Bodies, ecotones and disability: Some personal reflections

This chapter offers a deeply personal and interdisciplinary reflection on becoming a wheelchair user, using the ecological concept of ecotones as metaphor. An ecotone, a zone of transition between different ecosystems, becomes a way of understanding the author’s body as a site of ongoing transition: physically, emotionally and socially. Moving from walking everywhere to navigating the world by wheelchair is not a single moment of change, but a continuing process of adjustment, tension and reorientation. Through interwoven vignettes, the chapter explores themes of hyper-visibility and invisibility, accessibility and relationality. Everyday experiences on public transport, at academic events and in social spaces reveal how disability is shaped not only by physical barriers, but also by attitudes, assumptions and institutional practices. The author reflects on the shrinking and reshaping of her world, while also recognising new connections and forms of awareness that have emerged. Grounded in feminist disability perspectives, the chapter resists any single model of disability and instead foregrounds lived experience, complexity and the creative possibilities found at life’s ‘edges’.