Can I tell you a secret? My husband is scared to leave us at home alone. Our child is well behaved, I’m a confident, capable adult and so... what’s the fuss?

Well, I’ve had three adrenal crises this year and it’s not pretty, pleasant or peaceful. In fact, it’s a life threatening medical emergency. My pituitary gland no longer functions since brain surgery and the ramifications of that are immense.

You can’t necessarily tell by looking at me but I wouldn’t be alive without the tablets, creams and injections I take daily. What you might consider ordinary life tasks, I sometimes find extraordinarily hard.

I don’t want or need your pity but I do ask - including on behalf of others like me - for your understanding and solidarity. The world is built around the needs of healthy people without disabilities.

For the rest of us, work and play, movement and spaces, access and agility, energy and acceptance, communication and custody, can be difficult or even impossible. Not because of our bodies but because the world wasn’t built for our bodies.

Buildings, commutes, ways of working, polite conversation, busy supermarkets, noisy school bells and the most ordinary of stuff, wasn’t created with us in mind.

It’s International Day of People with Disabilities and my husband has gone surfing, solo, because he damn well deserves to do what he loves. I know he’s nervous to go. I’m nervous to stay behind.

This supposedly ordinary thing, this being apart where I’m the only parent around our son, has become worrying and troublesome and something to plan for.

But we’re trying, we’re learning, we’re making it work - and that process is made easier with a little of that understanding I’ve already mentioned.

Stay safe, folks. Thanks for listening.