• Falling for Myself

Falling for Myself

by Dorothy Ellen Palmer

October 22, 2019 | ISBN 978-1-989496-03-9 | 320 Pages

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In this searing and seriously funny memoir, Dorothy Ellen Palmer falls down, a lot, and spends a lifetime learning to appreciate her disability. Born with two very different, very tiny feet, she was adopted as a toddler by an already wounded 1950s family. From childhood surgeries to decades as a feminist teacher, mom, improv coach and unionist, she tried to hide being different. But now, standing proud with her walker, she’s sharing her journey. Navigating abandonment, abuse and ableism, she finds her birth parents and a new chosen family in the disability community.   Reviews Falling For Myself: A Memoir (Monica… Read more

Advance Praise

“Fierce and uncompromising, filled with empathy and wit, Falling for Myself is a rallying cry for all of us. Dorothy Ellen Palmer takes a long hard look at the realities of the disabled life – and the ableism that pervades the world we live in today – and pushes us ever onward into a space that calls for change. In its humour and gentleness, and its refusal to acknowledge anything less than the extraordinarily complex, difficult joys and sorrows of the disabled life, Falling for Myself is a work of great galvanizing power. It is nothing short of incandescent.” – Amanda Leduc, author of The Miracles of Ordinary Men

“In Falling for Myself, Dorothy Palmer unflinchingly looks back at her childhood growing up as an adopted disabled girl filled with shame, pain and confusion. Brutally honest, Palmer reveals the messy realness of internalized ableism and the ways disabled girls and women are made to feel small by society. An important story for anyone who has yet to discover their self-love and pride.” – Alice Wong, founder of the Disability Visibility Project

“Not since reading Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl as a child have I been so utterly undone and yet, at the same time, encouraged about the will of the human spirit to not only survive but thrive.
     “Not one to placate, like so many of my Métis aunties, Dorothy hits you up the side of the head. Her story is a wake-up call to us all re: ableism and what it means to be a child, a teenager, a woman and mother making her way in this ableist society. Her way with words, her honesty and humour enter your psyche, leaving you forever changed. There is a fierceness to this story, the kind of fierceness that is humbling and can make you question your own beliefs and subsequent choices. It is my deepest hope that this is a book that will travel far.” – Jónína Kirton, author of An Honest Woman

Excerpt

Read an excerpt from Falling for Myself

  • **Finalist for the 2021 Hamilton Literary Award for Non-fiction**

    • Falling For Myself: A Memoir (Monica Miller, SubTerrain, Summer 2020)
      "A highly readable, sharp memoir that will hopefully clear a wide trail for more disabled voices to shine."
    • Reviews: vol 7, issue 2 (Neil Price, Humber Literary Review, 28/12/2019)
      "While memoirs that present stories of overcoming odds often slip into maudlin predictability, Falling for Myself never feels contrived or set up to induce what Palmer calls 'inspiration porn.' Instead, her story is really about a personal journey of learning and never becomes overly preachy or didactic."
    • Dorothy Ellen Palmer’s new extraordinary memoir, Falling for Myself, is a tale of an ordinary girl (K.J. Aiello, Globe and Mail, 17/12/2019)
      A review of Dorothy's memoir.

  • Dorothy Ellen Palmer is a disabled senior writer, accessibility consultant, and retired high school drama teacher and union activist. She grew up in suburban Toronto, and spent childhood summers at a three-generation cottage near Fenelon Falls.

    For three decades, she worked in three provinces as a high school English/Drama teacher, teaching on a Mennonite Colony, a four-room schoolhouse, an adult learning centre attached to a prison, and a highly diverse new high school in Pickering. Elected to her union executive each year for fifteen years, she created staff and student workshops to fight bullying, racism, sexism, sexual harassment, and homophobia.

    Dorothy sits on the Accessibility Advisory Board of the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) and is an executive board member for the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP) where she writes a monthly column on disability in CanLit for the newsletter.

    Her work has appeared in: REFUSE, Wordgathering, Alt-Minds, All Lit Up, Don't Talk to Me About Love, Little Fiction Big Truths, 49th Shelf and Open Book. Her first novel, When Fenelon Falls, features a disabled teen protagonist in the Woodstock-Moonwalk summer of 1969. She lives in Burlington, Ontario, and can always be found tweeting @depalm.