Book review: (In)visible

Excuse the puppy marks, in all my years I’ve never had to replace a library book until now 😂 but dog treat aside, this was a good one I wanted to share !

Goodreads summary: Diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome as a teenager, Adam, now a 26 year old freelance designer, attends his first meeting at a social support group. Here he meets Anna, a charity worker with a face hemangioma, Marta a TV anchor with alopecia, and Eva a make up artist with vitiligo. The following week he moves in with them.

Shaped after the writer’s own experience of living with Tourette’s syndrome, Adam tries to move from self-inflicted invisibility to being visible–in his family, career, and personal life.

Invisible is a book about what it means to be different. A book that encourages acceptance and tolerance. A book about fear and escape, about the necessity of being loved and accepted. It’s about the permanent struggle with your complexes and attempts to start loving yourself. It’s about hard stories. But also about big hearts.

My notes: This book was short and sweet, and took you into the world of a group of individuals with various disabilities and differences. Each character comes together in a therapy group, which helps them explore their challenges and work towards acceptance. I loved reading this book as it allowed you to see into other peoples’ lived experiences, and gain more understanding. As an occupational therapist, these are my favourite kind of books to read because they help me relate to my clients more. Sometimes theoretical books and therapeutic experience are just not enough to support our clients. They need someone to be able to see them and their life challenges as they are, not just see them for their diagnoses.

I definitely recommend this book as an easy read, and one of hope and love. Each character has their own chapters where they talk about their journeys to acceptance of their differences. They talk about the troubles they experience with society judging them or making outlandish comments to hurt them. I am in full belief that the reason people have such hard times with their disabilities is because our world is not created with them in mind. If you don’t look a certain way, or sound, move, act a certain way, your life becomes so much harder because others are not open to changing their perspective. If we were all a little more open minded and compassionate to differences and not fitting inside of these impossible societal norms, I truly believe life would be better for all.

Here’s my share, definitely recommend ! On the hunt for more disability stories similar to this if anyone has recommendations!