A Wednesday with Liz

People in the disability community know her from her video series, Tuesdays with Liz: Disability Policy for All, but it’s a recent Wednesday, and Liz Weintraub is getting personal.

Her new book, All Means All: My Life in Advocacy , shares lessons learned over 25 years as an advocate for people with disabilities and as a person with life-long disabilities. It shares her love story with her husband, Phil Weintraub; her complex emotions around her parents’ decision to place her in a residential facility; and early mistakes at work that taught her how to better relate to people around her.

“Sharing all of that, I believe, is how people will learn from my story,” she said.

Weintraub has long collaborated with the Institute on Community Integration, and ICI Director Amy Hewitt wrote one of two forewords in the book, released January 20.

“Stories that are shared illustrate the forgiveness, reflection, and reckoning that come with wisdom,” Hewitt writes. “Liz shares a story about her leadership journey and how she came to recognize that the qualities of a great leader require you to listen more, profess less, and seek to understand.”

Weintraub credits Hewitt and Charlie Lakin, who led ICI’s Research and Training Center on Community Living and is now retired, with providing critical support to people with disabilities over many decades.

“I always understood that Charlie and Amy were two people who believed in us, and that means a lot to me and my friends,” she said.

Some of Weintraub’s story, including her years in the residential facility, almost didn’t get told.

“At first I didn’t want to touch that part of my life in the book,” she said. “It was a bad part of my life, and it was scary. A friend helped me realize that Bancroft really taught me some things, like how to live on my own.”

Also in the book, Weintraub shares poetry, short stories, and a plain-language glossary of terms, such as ableism and special needs, that are important to understand.

So, while it’s her first book, she says it may also be her last because of all the hard work it took to create.

The book is written in plain language, so everyone can easily understand the concepts, but that doesn’t make them any less profound. Chapter One, titled “We the People,” quotes Thomas Jefferson’s writing in the Declaration of Independence that all people were created as equals.

“But are people with intellectual/developmental disabilities included? Or are we seen as just ‘those people we should feel sorry for’?” she asks. “In my life, I have noticed that some people are not included. We are often not considered in ‘we the people.’”

All, indeed, means all.