Getting help is leadership

A great many stories have been written about Senator Fetterman’s struggle to recover from a stroke while taking office as Pennyslvania’s junior senator. A lot of them have tried to spin his recovery into a tale of weakness, usually with a dose of patriarchy tossed in. But every story about how the Senate has adapted to accomodate his need for captioning, to this week’s news that he has checked himself in to Walter Reed to get care for depression, tells us something else: that we can choose to build workplaces that are welcoming to people with disabilities, and where people are encouraged to prioritize their health. As Sabrina Hersi Issa notes, “getting help is leadership.”