I remember that the HIV community made real progress when they embraced disability as a community....
Although I received accommodations from the disability services center throughout college, I didn't really start applying the label "disability" until my senior year, when I qualified for the Workforce Recruitment Program, a federal program that works with colleges to help students with disabilities get internships and jobs within the government. I looked at the ADA definition of the term: "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity."
I immediately recognized my qualification under the term. Crohn's Disease has limited many major life activities at different times: the ability to eat, the ability to walk longer than the shortest distances. With this new word in my lexicon, I started unconsciously using it interchangeably. This became even more prominent when I realized how hard it is to get a job if you have any sort of medical issue, then began researching disability rights, and then when I found my passion and life goal of promoting the disability community. In discovering disability activism, I also found a very empowered community of people who use a seemingly negative label in a positive way.
As someone with a chronic illness, I sometimes still feel like I'm out of place, not because the disability movement hasn't accepted me, but because many others with chronic illnesses reject the label, despite getting short-term or long-term disability insurance, ending up in the hospital, or experiencing discrimination for their illness. While I respect anybody's right to use whatever label they choose, I feel like detaching oneself from the disability rights movement does more harm than good to our goals.