Dr Grace Spence Green

ANYONE looking for a stocking filler this Christmas should take a look at To Exist As I Am, by Dr Grace Spence Green.

The disabled junior doctor, 29, who lives in Clerkenwell, is currently completing her paediatrics training at hospitals in north London, and is a regular swimmer in the ponds at Hampstead Heath.

Her book tells the story of how she rebuilt her life after being crushed by a man falling on top of her from three storeys up in the Westfield Stratford shopping centre in 2018. The book asks people to think about disabled people as a community impaired by society, rather than their injuries. It makes you think about why people are unwilling to get their heads around what Dr Spence Green describes as her “radical acceptance”: simply being content – as the title of her book says, to exist as I am.

“Maybe I could understand a pitying reaction better when I was still stuck in hospital, but it continued to crop up, even once I was out in the world, doing a dream job that I had worked so hard for, beginning to enjoy life again, and feeling more capable every day in my new body,” she writes.

“I want my story to be seen in the context of a greater struggle of generations of disabled people, in the community where I have found a place. I want it to be bigger than myself and part of a movement of collective action and solidarity.”

Earlier this year, Dr Spence Green spoke to the Tribune about the difference between the medical model of disability “where it’s your job to fix it”, and the social model “that society is what disables you mostly rather than the impairment”.

Over the years, she has come to think of her wheelchair as something of a fun friend, as well as fundamental to her independence.

• To Exist As I Am is published by Profile with the support of the Wellcome Collection in Euston.