What Does Independence Really Mean?

Life Adapts.

What does it mean to be independent?

At first, the answer seems simple.

Being able to take care of yourself. Make your own decisions. Pay your own bills. Go where you want to go. Live where you choose. Do the things you need to do without relying on someone else.

But the longer you sit with the word, the less simple it becomes.

In the disability community, independence can look very different.

Someone may live in their own home, manage their own finances, choose what they eat, decide when they go to bed, determine where they go and make every major decision about their life.

That same person may also require another human being to help them get out of bed, get dressed, prepare a meal or complete other daily activities.

Are they independent?

The disability rights movement has spent decades fighting for the right of disabled people to live in their communities and direct their own lives rather than having those decisions made for them.

That history matters.

For someone who requires assistance, independence doesn't necessarily mean doing everything alone. It can mean having control over how you live, who assists you and what happens in your own life.

But that raises another question.

Are independence and autonomy the same thing?

Autonomy is the ability to make decisions and have control over your own life. Independence, at least in the way many of us understand the word outside of disability, often includes the ability to carry those decisions out without depending on someone else.

Those ideas overlap.

But are they interchangeable?

Consider something simple.

You decide you want a glass of water.

If you can go into the kitchen, get a glass, turn on the faucet and get the water yourself, you made the decision and physically carried it out independently.

Now imagine you make the exact same decision, but you need someone else to get the glass, fill it and bring it to you.

The decision is still yours.

The water is still what you wanted.

You still directed what happened.

But was the action independent?

Or was the decision autonomous and the action dependent on assistance?

Maybe both experiences can be described as independence.

Maybe they shouldn't be.

Words matter because the words we choose shape how we understand people's lives.

There is nothing inherently wrong with dependence. Human beings depend on other people in countless ways throughout their lives. Requiring assistance doesn't make someone less capable of deciding what they want, and it certainly doesn't make them less deserving of control over their own life.

Perhaps that's exactly why this distinction deserves more thought.

I have experienced independence from more than one perspective. I know what it is like to make a decision and simply get up and do it. I also know what it is like to make the decision myself while needing a tool, an accessible environment or another person to make that decision possible.

Both allow me to direct my life.

But they don't always feel like the same kind of independence.

Maybe independence isn't one thing.

There can be financial independence. Physical independence. Independent living. Self-direction. Autonomy. And perhaps acknowledging those differences doesn't diminish any of them.

Maybe it simply gives us better language for talking about the lives people actually live.

So instead of deciding what independence should mean, maybe the better place to start is with a question.

When you remove the definitions, the labels and what you've been taught the word is supposed to mean—

what does independence mean to you?

Until next time… keep adapting, keep living.