We stand together, united in our grief, our solidarity, and our shared commitment to justice.

12/12

Today, we gather as a community to grieve. To speak the names of those who were failed by the very people they trusted and relied upon. To honour their memory. To name the violence for what it is and to validate the painful reality of what is happening.

11/12

This is why we observe Disability Day of Mourning. When we grieve together, we transform sorrow into solidarity, pain into power. We use our grief not only to honour those we have lost but to demand justice for the living.

10/12

Grief is medicine. It allows us to process loss not in isolation, but as a collective act of remembrance and resistance. Grief affirms the value of life. It reminds us that things can, and must, change.

Mourning the dead is a prerequisite to fighting for the living.

9/12

When we express our grief, we refuse to let those we have lost be erased. We refuse to let the value of their lives be minimised. We refuse to let the systems that harmed them go unchallenged.

With rising ableism in society, there has never been a more urgent time to express our grief.

8/12

Grief is meant to be carried together. When I joined the UK disabled community, I finally found the words and concepts to articulate the grief I had carried my whole life. I learned that grief, when acknowledged and shared, becomes a force for change.

7/12

The denial of our grief upholds the status quo. When we are unable to name and process our grief together, we are unable to transform it into action.

6/12

• The deaths of disabled young people at the hands of their caregivers are portrayed as the inevitable result of the "burden" of caregiving.

The abuse, neglect, and killing of disabled people are minimised, and as a result our mourning is invalidated.

5/12

• The deaths of autistic people in "care" or disabled people of colour due to police violence are excused as consequences of necessary interventions for public safety.

• The deaths of disabled people due to austerity are framed as an unavoidable cost of economic growth and efficiency.

4/12

• The deaths of disabled people due to NHS cuts and pandemic neglect are dismissed as the inevitable consequence of impairment.

3/12

As an autistic child, I saw and read about people like me being punished, neglected, abused, and killed. But without the language to name it as ableism, my grief had nowhere to go.

More often than not, ableist abuse and neglect remain invisible, unnamed, unchallenged:

2/12

Today is Disability Day of Mourning, a day when we remember disabled people murdered by their caregivers.

I grew up grieving...

1/12

We stand together, united in our grief, our solidarity, and our shared commitment to justice.

12/12

Today, we gather as a community to grieve. To speak the names of those who were failed by the very people they trusted and relied upon. To honour their memory. To name the violence for what it is and to validate the painful reality of what is happening.

11/12

This is why we observe Disability Day of Mourning. When we grieve together, we transform sorrow into solidarity, pain into power.

We use our grief not only to honour those we have lost but to demand justice for the living.

10/11

Grief is medicine. It allows us to process loss not in isolation, but as a collective act of remembrance and resistance.

Grief affirms the value of life. It reminds us that things can, and must, change.

Mourning the dead is a prerequisite to fighting for the living.

9/11