Those Additional Burdens
Just because an individual has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, doesn’t mean he or she is exempt from other unrelated challenges and discriminations in the world.
As hard as it is living with DMD, unfortunately, it can get even harder.
In our rare disease community, we have individuals with Duchenne who struggle not only with the social challenges of our rare disease, but also challenges of racial discrimination, homeland discrimination, income discrimination, mental health discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination and transgender discrimination.
In other words, they carry extra social burdens of existing concurrently in two – or more – minority classes. Those additional burdens include a greater likelihood of prejudice, exclusion and isolation.
As hard as it is to forge friendships and find a sense of belonging beyond our DMD community, it’s even harder for those individuals who carry multiple burdens…
…as if the many challenges of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy itself wasn’t more than enough to bear.
We Want to Help
Family, Friends and Duchenne want to help. We want to raise awareness about the social challenges of these rarer than rare individuals and their families.
We know many people have strong opinions about these minority classes. Indeed, they can become very hot topics. We are not asking you to agree or support the situations that many in our community are facing.
We do hope, though, that you can find some compassion for the human beyond the hot topic.
If you know someone in one of these situations, we hope that you will help them get help. Send them our way and we’ll do our best to assist them in navigating the incredible challenges that life has given them…
…so they can finally find friendships, they can finally find support in their life goals, they can finally find acceptance, and they can finally belong.