The Power of Halloween for People with Chronic Illness

The Power of Halloween for People with Chronic Illness

Doesn’t everyone deserve one day to be awesome? For people with chronic illness, Halloween is that day.

If your chronic illness is visible, there’s no way around it: You probably spend most of the year feeling different. Even if you choose to hide your chronic illness, it’s easy to feel like you’re not quite like everyone else. And for most of the year, it can be hard to see these differences created by chronic illness in a positive light — it’s easy to feel “less than” rather than “more than.”

Then there’s Halloween. On Halloween, everyone is different. Think about it this way: How many movies have you seen in which aliens or witches walk around in plain sight on Halloween and everyone just thinks they have really good costumes? Halloween is an opportunity for aliens and witches to be treated just like everyone else — or even to be treated like they’ve done a better job than the other costume-goers.

It’s a chance for people with chronic illness to be treated like everyone else, too. Whether your costume hides your differences or celebrates them, Halloween lets us choose how we are seen. We can pretend to be normal. Or we can blow right past normal into awesomeness.

Doesn’t everyone deserve one day to be awesome? For people with chronic illness, Halloween is that day. Check out these adaptive costume ideas, some from Target, and others from the creative minds of people just like us: