
I think just literally just the words. I think people just entertain.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Sexual is just meant to be inclusive of intersex and non binary people. And because bisexual technically means two, it means you're attracted to your gender and another gender and people have used both.
[00:50:53] Speaker C: For the same thing. Some people just prefer the word bisexual because it's more known and more familiar. But they do. They're open to every single person.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:02] Speaker C: And some people just prefer pansexual. I prefer pansexual.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: Really? Yeah, it's whatever. People get their pans. Sexual panties in a twist about it. So.
[00:51:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:51:13] Speaker C: There we go.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: Wow.
Where'd you go from there? So it was the fashion element because I remember being introduced to you, Joe.
I was really digging your shirt and I, I really.
And I springboarded to finding out how you got that shirt. Would you tell that story.
Oh, well, it's a shirt, but it's fantastic.
[00:52:02] Speaker C: It's. It's like lions. It's a. It's a nice light brown shirt with lions on it and, like, some leopard. Leopard print. And so there's been an ongoing. It kind of. It's kind of a tradition now, I guess, where Carrie's mom has gotten me these very lavish shirts for, like, Christmases. And so it's. It's one of a few cat shirts I have.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: And you're very stylish.
[00:52:30] Speaker C: Well, I, like, connects to. Yeah. And again, that connects to the queerness of, like, not. I just not being boxed in on, like, a certain style you have to be or a certain thing you could.
[00:52:41] Speaker A: Wear, which is silly that that's even connected to queerness, really. It doesn't have. It doesn't have to be, but that's the way that it's been. I mean, every. Every straight guy who I dated before you has, like a few T shirts and a few flannel downs. And then we went to see. We went to a Death Cab for Cutie concert. And like, every.
Every guy there was dressed exactly like that. And it's like, doesn't that get boring? Doesn't that. And then you posted a picture recently of your suit that you wore for our wedding.
[00:53:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:53:13] Speaker A: Which do you want to describe?
[00:53:14] Speaker C: That it's a salmon pink. Yeah. Suit with. The shirt itself has French. Frenchies.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: Like, French who are like, maybe in tuxedos, but.
[00:53:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:53:27] Speaker A: Confusing.
[00:53:27] Speaker C: Confusing.
[00:53:28] Speaker B: It's very.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: Color.
[00:53:29] Speaker C: Very colorful.
[00:53:29] Speaker A: You got a message about that shirt, about that picture. It was like, I can't believe you're married to a woman.
[00:53:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: It's like, when did we decide that someone liking colors and patterns and in just appreciating fashion. Why does that have to connect to which genitalia they prefer in the bedroom? Like, what? And it's so bizarre.
[00:53:52] Speaker C: And that. And then both sides of the aisle are doing this.
[00:53:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:53:57] Speaker C: This gatekeeping of sexuality, of gatekeeping of heterosexuality and gatekeeping, of fairness and fashion. And fashion.
[00:54:04] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, it would. The Vagin element. And I geek out over musical theater so much. I always have. And it's transformed not only my being, but also my vagina sense, which is, again, what theater people tend to stick together. And why hearing about all the stories you guys have. And I mean, there are so, so, so many more that we could do a whole mini season. And we will probably not run out of stories to share or to have YouTube share with the audience.
Let's go back to the juxt position, because that's a very interesting avenue to find yourselves at as not only a married couple, but content creators, creative types, and always having to really, I hate to use this phrase, thread the needle or having to really walk the tight rope or wheel the tight rope. I mean, the picture I referenced earlier, I believe you two are at Central park or outside.
And Joe, you were commenting on how the wheelchair you were in that day carried to get on the back of it and almost use it as two cedar transport.
[00:56:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:56:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And so what is it like having so many eyes on your relationship and you two are just normal everyday people like everyone else, but you almost have like a local and national pseudo popularity following both of you.
In terms of the comments, what is that like inside the phrasing, which. Really weird.
[00:57:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
I think personally, in my previous relation relationships, as long as I have used a mobility, I have felt like people have looked at me. But it's much more comfortable when it's us together. Even though it's exponentially more.
[00:57:50] Speaker C: It's happening more. But it's almost validating to be able to turn to the other person and be like, okay, that just happened. Right. That was okay. That was ableism. Okay. Got it.
[00:57:59] Speaker A: About something. As opposed to having to just carry it.
[00:58:03] Speaker C: Yeah. And we're not being kind of gaslit by being. Oh, I don't think that was anything. You didn't have to deal with it. That's. It's fine. They didn't mean that.
[00:58:11] Speaker A: A little bit more. Speak up for the other person. If. If one person's feeling quiet. There are a few times when we talk about the fact that you use a wheelchair more often and I use a cane more often. That sometimes people don't see my cane because it's like wheelchair Trump's cane.
[00:58:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:58:28] Speaker A: And they'll think that I'm still your caregiver or something weird. That does happen.
[00:58:32] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think just the living online aspect that you're like. Of the idea of, like the comments and what I'm. I'm still managing it. We're still balancing what. How to deal with that and how to live. I mean, there'll be days. What was it the other day we went coffee when someone recognized me from Instagram.
[00:58:50] Speaker A: Right, Right.
[00:58:51] Speaker C: That was like two days ago, we went to go get coffee and someone's like, oh, I know. I follow you.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: Yeah. They were very nice.
[00:58:56] Speaker C: Very nice. And usually in person, it's very nice.
[00:58:59] Speaker A: Yes. Everyone's always excited to see you in person.
[00:59:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: And I've Only been recognized one time from Handmaid's Tale. That's the only once. And it was a person like, was in the theater community already. So I've been kind of safe from that. Like, I get to still kind of.
[00:59:14] Speaker C: Just live, but we're having to figure out how to acknowledge and what things to respond to, what things not to respond to with things to just let go. And like, it's, it takes me a little bit to kind of, I mean, you know, it's funny, it's almost like a form of amnesia every few weeks when something really triggers an audience online. And I even said it, what was it? The pansexual post. That post even. I, I didn't think of it. I didn't give it a second thought when I went to post.
[00:59:48] Speaker B: Would you.
[00:59:49] Speaker C: I, I, I was just like, I'm just gonna like, oh, whatever I saw, which is so funny. I saw already a few of my friends posting about it and their, you know, their comments. I'm not to shame them. They had like 20 likes and like a lot of positive things and like, oh, good for you. Mostly from friends and queer community. And so, like, right before I got up to take Yoda for his walk, I just did the, the post and I went, did the walk, came back and we were getting coffee and I look at my phone and I'm like, right, I forgot I have this phone. Like, I'll forget that I'm not, I'm not just speaking to my friends because for a long time it was just speaking to my friends. And so it's still tricky. Yeah, it's very tricky trying to figure out how to, how to let it not affect you emotionally and to be able to go about your day and not like, just be taken down by it. I mean, I got a lot of, I got a lot of nasty messages that day for quite a few days.
[01:00:48] Speaker A: And then being able to separate that from the real world and then the things that happen out in the world, I mean, most of what we'll get is, we'll get, People will clap or we'll do some. If they see me.
[01:01:00] Speaker C: Yeah, they might say something similar and.
[01:01:03] Speaker A: And people might be people, but it's more like, it's more kind of slightly, slightly condescending. Ranging, too positive. Yeah, is, is what we get out, out in the world when people see us getting about. I think the main thing is that that's almost created like a codependency in getting out and about because we use each other and help each other so much. So it is like when one of us goes off to do. To travel, and this is a hard city to be in. As a disabled person, we worry very much about each other, so.
[01:01:33] Speaker C: And usually when one of us decides to go on our own, that's the day that, like, the craziest story happens.
[01:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Or when it will fall down or something.
[01:01:41] Speaker C: Yeah, something will happen. Or someone will follow me or. Or you. It'll be like a whole call you into the building. Yes. Yeah.
[01:01:50] Speaker A: So those things are separate, but it's. You can kind of get them mixed up in your. In your head and heart, I think, too.
[01:01:56] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:01:57] Speaker A: I don't know if that answers. That was a rambly answer. But.
[01:02:00] Speaker B: Well, I mean, the.
One of the moments that moved me so much, Carrie, is a video that you did several years ago where you were responding to a then friend accusing you of somehow faking your disability for attention or for whatever. And you were so broken and distraught. And it just.
It just filled me with a lot of empathy for you because that comment really affected you in a profound way.
Could you talk more about that?
[01:03:20] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. So. So when I was going through my diagnosis process was starting to affect my work, the ability to get acting jobs, to get callbacks, things were starting to shift very much because I needed to find my community and I needed to start identifying as a disabled actor to be able to find the people who could actually see me and consider me for roles. But there was a stretch when I was using my cane to get to an audition. I would leave it in the waiting room and then I'd go in and try to hide it in the audition room. And that wasn't working.
People would see through it. And I was in this place very much of, I can't hide this anymore. And going through all sorts of grief in. You know, I used to be able to dance. Not very well, but I would try. And I. I used to bike everywhere. That was my main way of. Of transportation. I mean, I could bike and walk and run for hours. And I was always a very clumsy person, but I considered myself athletic. And losing that part of myself, or not losing it, but having to adjust and find it in other ways was difficult. And there also, at the same time, I didn't know that many people who had Ehlers Danlos syndrome. I was diagnosed four times. I was diagnosed by two geneticists and two rheumatologists over a period of years to make sure that that's what it was, because they thought it also might be Marfan syndrome. And a lot of things were Changing. And I was having to spend. I got very deconditioned for a while and was having to spend a lot of time in bed. I started getting chronic migraines. I was having. I was always, always a server in restaurants, and I found I couldn't do that anymore, and I had to pivot to only babysitting, but only within certain parameters. It was. I mean, everybody who has acquired a disability has to go through some kind of grieving process. And in that time, I connected with a girl who I'd gone to high school with, who was a delightful person in high school, and she was also going through eds, and her issues were a little different from mine, and she was dealing with a lot of seizures and seizure activity and that kind of thing. And during the pandemic, I had pivoted. I'd gotten off of Facebook and I was doing mostly Instagram and was still trying to figure out, like, okay, what. I have so many interests. I have 8 million interests. But also felt this lack of knowledge about disability with my friends and with the theater community.
So I was doing a lot of posting for advocacy at the time and trying to explain what I had and explain what disabled actors are. And I was just talking a lot about that. And sometimes there's this thing that we've talked about, too, of.
You get sometimes pigeonholed into thinking, even though I have, again, 8 million interests, and I love to read and learn about things. I have 8 million hobbies. But people sometimes then only want to talk to you about disability, or it becomes like, that's the. That's the main thing that you're expected to talk about. So I was grappling with lots of discomfort about that.
[01:06:44] Speaker C: Yeah, well, you get. You get traction, and it's. You know, you think about algorithms, and everyone thinks about the algorithm and what does the algorithm want and what do people want from you? And if you're just known as the disabled person or the. Whatever.
[01:06:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:06:56] Speaker C: Then. Then you do create a fake identity in your head of like, well, only people care. People only care if I'm talking about.
[01:07:03] Speaker A: Disability, and especially if you feel misunderstood by the communities that you're in. I felt misunderstood by the theater community, and I felt a little misunderstood by the disabled community in. In certain ways because I was an ambulatory wheelchair user, and my disability is dynamic and changes a lot. So I would make posts trying to explain, I need this mobility aid at this time for this reason, and. And just trying to educate so that I didn't feel so.
Like I was facing so much Ignorance. You know, we, and I think we all try to do versions of that online or we feel the, the impulse to do that. And I think that the post that she took issue with, I think was about blood pooling. I think, I'm not sure, but I have an issue with if I'm on my, if I'm feet too long, I get bad blood pooling in my legs.
[01:07:53] Speaker C: Very real, it's very visible.
[01:07:55] Speaker A: Yes. They get red and they get purple and they spots and they get really hot and itchy. And I, at that point, I can't be on my feet anymore. And I just posted a picture of my legs during that and I talked about that and I don't know what, what it was about that particular post that, that triggered her. And you know, she's, she was in a very obviously very hard place in her life and having mental health issues also. And we all were to a degree during the pandemic, you know, but especially if you had mental health issues coming into things. But she wrote me this very long message that accused me of having no personality outside of my disability, no interests outside of my disability. She encouraged me to go get a hobby and go like, read a book, which is. I, I'm an avid reader and I have a ton of hobbies.
[01:08:45] Speaker C: You have and you have more. You have, one might say, too many hobbies.
[01:08:50] Speaker A: Ye.
[01:08:51] Speaker C: She.
[01:08:51] Speaker A: And then she said, for those of us who are actually disabled, your posts are very offensive. She said that. And she said for those of us who actually have this condition, it's very hard and it's not cute and it's not fun. And she basically accused me of trying to use my disability for clout. And she said. And trying to get famous, which is ridiculous because nobody cares about disabled people enough for us to become famous off of our disability. Nobody fakes disability. It's not a good kind of attention that you get most of the time. And also the money you could potentially get from faking disability is not worth it, not existence. So it's just bizarre to even accuse someone of faking it for the. In the first place and then to do this character assassination of me based on my posts, thinking that my posts were the entirety of who I am as a person and that this was someone who I had known in real life for a very long time. She was one of the few people in the, in the world at that time who I knew who had my diagnosis. And I had found a lot of comfort in being able to talk to her. And she, at periods of time she Would respond to my post going, I see you, I hear you. Thank you for posting about this. I used to send her messages going, like, I'm sorry you're going through this. I'm thinking about you. So this came out of absolutely nowhere.
[01:10:12] Speaker C: Clearly she was going through something.
[01:10:14] Speaker A: Yes. And she said, it's so offensive how you're always talking about it and then how you're always acting in little things. I was like always acting in little things. I have a. A bachelor's in musical theater and I have a master's degree in acting. I been a professional actor for years. I'm not using my disability to try to act in little things. This is my life's passion. I'm an. I am an actor and I'm trying to create space for. For us. So I knew after that I, I was able to make peace with like, obviously this is more about where she is in her place and her journey and her grieving process than it is about me.
[01:10:51] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:10:51] Speaker A: At the time it felt very personal and we all felt very isolated too. So I think it was all. It.
[01:10:58] Speaker B: It must have been particularly devastating because as you should said, she at that time was one of the few people you knew who actually had your diagnosis.
[01:11:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:11:19] Speaker B: And I, I mean I. I can't even begin to comprehend the extra metaphorically knife in the back that that much of had on you.
[01:11:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it felt. It felt like a rejection for sure. And luckily I had Joe from afar helping me through it. And then my best friend was. Was living here at the time with me and she was very kind and, and helped me process it. And they, they helped me realize very quickly. And the Internet, the me sharing it on the. And I was torn about whether to share it or not, but it was also like, I wanted at the time for it to be a reminder for people to be especially nice to each other during the pandemic. Not knowing how many people the person who you could be bullying could be so close to the edge right now. This is not the time to bully people. You know, those were the goals in kind of sharing that. And now I'm almost a little embarrassed about it. But I, you know, it was, it happened. It really happened. And it's okay to be vulnerable sometimes.
[01:12:34] Speaker B: No, I mean the region. I bring it up. I, I knew about your acting. I.
We go way back. I knew what you would studying. But the, the vulnerability in that video, you can't act that. Like in that moment, what spoke to me the most and what I hope that most people got from that video was the vulnerability and the heartache of feeling attacked that you can tear out a piece of news leaf paper from a note, look and you can show it and then you can crumple it into a bowl and then you can un crumble it, but it will never be the exact same thing. And I should demonstrate that I'm assuming that everyone knows exactly, exactly what that is like for to not have a visual cue.
I'm now looking for loot. Leave paper. Joe, Carrie, help me out Budget. It's.
I mean bullying is particularly prevalent online and shockingly particularly prevalent in the communities that you guys are involved in that I'm involved in.
Whereas you. You would expect that sort of come in, that sort of vitriol from people outside the community and it cuts more, much more, more deeply when it comes within.
Then and then you have the imposter syndrome.
Inner tides, ableism.
There's so much to unpack and we simply don't have time.
Hijits want to thank you for having the bravery to pose something like that. It. It wasn't pleasant at all, but it was important and I think it's what empowered me to reach back out to you and reconnect in that way. I also had no idea what your disability was, so I would carry it. But seeing that emotional vulnerability made me feel lads alone.
And that's also coming full circle. What Joe does in the.
You poach too much. Please stop. Please also never stop. Because it's just like. And it's what you carry do with your writing and why I'm so pumped not only to read the play but to see it be produced and performed and so wrapping up even though I simply don't want to because I could talk to you ad nauseam for days on end.
There are two questions I always wrap up interviews with because it brings it full circle again in case there are aspiring advocates, actors, screenwriters and the like watching or listening that and wanting to make whatever their chosen field is their chosen field.
You guys have walked many roads and worn many different hats, both together and separate. What would be some action steps that you would recommend to encourage them along their path?
[01:19:00] Speaker A: Like I've been talking a lot. You want to start or do you.
[01:19:02] Speaker C: Oh, let me see though.
I. I think the biggest thing is just to embrace that it's a long journey and that pacing yourself is very important in terms of whatever you want to pursue that. I think the goal is to just know that this is your life's work and to not get down about any failures or no's. Or missteps, that. That's part of the process. And that means you are growing even when it feels like you're not. Even when you feel it's like people are telling you you're not allowed to be here. That is actually a rite of passage and that tells you that you're. You're right to be there and that.
[01:19:46] Speaker A: And that frustration can fuel you. Yes, I'd say we talked, you know, we touched briefly on how our community can be sometimes critical within itself. And there are lots of reasons for that. It's because we don't feel seen in the broader context. So instead, I think sometimes we turn on each other. That is a thing to acknowledge, but also the community is. Is there to provide support and to uplift each other. And finding the people who have been doing this before you, people who can mentor you, people whose attitude you aspire to. Like, I'm a bit of a people pleaser and that's shifting, but. So I have always been drawn to, like, really bold people who maybe even rub people the wrong way, people who demand to be taken seriously and people who don't put up with being condescended to or spoken down to. Those people are out here. And a lot of times, if you just message them, they will be willing to help. They'll be willing to talk to you. Get the. Get the training, if you can.
[01:21:01] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:21:02] Speaker A: And demand to be seen. Demand equal training opportunities.
It's really hard because these spaces are not built for us. But there's. There's money. Get. Try to get the money.
[01:21:14] Speaker C: Try to get the funding, scholarships, the whatever.
[01:21:17] Speaker A: I know. It's so hard. A lot of us too are. Are on Social Security and are balancing that, and that causes a lot of barriers in. Because it's hot. We talk about this so much. There's a lot of lack of this middle area in helping disabled people become professional. There's a lot of, like, very early career stuff. Very early.
[01:21:37] Speaker C: Very early. Or it's like if you've been staffed for three years on a TV show and have had two films made, then we'll help you.
[01:21:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:21:45] Speaker C: It's like, well, where's.
[01:21:46] Speaker A: There's no hard. And a lot of times it's like we can't get into the door in that little area because there's steps up to the door, like, quite literally.
[01:21:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:21:55] Speaker A: In many circumstances. So it depends on the field. Of course, it's. We're talking very generally, but one of.
[01:22:01] Speaker C: My directors from film school always said me, surround yourself with people who know more than you and I think that's the best thing you can do.
[01:22:08] Speaker A: But don't. Don't people assume that you don't know anything? We talk about all the time. We. And it's kind of this annoying thing that we end up having to do. But it's also useful. We, like, we'd say our whole resume the first time we meet somebody or like there's always this thing that happens when I'm in a room, particularly with theater for the first few days, I'll feel, especially if I'm the only disabled person in the room, I'll feel a little alienated or I'll feel like people maybe are looking at me in this way. Like I almost didn't earn my, my place there, but almost like I was cast out of charity.
[01:22:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:22:47] Speaker A: They think that like we talked about make a wish kind of thing. Yeah. There's this assumption that we're being included out of somebody's good deed as opposed to being included because we actually have things to share and that we can contribute as much as anybody else who's there.
[01:23:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:23:02] Speaker A: So in those first few days in any room, it makes me really nervous. But I always make sure. And I talk a lot. I always, I bring up my resume and I name drop. Those are things that are like cringy coming from anybody else, but it feels like it's almost necessary for us to.
[01:23:16] Speaker C: Do because we're fighting to get to zero. We're fighting to get to neutral. We're fighting, fighting to get to the place where everyone else gets to start from.
[01:23:23] Speaker B: Fighting to get famous like Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Judy Dench level. We're fighting to get, as Jude said, to zero to the neutral point of view.
The, the. It's just normal because at the end of the day that's what we all are. There's so many questions I want to ask you more about like Joe, that the, the whole notion of your wife much be your caregiver. What did that. I mean it's just, it's laughable because it's so ludicrous and it's not like I'm.
Your masculinity isn't even threatened. But if. Wow, that's heart two ladies and gentlemen.
[01:24:41] Speaker A: There's a lot.
[01:24:43] Speaker B: But the last question to bring it all back together. I like to think that both people with disabilities and people who have yet to discover are enraged their own disabilities.
Both watch and legend to this show. Ads my guests. We've.
We've talked about so many topics in this episode. Ads my guests what do you hope that people with disabilities take away from this episode? And what do you hope that people who have yet to experience disability take away from the zeb?
[01:25:51] Speaker C: I would say for those with disabilities, advocate for yourself and don't feel like you can't speak up. And for people without disabilities, listen for.
[01:26:07] Speaker A: People with disabilities, know your worth, speak up, learn your history. Because that, it's both depressing, but it's also helpful. Know who the real competition is. We deserve as a community to be competitive, as in, we deserve to be competitive with non disabled people, but we don't need to be turning on each other as much or, or begrudging other people opportunities. When one person opens a door, they're opening the door. They're not opening the door and then closing it behind them. One person getting a job doesn't mean that they took your job. It means that they are creating the opportunity for there to be more jobs.
[01:26:53] Speaker C: We love to hear, hear about, we love to talk about firsts. The first evers, the first, the first, but the first. Allow for the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and that's really the wonderful thing.
[01:27:03] Speaker A: And it's an honor to be the 10th person to do something because that means that there's a bigger space being created and you're, you're following in a legacy, which is beautiful. You know, we're very individualistic in this society and I think sometimes we think that we don't matter if we're not the first one to do something. But the goal should be for all of us to have a seat at the table eventually and for us to as a community, make it, because that benefits everybody. And then for non, for non disabled people, acknowledge that you have a very high chance of becoming disabled at some point and that when that happens to you, it doesn't change anything about who you were before and who, I mean, it changes logistical things. But you're still going to be somebody who has hopes and, and dreams and hobbies and interests and.
[01:27:54] Speaker B: Oh, too many hobbies.
[01:27:57] Speaker A: Yes. Too many, yes. And knowing that maybe imagine what it feels, what it would feel like if suddenly just because something happens to you or you have an illness, what. Use your imagination to think about what it would be like if people only saw you for that and if everything else that you value in your life were suddenly erased or boiled down to that. And that's how a lot of us feel. That's how a lot of us feel when just something in our DNA happened or we had an accident or we were born a lot of people go through their entire lives feeling that way.
[01:28:29] Speaker C: Y.
[01:28:30] Speaker A: So just imagine what that feels like and maybe it's the next time you see a disabled person. Don't be condescending. Yeah, it's okay to ask if someone needs help. There's too much. There's too much to say. It's okay to ask. Don't just assume that we're all helpless and I don't know. Here, for your inspiration. Yeah, blah blah, blah. That's again, that's a whole nother episode in itself though too.
[01:28:52] Speaker C: We have many.
[01:28:53] Speaker B: Yes, we have many, many, many episodes to do together at the rigs of giving you more followers.
[01:29:06] Speaker A: And.
[01:29:09] Speaker B: If someone wanted to follow the inland stories of Joe Kibbler and Kelly Cox or if they wanted to reach out to you because they had a question about acting with a disability or screenwriting for characters with disabilities, how would a person do that?
[01:29:51] Speaker C: So you could find me on Instagram at Joseph A. Kibler or Tik Tok, which is just Joseph Kibler and I'm.
[01:30:00] Speaker A: Pretty much only on Instagram these days.
And I'm at Carrie Lee Cox. C A R E Y L E I G H C O X And there's this movement happening right now just to squeeze this in where a lot of times non disabled writers will hire us as consultants. Hire us people in our community as consultants on writing for disabled people. We encourage people write at us to the team. Actually hire disabled writers to be co writers or to be on the team. Consulting is great, but it's not enough and a lot of us are really ready to just write and be on the team. So take the next step and fully include us.
[01:30:41] Speaker C: Agreed.
[01:30:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:30:42] Speaker B: Any final thoughts before we sign up?
[01:30:47] Speaker C: Just thank you for having us.
[01:30:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been great to reconnect. I'm sure we'll see each other soon in the real world too.
[01:30:54] Speaker B: But we could do it July mid July.
In fact I still very much want to cook for you too.
And hopefully we'll get the dogs together sometime. That yeah, say hi to everyone and for what it was. You two will be fantastic parents. You already are to the animals. The Brady Bunch you reverenced early. Always fans of your creative out but always friends. I'm always here if you ever need. If anything, you two can always come back on and talk my ear off again with the ill Edge Stories YouTube channel. Thank you and such a privilege to know you both.
[01:32:10] Speaker A: You too. And thank you for doing this podcast. It's awesome.
[01:32:14] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:32:23] Speaker B: You have been listening to Disability Empowerment Now I would like to thank my dads. You are listener and the Disability Empowerment team that made Visibility Episode Podsible. More information about the podcast can be
[email protected] or on our social media at Disability Empowerment Now.
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